How to move WhatsApp chat history from iPhone to Android?

Question

Just upgraded my iPhone 4 to Nexus 4, and could not find on Google a reasonable answer to this question. Is there any good app that does this? Or, what should be the process?

Answer 1

I made the switch from iPhone 5S to Nexus 6 three days ago. I transferred WhatsApp conversations including attachments from my old iPhone to new Nexus 6 with the help of BackupTrans, the desktop utility mentioned in this article. Here are the steps to transfer WhatsApp messages from iPhone to Android with this software:

1. Launch the program on your Windows PC or Mac and then connect both your Android device and iPhone to your computer via USB cable.

2. Click 'Back up my data' when a message pops out on your Android phone’s screen. Now the software will read WhatsApp messages from your Android and iPhone and show them on its main interface.

3. Finally go to the top tool and click "Transfer Messages from iPhone to Android" button.

Note: You will need enable USB debugging before connecting your Android phone to this program and also make sure you have iTunes 11 or above installed on your computer.

It's a paid program but I couldn't find any other software or app that can migrate WhatsApp chat history from iPhone to Android. There are some apps on Play Store but none of them worked for me.

Answer 2

There is no simple way of doing so, you have to do a lot of technical mumble-jumble for this.

Caution: Do not install WhatsApp on your Android device beforehand.

If you are ready then:

[I have not tried this with Mac, this works fine in PC (Windows) and Linux]

1. Connect your iPhone to the system (PC)

2. Do not start iTunes. If starts automatically, then close it.

3. Open command prompt (RUN: cmd) or terminal.

4. Now here is the tricky part, you have to search for a folder named "whatsapp". You have to use command line

   1. dir - to see visible contents of the current folder.
   2. dir\a - to see all contents (including the hidden and system) of the current folder .
   3. cd [folder] - change directory (change folder to).
   4. copy the folder "whatsapp" to your system by using copy [source] [destination].

5. Now simply connect your Android phone and copy that folder in the primary USB storage (memory card).

6. Now install WhatsApp, authorise it and it will ask you to restore backup. Do it and you are done.

Answer 3

You can use a third party app to take the data and migrate it. You can use the following apps:

1. Backuptrans
2. WazzapMigrator
3. Dr. Fone

Alternatively, you can email yourself the backup file from the WhatsApp and import it on the new phone:

On your iPhone, launch the WhatsApp App and then go to "Settings > Chat Settings" on the interface.   Select the WhatsApp chat messages you want to transfer from iPhone to Android and swipe the pane to left. Then you need to tap on "More" button and choose "Export Chat". After that, you would be asked Whether to attach media or not.   Choose the e-mail to export and type in your email address as the way you do to send an e-mail, and then please press "Send".

Answer 4

As Zlatty's answer mentioned, you can use those paid programs and I think they should work. But they will cost you 2000+ Indian Rupees. Backuptrans has a limit of 20 messages in the trial version, Dr. Fone does not let you restore in the free version.

I will explain how I managed to successfully transfer WhatsApp messages from an iPhone to an Android phone (Nokia 2.1)

So, as this video explained,

1. Back up iPhone using iTunes without encryption

2. Use iPhone Backup Extractor (4 files can be extracted for free) to browse to Application Groups -> net.whatsapp.Whatsapp.shared -> ChatStorage.sqlite

   This one file has all the chat messages, the texts.

3. Copy this file to your Android phone's internal memory

4. Get the WazzapMigrator APK and open the SQLite file using it, it will create a local backup for WhatsApp Android that it understands.

   WazzapMigrator is great, it only costs 490 Rupees. You can find the APK for free online too since it used to be free for download. As of today, the latest Whatsapp version being supported by it is (2.18.248),

5. Use Droid Info or some other app and find out which variant APK works for your Android device and download that particular WhatsApp version from a site like APK Mirror.

6. As you set up WhatsApp, it will tell you that it has found the local backup and you will find all the chats in place.

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If you want all your media to also be transferred, you need to also somehow copy all the files inside the Media folder into your PC and then into your Android phone. This iPhone backup browser software I recommended only lets you download 4 for free, so either look for a free browser or pay for exporting all the images and videos you have.

As an example, there might be upwards of 700's files we need to bring out.

Once you have the media files on the mobile, the WazzapMigrator app will incorporate it while building the local backup of WhatsApp.

Answer 5

You can take a look at this app I developed: WazzapMigrator. It's an Android app that moves your Whatsapp history from iPhone to Android.

For this you will need:

• an Android device already running WhatsApp (do not enable Google Drive backup)
• an iPhone Whatsapp archive (ChatStorage.sqlite) - you don't need the actual iPhone, just a recent backup

Details:

You can use any iTunes Backup Extractor to get the file:

• How to extract ChatStorage.sqlite on Windows
• How to extract ChatStorage.sqlite on Mac

^{(source: WazzapMigrator)}