WhatsApp adds the ability to bring your chat history with you when you switch from iOS to Android — including all voice notes, photos, and conversations. The long-rumored feature was announced during Samsung’s launch event today and will initially cover transfers from iOS to the company’s new Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3 and other Samsung phones “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.
The new feature should help address one of WhatsApp’s most frustrating elements, which is that it’s never been officially possible to transfer your chat history between mobile operating systems. If you choose to use WhatsApp’s cloud backup feature, iOS chat histories are stored in iCloud, while Android’s are in Google Drive, meaning it’s only possible to transfer your chats between phones running the same operating system.
The new feature transfers chat histories using a physical Lightning to USB-C cable rather than sending them via the internet. Unfortunately, if you’ve transferred between iOS and Android in the past and have two separate cloud backups, the new transfer feature won’t merge them into a single chat history. Instead, WhatsApp tells me that if you use it to migrate your chat history and back it up, it’ll overwrite any existing backups.
WhatsApp says the new feature will allow transfers from iOS to Samsung’s new foldable at first, and it will allow transfers to Samsung devices running Android 10 and up “in the coming weeks.” It declined to say when the feature might arrive for non-Samsung Android phones or when it’ll allow Android to iOS transfers.
WhatsApp is developing a way for its users to transfer their chat histories from iOS to Android, according to reports from WABetaInfo and 9to5Google. The feature could fix one of the biggest annoyances with the Facebook-owned messaging service, which is that it’s not officially possible to transfer a backup of your messages between iPhone and Android, only between phones running the same operating system. Details of the in-development feature have been appearing in WhatsApp’s software since at least April.
Screenshots shared by WABetaInfo show a new “Move chats to Android” option in WhatsApp’s iOS app. A second screenshot shows a screen prompting users to keep their iPhone unlocked with WhatsApp open while the transfer occurs. So far, most of the evidence has pointed towards an iOS to Android transfer feature, but WABetaInfo has previously reported that the opposite will also be possible.
WhatsApp’s new transfer tool could form part of a new “Switch to Android” iOS app under development from Google, XDA Developers reports. Similar to the “Move to iOS” app that Apple offers to help users migrate from Android to iOS, Switch to Android could make it easier to migrate to Google’s operating system. According to XDA Developers, code in Google’s app suggests it might integrate with WhatsApp’s unreleased transfer tool.
News of the migration feature comes as WhatsApp is beta testing multi-device support, allowing users to access their conversations from multiple devices without routing everything through a single phone. As well as transferring chat histories between platforms, WABetaInfo has also reported that WhatsApp is developing a way of transferring them between different phone numbers. It’s currently unclear when any of these features might be widely available.
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