Smartphones & Tablets | July 5, 2023
WhatsApp is the center of their digital life. It’s more than just a messaging app to communicate with loved ones and acquaintances; it also serves as a way to make purchases, contact customer support for the products they buy, or even follow their favorite football team on WhatsApp.
That’s why the fear of losing WhatsApp chats is understandable because if they get deleted, it’s possible to lose not only our memories but also other valuable information. That’s also why many people rely on third-party apps to backup their chats and transfer them to another phone, for example, when switching devices.
The latest update from WhatsApp finally solves this problem by offering an easy and direct way to transfer chat history from one phone to another, as long as both devices use the same operating system (e.g., between two Android phones).
The novelty lies in a new chat transfer process between two phones, allowing you to move all open chats from one device to another. As demonstrated by Mark Zuckerberg himself on his Facebook account, it is an incredibly simple process that only involves using the phone’s camera.
The transfer process begins on the new phone. For some time now, it has been possible to log in to WhatsApp on another phone without losing the connection with the current phone. Once the session is initiated, we can start the transfer process, which involves the new phone displaying a unique and exclusive QR code. All you have to do is use the camera of the old phone to scan the code from within WhatsApp and accept the transfer. To do this, go to Settings > Chats > Chat Transfer. Both devices must be connected to the same Wi-Fi network, and location services must be enabled.
An important detail is that, with this method, chats are not shared with anyone else. The information is directly transferred between the two phones, and the data is always encrypted. In this way, WhatsApp has overcome the significant obstacle it faced, which was the fact that its chats are encrypted, and not even the company itself can read them. However, this also means that it is not as straightforward as making a backup on WhatsApp servers and accessing it from another device. That’s why this new feature may have taken a bit longer than expected.
