When switching phones, one of the most important things you want to keep is your chat history. Specifically, transferring your WhatsApp chats from iPhone to Android.
While most apps and chat platforms make it relatively easy to carry years of chat history with you, WhatsApp is an outlier in this regard. Yes, as long as you stay on Android or iOS, you can use cloud backups to keep moving your WhatsApp chats from iPhone to Android or vise versa. However, switching WhatsApp between iOS and Android has resulted in the loss of all your conversations thus far. Fortunately, this is about to change.
WhatsApp is the world’s most popular chat platform. With over 2.5 billion users, the service relies on Google Drive and Apple iCloud to backup online chats. As a free platform, this makes sense to reduce WhatsApp storage costs – my own WhatsApp backup is over 15 gigabytes.
However, it is not possible to connect to Drive and transfer encrypted backups directly. Furthermore, neither platform integrates deeply on the smartphones of the competing platform. Apple doesn’t even have an iCloud app for Android. This effectively eliminates local transfers as a viable option for moving data from one platform to another.
For the time being, WhatsApp has collaborated with Google and Samsung to enable local backup transfers from an iPhone to an Android device. However, if you want to transfer your WhatsApp chats from an Android device to an iPhone, you’ll have to wait a little longer. According to WhatsApp, the feature will be available later in 2021.
How to transfer chats from an iPhone to an Android 12 phone
Google has made operating-system-level changes starting with Android 12 to allow users to transfer their WhatsApp chat histories from iPhones to Android devices. For the time being, the feature is only available on Pixel phones, but it should be available on all new smartphones that launch with Android 12.
- You’ll need a phone that has been recently reset and has Android 12 installed.
- Using a USB-C to Lightning cable, connect the iPhone to your Android 12 device.
- To import all or selected data from your iPhone to your Android 12 phone, follow the on-screen instructions.
- To complete the data transfer, press the continue button.
- When prompted during the transfer process, use your iPhone to scan the QR code displayed on the Android device.
- Scan the QR code to open WhatsApp on your iPhone. You’re ready to go when you press the start button.
How to Move WhatsApp Messages from an iPhone to a Samsung Phone
Earlier this year, WhatsApp announced the ability to move chats between platforms, as well as a partnership with Samsung. This eliminates the need for Android 12 on Samsung devices, but it does make the process more difficult.
- Your Samsung device should be reset.
- Connect your iPhone to your Samsung device using a USB-C to Lightning cable when prompted by the onboard smart-switch app.
- Choose all of the apps and data you want to move, including WhatsApp.
- Scan the QR code displayed on the phone’s screen when prompted.
- When you scan the QR code, WhatsApp should launch on your iPhone. To continue transferring data, press the start button.
- You can now complete the setup of your Samsung device.
- After that, open WhatsApp and sign in with the same phone number you used on the iPhone.
- When prompted, click the import button to finish the process.
Transferring WhatsApp chats from iPhone to Android is a simple process that should only take a few minutes, depending on the size of the WhatsApp backup. The entire transfer is done locally and is encrypted. All media, including chat history, photos, and videos, should be preserved, but you will lose your WhatsApp call history.
