WhatsApp Will Now Let You Transfer Your Chat History Between Android and iOS

WhatsApp finally addressed one of its biggest problems with chat history — the inability to transfer chat messages when you change platforms. 

The Instant-messaging Service will now let you move your chat history when you switch from an iOS device to Android. This includes voice notes, images, and chat messages. 

The Facebook brand announced this update during Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event today. It will roll out to Android phones for now, starting with the new Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 and other Samsung phones (Android 10 or higher) “in the coming weeks.” 

Eventually, the feature will cover all transfers between iOS and Android phones, though it’s unclear when it’ll be available for all devices.

Before now, it has been impossible to transfer chat histories from iOS to Android and vice versa. Here’s how the WhatsApp Cloud Backup feature works: iOS chat history is stored on iCloud while Android chats are stored on Google Drive. This means users can only transfer chats between Android to Android phones only as well as iOS to iOS devices. 

Now that it’s possible between devices with different operating systems, the new feature allows the transfer of chat histories using a physical Lightning to USB-C cable rather than for users to upload them to the internet. 

If you’ve switched between iOS and Android in the past and had two separate cloud backups, unfortunately this new transfer function won’t combine them into a single chat history. Instead, WhatsApp says that if you use it to migrate your chat history and then back it up, it will overwrite the existing backup. 

For now, WhatsApp will only allow transfers from iOS to Samsung’s new foldables, and it will allow transfers to Samsung devices running Android 10 and later “in the coming weeks.” 

The Facebook Company didn’t say when the new feature will be available to other Android phones aside Samsung or when it’ll allow Android to iOS transfers. 

Engadget reported a statement from WhatsApp saying, “The implementation was difficult.” As the messages are end-to-end encrypted and stored on-device, migrating them demands “additional work” from WhatsApp, OS developers and phone makers. It took a collaborative effort to enable transfers like these, in other words.