How to easily recover your WhatsApp chat history
If you need to restore your WhatsApp chat history, whether due to a new phone or accidental deletion, a Google Account backup is essential. Here’s a detailed guide to checking for existing backups and restoring your chats.
Checking for an existing Google Account backup
1. Open Google Drive: Launch the Google Drive app and sign in to your Google Account.
2. Access backups: Tap the menu icon and select ‘Backups’. Here you can see if there are any WhatsApp backups stored on your account.
Restore your chat history
1. Reinstall WhatsApp: Uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp from your device.
2. Restore your backup: When prompted, tap ‘Restore’ to restore your chats from your Google Account backup. If you choose to skip this step, the app will be reinstalled without restoring your backup.
3. Verify your identity: For added security, you may need to verify your identity, especially if you don’t have two-step verification or end-to-end encrypted backups enabled. Verification can be via a code sent by text or phone call.
Important considerations
– Storage space: Ensure that your Android device has more storage space than the size of the backup. If your device does not have enough space, only a partial backup may be restored. In this case, free up space and try the restore process again.
– Consistent phone number: The phone number used to create the backup must match the phone number used to restore the backup.
– Backup overwrites: Google Account will only keep the most recent backup per phone number, with each new backup replacing the old one. There’s no option to restore an earlier backup.
Additional backup and restore options
– Recurring backups: To set up automatic backups:
– Go to WhatsApp > More options > Settings > Chats > Chat backup.
– Select ‘Backup to Google Drive’ and choose a backup schedule.
– Select your Google account for backups. If not already connected, tap ‘Add account’ and sign in.
– Optionally, you can choose to back up using mobile data.
– Manual backups: To manually back up your chats at any time:
– Open WhatsApp > More options > Settings > Chats > Chat backup.
– Tap ‘Backup’.
– End-to-end encrypted backups: For added security:
– Go to WhatsApp > More options > Settings > Chats > Chat backup > End-to-end encrypted backup.
– Tap ‘Enable’ and create a password or 64-digit encryption key.
– Tap ‘Create’ to start the encrypted backup.
Change your Google Account for backups
– Update Google Account: To change the Google Account associated with your WhatsApp backups
– Go to WhatsApp > More options > Settings > Chats > Chat backup > Google Account.
– Tap ‘Add Account’ and sign in with the new account.
– Set a new backup schedule.