WhatsApp has become the most popular messaging app globally, with an active user base of 600 million people. This popularity that WhatsApp garnered is majorly because of the ease of use this cross-platforming messenger offers. The simple UI and the minute features made it what it is today. In India alone, WhatsApp boasts of 70 million active users, which is more than one-tenth of its active consumer base.
There is no questioning the popularity of WhatsApp, and we aren’t here to do that. Because of its popularity, more and more people have replaced their standard messaging with WhatsApp. But, with leading technology come greater problems. WhatsApp claims that it adds more than 25 million users monthly. Now, for these 25 million and the other 600 million people, the single most priority is sending messages.
Why Backup?
Humans and machines both are unpredictable. You never know what may happen next. You may lose your mobile phone, your phone may get corrupt, your memory card may start to malfunction, you need an immediate factory reset, your kid uninstalls WhatsApp, and the list goes on. And that’s when having a backup will make you feel better. Not only WhatsApp, it’s recommended that you backup everything important from your phone at regular intervals or set up an automatic backup so if a situation arises, you don’t have to struggle a lot.
While taking a full phone backup is what I recommend, it’s a tedious and time-consuming job. So just taking a backup of everything important is what I’ll instead suggest you to do. In this case, let’s learn to backup and restore (recover) WhatsApp messages on your phone.
Recover Deleted WhatsApp Messages
Luckily for you, WhatsApp takes regular backups of your chat history on a daily basis. The default time for this backup is 2:00 AM according to the time on your phone. This backup file is located on your phone’s internal storage, and for precautionary measures, you should always copy it to your laptop or desktop. Thus, recovering WhatsApp messages won’t be a tough job for you since all of them are automatically backed up by WhatsApp.
How to Backup WhatsApp Messages?
Manually Backup WhatsApp Conversations
You can also take the backup for your messages manually, by following these steps:
- In WhatsApp, Go To Settings
- Go To Chat Settings
- Tap on Backup Conversations
Once your backup is ready, you can copy the file on the internal storage of your phone and transfer it to your PC/Laptop, whichever is convenient. Please know that the chat history that will be restored will only consist of the messages that were backed up in the most recent backup that you took. So if you plan to manually backup WhatsApp, make sure you do it regularly.
Set up Google Drive Backup
An alternate way to backup your WhatsApp messages is to set up a Google Drive backup. Ensure that you have got a Google Drive account before you try to backup your WhatsApp on the cloud. This feature is not yet available on all the devices. If you download the latest APK from WhatsApp website, you can use this feature. Follow this link if you wish to do so. Once you’ve downloaded the app, move it to your phone and install it. Follow the on-screen instructions and complete the installation/setup. Once done, follow the steps below to setup Google Drive backup on your smartphone.
- Open WhatsApp
- Go to ‘Menu’ button -> Settings -> Chats & Calls -> Chat Backup
- Tap on ‘Backup to Google Drive’ and set how frequently you want the data to be backed up by the cloud. Choose the time duration appropriately while making sure that you do not consume all your bandwidth just for backing up your WhatsApp.
- You will now be prompted to select a Google account that you want to associate with WhatsApp. Choose one and grant the necessary permissions if asked.
- Tap ‘Back up Over’ to choose the network you wish to use for backups – Cellular, WiFi, etc.
You can also backup your chats to Google Drive manually. To do so, follow the given steps.
- Open WhatsApp
- Go to ‘Menu’ button -> Settings -> Chats & Calls -> Chat Backup
- Tap on ‘Backup to Google Drive’ and select a Backup frequency other than ‘Never’.
- Tap on ‘Back up’ to begin your Google Drive backup.
The first backup usually takes more time than subsequent backups. Because when you backup for the first time, all your chats are uploaded to the cloud but subsequent backups are incremental. Only the data that has changed or new data that has been generates is uploaded. So the first backup will consume more data and time than the subsequent backups.
How to Restore WhatsApp Messages?
Now, to restore the messages you backed up, follow these simple steps. Before that, you must ensure that there is a backup of your previous chat history. Otherwise, you may lose all your data. If you have the backup file saved on your computer, it’s now time to move it to your smartphone’s WhatsApp -> Databases directory. If there’s a backup already present there which you believe contains the messages you want to recover, then you do not need to replace a database or copy a new one there.
- Tap on the WhatsApp icon in your Apps drawer.
- Once you get the option to uninstall WhatsApp, do so.
- Now, download WhatsApp from the Play Store.
- Once downloaded and installed, start the application and enter your details
- After your details have been entered, WhatsApp will scan your phone for any previous chat history.
- If you have backed-up your data successfully, you will get a window that notifies you of an available backup.
- Restore that backup and, Voila!
The other way of doing the same thing is:
- Go to your Phone Settings
- Look for Applications
- Under Applications, look for WhatsApp
- Open WhatsApp, under applications.
- Now, you should have an option for clearing the data.
- Clear the data and the open WhatsApp.
- Enter your details
- After your details have been entered, WhatsApp will scan your phone for any previous chat history.
- If you have backed-up your data successfully, you will get a window that notifies you of an available backup.
- Restore that backup and you are done!
Restore backup from Google Drive
If you’ve backed up your chats on the cloud i.e. on Google Drive, follow the below steps to restore the backup.
- Make sure that the Google account you used to backup your chats is added to your device.
- Uninstall WhatsApp from your phone.
- Reinstall WhatsApp from Google Play Store or the link provided above.
- After verifying your phone number, you will be prompted to restore messages and media from your Google Drive account.
- Once the restoration process is complete, tap on ‘Next’ to see all your chats as before. Once the chats are restored, WhatsApp will begin downloading media from Google Drive. This ensures that you work doesn’t stop because in most cases chats are more important than images, videos and voice messages.
If you do not have a backup on Google Drive, WhatsApp will automatically begin to restore messages from the locally stored backup (if any).
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