Merge and restore to iOS #Ĭompared to Android, the message database on iOS is easily accessible through local backups.

When finished, your decrypted database will be in extracted/msgstore.db.

For the sake of simplicity, I left the password blank. Make sure to provide the same password to the script when it asks for it. Then install the Android SDK Platform Tools on your computer, and ensure you can see your device.ĭuring this process, your phone will ask you to set a backup password. To begin, enable developer options and USB debugging on your phone. WhatsApp-Key-DB-Extractor takes advantage of this by sideloading an older version of the app onto your phone and then performs a backup with adb backup. While WhatsApp has disabled this option, there are older versions of the app with it still enabled. The database and key are both stored in internal storage which is inaccessible unless you have a rooted device or the app has enabled android:allowBackup. The WhatsApp Android app encrypts the chat database with a key that is generated during the initial setup. Ensure you read and understand the risks of any code or scripts you run on your devices. This process does have some limitations outlined in the watoi README.md that include replacing media files and shared locations with placeholders and skipping messages from contacts that have changed IDs (phone numbers).Īs always, follow this guide at your own risk and always make a backup. Note that I have used the kittywhiskers fork of watoi, as it has support for the newer WhatsApp schema. I used two open-source tools to perform the transfer: WhatsApp-Key-DB-Extractor to extract my existing chat database from my Android phone, and watoi to merge and replace my chat history with my iOS database. Unfortunately, this support did not come soon enough for me and I needed to find another way. This may be changing soon, as WhatsApp recently added support for iOS to Samsung transfers on select devices with the promise of support to come soon. Currently, there is no official way to transfer your chat history from Android to iOS. I was willing to spend an afternoon redownloading all my apps and meticulously signing in to each one, but my years of chat history on WhatsApp eluded me. After nearly a decade, I decided to switch back to iPhone for the first time since the iPhone 4.

Iphone backup extractor github