WhatsApp will allow us to export and import our chats with local backup

WhatsApp creates local backups on the mobile but they are for internal use. Actual backups are hosted in Google Drive on an Android mobile and in iCloud on an iPhonebut in the future we will have a little more control over them.

A few months ago we discovered that WhatsApp was working on an option to export chats and now we know from WaBetaInfo the reverse process: import a backup of our chats on WhatsAppwithout depending on Google Drive or iCloud.

He’s my cat and I take him where I want

There are those who accumulate up to ten years of messages on their WhatsApp and without any intention of losing them. The good news is that lately WhatsApp has fixed its main problems in this regard with utilities to transfer chats from iOS to Android and vice versa.

However, that’s not the only way your cats can go extinct. WhatsApp backup requires you to use Google Drive or iCloud, and there will be those who won’t or can’t use either of them. The application does not give us the possibility to save a local backup that we can take from mobile to mobile. But everything indicates that it will soon be the case.

Back in June, we echoed the mysterious menu for exporting backups and now we know the other half of the problem: the menu for import a backup that you previously exported

. Not much is shown on the screen except for text stating that “if you exported a backup from a previous device, you can now import it”. Also including the button Skipmakes us think that it will be a process that we can only do during the initial registration of WhatsApp.

This export and import without going through anyone’s cloud has several advantages. Technically, you shouldn’t need an internet connection (although you will still need it to sign up and use WhatsApp, but at least you won’t need to download the huge size of your backup). We don’t yet know what type of file it will generate, but it will usually create one or more large files that we will have to transfer to our new mobile

to import it.

We still don’t know exactly how this local WhatsApp backup will work, but if it’s cross-platform (i.e. you can import it to both Android and iOS), we It will be much easier to change mobile regardless of your operating system. We’ll have to wait and see how it ends, but the truth is that it promises a lot.

More information | WhatsApp