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How to Back Up and Restore Your Chat History in a Messaging App

Tap through each step to see how to back up your conversations and bring them to a new device.

  1. Open Settings and find Chats

    In WhatsApp, tap Settings, then Chats, to find the backup options.

  2. Open "Chat Backup"

    Inside Chats, tap "Chat Backup" to see your backup status and options.

  3. Choose where the backup is stored

    On Android this saves to Google Drive; on iPhone it saves to iCloud. Sign in to the right account before backing up.

  4. Export a single conversation separately if needed

    For just one important conversation rather than everything, use "Export Chat" inside that specific chat to save it as a standalone text file -- a different, narrower feature from a full backup.

  5. Restore it on your new phone

    Install the app on your new device, verify your number, and when prompted, choose "Restore" to pull your backed-up chats back in before setup finishes.

Back up before you switch devices

Chat history doesn't always transfer automatically to a new phone, especially moving between Android and iPhone, so backing up beforehand is worth doing any time you're about to switch devices, not just as an afterthought.

This is different from exporting a single chat

A full backup restores your entire chat history and settings to a new device; exporting a single chat produces a plain text file of just one conversation for reading or saving separately. Use a backup when switching phones, and export chat when you just need to save or share one specific conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are photos and videos included in the backup?

You can usually choose whether to include media. Including it makes for a more complete backup but takes longer and uses more storage.

Can I back up an end-to-end encrypted or "secret" conversation the same way?

Some apps exclude specially encrypted or secret chats from a standard backup for security reasons, so it's worth checking separately whether anything sensitive needs its own copy.