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My phone has been running low on space lately. WhatsApp gave me the low storage error and then crashed. After freeing a couple of gigabyte on my phone, I went back to WhatsApp, only to discover that my chat history (for all contacts) has been wiped out. However, I discovered that in my phone's settings, it says WhatsApp is using 70 GB (probably all my WhatsApp chat data).

I don't think any files are corrupted, because I went to the WhatsApp data folder in the "My Files" app and I was able to play WhatsApp videos from there.

How can I get my chat history to show up again in their respective WhatsApp chats?

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Have you explored File Explorer on your Android phone? If you haven't set up WhatsApp to back up your chats to Google Drive, your Android device will take care of it by saving a local backup.

If you use an external SD card for storage, you can find this backup in the SD Card > WhatsApp > Databases folder.

Android will store the backup on your phone's internal memory if your device doesn't have an SD card. Remember, deleted messages are only stored in the local backup for a week. So, if you need to recover them, do so within seven days. The exact steps to restore your messages can differ based on your Android version and phone model. Still, they generally involve navigating your phone settings to find and restore the backup. Here are the steps to find:

  1. Launch File Explorer on your Android device and navigate to WhatsApp > Databases.
  2. Here, you can view the backup files. The latest backup file is named msgstore.db.crypt12.
  3. Rename the latest backup file to msgstore-latest.db.crypt12.
  4. Rename the other older msgstore-YYYY-MM-DD. 1 .db.crypt12 files you want to restore to msgstore.db.crypt12.
  5. Uninstall WhatsApp.
  6. If you’ve enabled Google Drive, tap the left menu tab and select Backups.
  7. You can view the backup files with your phone number in it.
  8. Hit the three-dot menu and tap Delete Backup.
  9. Next, reinstall WhatsApp.
  10. When prompted while setting up, select Restore from backup.

You can try Android Data Recovery Software if this method doesn't work, but don't overwrite your phone by using it excessively.

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  1. Back up all your data from WhatsApp
  2. Add to Dropbox or whatever is your preferred backup storage app or SD card
  3. Sign out of WhatsApp
  4. Clear storage bins and delete all WhatsApp data, don't forget about junk files
  5. Uninstall WhatsApp
  6. Clear cache again
  7. Restart
  8. Open Play Store
  9. Download WhatsApp
  10. Set permissions before signing in
  11. Sign in, and set all usage and preferred settings

All your past data will show on the app side or web app side of WhatsApp, then go and test the erroneous process again.

Not sure if this will work, but the alternative would be to copy WhatsApp to the SD card and have it always launch from there. To move that data to another drive, that would free up over 70 GBs. Always format your SD card before loading anything onto it. See SD card instructions on the web.

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  • I dont think this will work. Have you tried it?
    – Rohit Gupta
    Commented Nov 29, 2023 at 19:02

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