Twelve years since WhatsApp’s release, the company has finally allowed chats to be transferred between Android and iOS apps.
Until now, if you had a WhatsApp account and decided to change phones from Android to iOS or vice versa, you would not have been able to transfer your chats with it–officially. The reason was that Android backs up chats to Google Drive while iOS did so to iCloud–the two cloud-based storages being incompatible with each other.
While third-party apps allowed for this transfer, due to them being unofficial, they raised a security issue.
Now, WhatsApp has enabled this cross-platform functionality via Samsung’s Smart Switch transfer tool. The new tool was revealed at Samsung’s Galaxy Unpacked event, and will debut on Samsung’s newest Galaxy foldable devices, with a broader Android release later. The app will allow chats to be transferred from an iOS device to a Samsung one via a Lightning to USB-C cable (most of which retail for over Rs 1,400 online).
However, iOS users wanting to transfer data from an Android will need to wait, though a WhatsApp spokesperson told TechCrunch they were working to bring this feature to users worldwide.
The transfer currently only works with a single backup file.