How To Download Your Whatsapp Backup
Igone Yochim
Today I went to the official Apple Store in Mexico City. My iPhone has been having the unresponsive touch screen issue. They said that the only solution offered by Apple is to replace the entire phone, which is fine with me. However, I need to have a backup of my WhatsApp chats.
I asked the Apple guy if I would be able to restore my messages from an iTunes backup. He said "absolutely not" and that WhatsApp messages can only be restored from an iCloud backup. I got home and decided to Google it. According to the WhatsApp website, you CAN restore your WhatsApp chats by using iTunes.
Apple should RECOMMEND THIS POST because there is ABSOLUTELY NO DOUBT that it works!!! The reason I say that Apple should recommend this post is because I Googled the same question hundreds of times in different ways, and half of the websites out there said that it would not work, and that iCloud was the only way. Everyone who reads this post can rest assured that it DOES WORK!!! However, I should mention that I chose to do an ENCRYPTED BACKUP. Unfortunately, I don't know if a normal backup will work.
If anyone out there reading this post has done a normal (non encrypted) iTunes backup, it would be great if they were to post on this thread and let everyone know what the results were! I'm sure a lot of people would be very thankful!
Ok gotcha. So iTunes will save all 3rd-party app data unless that app's data has been marked by the app itself to not be saved as part of a backup. I can say that 99.9% of the time iTunes does backup the app data since there are very few reasons apps will deliberately flag themselves to iTunes to not save the data. I can't imagine that WhatsApp is one of them that would do that.
WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, boasting over 2 billion active users worldwide. With so many conversations and important messages passing through the app every day, it's crucial to have a backup plan in case something goes wrong.
If you'd like to be able to view your backed-up WhatsApp messages, you'll need to export them. Using this method, you can select which conversations you want to save, then open the exported file to view your messages in that conversation.
WhatsApp allows you to export chats as Plain Text, however, this does not embed your media like photos in the export. To retain the nice messaging format used in WhatsApp, and your embedded media, you can instead export as HTML or PDF with TouchCopy!
TouchCopy is an invaluable tool which allows you to view your iPhone content and copy whatever you want to your PC or Mac. With TouchCopy, you can access all your WhatsApp chats, export them (along with emojis and attached media), or print them out!
If you chose to export media as well, the media will be saved in a zip file alongside your .txt file. The images will not be embedded in the text file. Use TouchCopy instead if you would prefer your export to resemble your WhatsApp chat format and embedded media.
When using this method, WhatsApp will back up your chats to Google Drive, however, the backup must first be created on your Android itself - so ensure your Android has sufficient free storage space to store the backup before you proceed (a WhatsApp backup will not count against your storage limit in Google Drive).
You can back up your iPhone in its entirety to iCloud. However, if you only wish to back up your WhatsApp chats to iCloud, you can do this directly from WhatsApp itself on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch.
Before restoring a backup, you may wish to ensure that your existing backup is up to date. Creating a new backup will ensure that all your most recent chats and messages are saved to the backup. This will prevent losing any data since the last backup was made.
Note that the phone number of the iPhone you are restoring to must match the phone number of the device that the backup was made from (backups are linked to a certain phone number and WhatsApp account).
Restoring a complete backup of your iPhone in this way will replace any content currently on your iPhone. As such, you may lose new content on the device which was acquired since your last backup (this is not an issue if you are restoring to a brand-new iPhone). For this reason, make sure you understand this process before proceeding with a full restore of your iPhone.
A few days ago, I encountered a weird set of problems in WhatsApp on one of me Android phones. I wassuddenly unable to either download documents or images sent to me by my contacts, or upload and senddocuments and images to my contacts. WhatsApp would complain with a message that reads along the lines:"Sorry, this media file doesn't exist on your internal storage."
I realized that WhatsApp had probably broken, or more specifically, the database. So I decided toperform a local database restore. I've done this a few times in the past. You uninstall WhatsApp anddelete data. You connect your phone via USB, you navigate to the WhatsApp folder, and you copy the(backed up) contents in. Then, you reinstall WhatsApp, go through the setup process, and job done.Alas, this wasn't working.
So we know that WhatsApp isn't working. Okay. The real problem is the inability to perform a localdata restore. The WhatsApp folder on your Android phone has three sub-directories: Backups, Databasesand Media. These three directories contain the following data: your application settings, your actualmessages, and all your different media files, like gifs, photos sents and received, videos, audiorecordings, etc.
If WhatsApp is not working correctly, you can just copy the contents of the Databases directory ontoyour phone. This will restore your WhatsApp activity to the date the database copy was made. So if it'sfrom say three days ago, anything done in the last three days will not be shown in the WhatsAppinterface.
I did this, but nothing. During the setup process, WhatsApp did not see my local backup. It wouldonly ask me about trying to look for a backup on my Google account, and nudging for a permission to doso. The really maddening part is that I've done this local copy & paste many times before, withoutissues.
I did this, and when I set up WhatsApp again, this time, it DID prompt me to restore a local backup.I was able to restore the application, and now the download and upload of media was working correctlyagain. However, the database was only valid to about 8 days prior. So I lost a little bit of chathistory and such.
I have a pretty decent guess. On December 2, there was a phone system update. This is also the lastdate when WhatsApp created a daily rotation backup of its database - normally, the program retainsseven daily database files, typically titled: msgstore-[timestamp].crypt14 or similar.
I truly hope you will find this article useful and valuable to your own needs. After all, if you'rereading this, you probably need to restore your WhatsApp database, and you are not using the cloudbackup. Indeed, that's always an option, but like many things mobile, it requires sending yet more ofyour data to the "cloud", yet more linking of accounts, and even less privacy. Convenience yes,something I want no.
WhatsApp for Android can back up its data to Google Drive on a regular basis. These copies may include just text, or text, photos, and videos, depending on the setup. The feature is nothing new; backup has been working like this for years. Take a look in Menu -> Settings -> Chats -> Backup to check if you have backup to Google Drive configured.
Any file takes up space in Google Drive, reducing your remaining storage quota. However, Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, and Google have agreed not to count WhatsApp backups toward the quota. So, you will be able to store more data in your Google Drive.
Some risk has always been there and will remain. Chats stored in WhatsApp are encrypted, and only chat members can read them, whereas backups on Google servers lack that protection: The data stored there is openly accessible. Therefore, that kind of backup is a potential threat to your privacy.
Google Play offers dozens of apps for backing up WhatsApp data. Unfortunately, none of them are made by well-known app developers, and many require root access. These apps may not be safe to install; you could easily let in a nasty Trojan disguised as a backup app. At the very least, we recommend you download highly rated, frequently downloaded apps only. We also advise you to take care of your smartphone's malware protection.
WhatsApp will let you know 30 days before this change happens with a banner in the chat app when you go to Settings > Chats > Chat backup. Those who have Google Workspace subscription through work or school will not be impacted by this change, for now.
If that sounds good to you, follow the steps below to back up your WhatsApp chats using iCloud, or scroll to the Troubleshooting section at the bottom of this page to learn how to set up regularly scheduled, automatic backups.
At the top of the screen, you will see a log of your recent WhatsApp backups, plus an option to back up right away. Make sure to do this on Wi-Fi if possible, as backing up media can use up heaps of mobile data.
Below that, you can choose the Google Account you want to back up to, your backup frequency, and more. We recommend not backing up videos, as this will quickly eat through your Google Drive storage limit!
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