One of the major drawbacks of switching from Android to iOS was the pain of losing your WhatsApp data, including chat history and downloaded media. However, all this will now be a thing of the past following WhatsApp’s latest major update making it possible to transfer your chat history, media and other settings when you ditch your Android device for an iPhone.
WhatsApp announced on Twitter, “A new way to keep the chats that mean the most 📱📲 Today, you’ll have the ability to transfer your entire chat history from Android to iOS and vice versa. Now you have the freedom to switch to and from your preferred devices.”
Based on the steps indicated in the instructions, WhatsApp has partnered with Apple to leverage its Move to iOS app to make a successful transfer of WhatsApp data to a phone on iOS.
According to the support page, A user can transfer account information, profile photo, individual and group chats, chat history, chat media, and WhatsApp settings. The only things that will not be transferrable are the WhatsApp call history and peer-to-peer payment messages.
To get started with the transfer, there are a few conditions both devices must first satisfy before the data transfer can be made:
- Have WhatsApp iOS version 2.22.10.70 or above on the iPhone and WhatsApp Android version 2.22.7.74 or above on your Android device.
- Use the same phone number as your old phone on your new device
- Your iPhone must be factory new or reset to factory settings to pair with the Move to iOS app and move data from your Android phone
- Both the iPhone and the Android device need to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network or connect the Android device to the iPhone’s hotspot.
- Once you have done this, open the Move to iOS app on your Android phone and follow the onscreen prompts
- Once you have followed all the prompts to the letter, you can now activate your new device, and you will find all your chats as they were on the old device.
Immediately after you have made the transfer to iOS, the data does not go to cloud storage until you create an iCloud backup. Furthermore, your data will still remain on your Android smartphone until you decide to manually delete and remove WhatsApp.
