WhatsApp rolls out Android and iOS chat history transfers, starting with Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Flip 3

Total WhatsApp chat freedom from the device you’re using is finally here.

After years of wondering how to transfer WhatsApp chats across operating systems, or more specifically, between Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android devices, one of the world’s largest chat platform says it is now introducing the ability for users to transfer your entire WhatsApp chat history, including voice notes, photos and videos, between operating systems.

Like FINALLY.

This new feature will be available to both Android and iOS users, which means that users who don’t want to lose years of chat history and contents will be able to switch from both Android to iOS, and from iOS to Android, freely.

The catch? WhatsApp will start rolling out this feature on Android first, or more importantly, on Samsung’s newest Galaxy Z Fold 3 & Flip 3 devices which were announced today.

For a start, users will be able to take their WhatsApp history from iOS to either Samsung Android devices. Subsequently, users around the world can start to use this feature to take their WhatsApp chats to a Samsung device that run Android 10 or higher in the coming weeks.

While slightly limited in availability for now, it’s goods new for WhatsApp, whichsaw itself in a bit of a rough patch earlier this year with many folks migrating off to other chat platforms.

The challenge in doing this is that unlike cloud based messaging services, WhatsApp messages are encrypted end-to-end, and stored on each device so bringing your WhatsApp history between platforms requires additional work from WhatsApp, and for operating systems and device manufacturers to build it in a secure and reliable way.

“Your WhatsApp messages belong to you. That’s why they are stored on your phone by default, and not accessible in the cloud like many other messaging services.

"We’re excited for the first time to make it easy for people to securely transfer their WhatsApp history from one operating system to another.

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"This has been one of our most requested features from users for years and we worked together with operating systems and device manufacturers to solve it,” says Sandeep Paruchuri, product manager at WhatsApp.

During Samsung’s August 2021 Unpacked event, the company shared that full chat history migration will be coming soon to more Galaxy devices, though no timeline was mentioned.

Still, we expect some entrepreneurial folks to find a backdoor to this.

The only caveat? This feature will only be available for Android devices running OS 10 and up.

Nice one, WhatsApp. Late is better than never.

This article was first published in Geek Culture.