How to transfer WhatsApp chats from iPhone to Android

One of the most important things you want to carry forward with you when switching phones is your chat history.

While most apps and chat platforms make it fairly trivial to carry years of chat history with you, an outlier here is WhatsApp. Sure, you can use cloud backups to keep moving your chat history from one phone to the next as long as you are staying on Android or iOS. However, so far, switching WhatsApp between iOS and Android has meant losing all your conversations. Thankfully, this is about to change.

Read more: 21 essential and fun WhatsApp tricks and tips you must know

WhatsApp is the most popular chat platform in the world. With over 2.5 billion users, the service relies on Google Drive and Apple iCloud respectively to maintain online chat backups. As a free platform, this makes sense to mitigate storage costs for WhatsApp – my own WhatsApp backup clocks in at over 15 gigabytes.

However, it isn’t possible to directly connect and transfer encrypted backups between Drive and iCloud. Moreover, neither platform integrates deeply on the competing platform’s smartphones. Apple doesn’t even offer an iCloud app for Android devices. This essentially leaves local transfers as the only real option to move data from one platform to the other.

For the moment, WhatsApp has worked with Google and Samsung to allow for local transfers of WhatsApp backups from an iPhone to an Android device. However, you’ll have to wait a bit longer if you are looking to transfer your WhatsApp chats from an Android device to an iPhone. WhatsApp claims that the feature should be available later in 2021.

Read below to learn how to transfer your WhatsApp data from iOS to Android.

How to transfer chats from an iPhone to an Android 12 phone

Starting with Android 12, Google has added operating-system-level changes to allow users to bring their WhatsApp chat histories from iPhones to Android devices. For now, the feature is limited to Pixel phones but should be rolling out to all new smartphones that launch with Android 12.

Here’s a step-by-step guide:

1. You’ll need a freshly reset phone with Android 12 onboard.
2. Connect the iPhone to your Android 12 device via a USB-C to Lightning cable.
3. Follow the on-screen instructions to import all or selected data from the iPhone to your Android 12 phone.
4. Tap the continue button to finish transferring data.
5. When prompted during the transfer process, scan the QR code shown on the Android device using your iPhone.
6. Scanning the QR code will pop open WhatsApp on the iPhone. Tap the start button and you’re good to go.

Also read: Here’s how to use WhatsApp without a SIM card in your phone

How to transfer WhatsApp chats from an iPhone to a Samsung phone

WhatsApp announced the ability to move chats between platforms earlier this year alongside a partnership with Samsung. This waves off the requirement for Android 12 on Samsung devices but does make for a more involved process.

1. Reset your Samsung device.
2. When prompted by the onboard smart-switch app, connect your iPhone to your Samsung device via a USB-C to Lightning cable.
3. Select all the apps and data you want to transfer, including WhatsApp.
4. When prompted, scan the QR code displayed on the phone’s screen.
5. The QR code should open WhatsApp on your iPhone. Tap the start button to continue transferring data.
6. You can now finish setting up your Samsung device.
7. Once done, open WhatsApp and log in using the same number as on the iPhone.
8. Press the import button when prompted to complete the process.

Transferring WhatsApp chats from iPhone to Android is a pretty straightforward process that shouldn’t take more than a few minutes depending on the size of the WhatsApp backup. The entire transfer takes place locally and remains encrypted. All media including chat history, photos, and videos should carry forward, but you will end up losing out on your WhatsApp call history.

Also read: How to delete a WhatsApp account