Whatsapp restore

Franzfume

I'm planning to install graphene on my pixel 6
How I can restore my actual backup from Google drive ?
Thanks

aurocha

This is how I do it:

Put phone in Airplane mode
Make a local backup of Whatsapp under Settings > Chats > Chat Backup
Make sure you have USB Debugging active under Developer options. If not, enable the usual way, by going to About Phone and toggle it by tapping 7 times in the build number.
Connect the phone to a computer or laptop that has adb installed.
Pull the WhatsApp Backup from step 2 to your computer via adb:
adb pull /sdcard/Android/media/com.whatsapp
Install GrapheneOS and enable USB Debugging as previously mentioned.
After all is properly configured in your GOS install, push the backup onto the phone again via adb:
adb push com.whatsapp /sdcard/Android/media/
Run Whatsapp initial configuration and give it all the permissions it wants, especially access to storage. You can change this later. It will find your backup and ask you if you want to restore from there. Say yes and all our chats and media will be restored.

I do this a lot.

Only piece of advice is: after doing the initial backup, don't connect to Whatsapp again, either via your phone or via your browser until the restoring is completed. I noticed that, if you do that, you might loose the messages posterior to the backup date. So just backup, and be offline until the restoring is completed.

Cheers,

Viewpoint0232

aurocha

How does this work in terms of encryption? Is the data in com.whatsapp unencrypted? And if not how does the Whatsapp on the new phone know how to decrypt it, as you never have to enter any password?

Franzfume

Wow thanks!

aurocha

Viewpoint0232 You can create an encrypted backup. You just have to enable it under Settings > Chats > Chat Backup > End-to-end encrypted backup.

You are required to set a password. If you do so, that password will be requested upon restoring.

Cheers,

mrn

For anyone wishing to restore Whatsapp conversations to a GOS install without Google Play Services, I will add the following to the discussion:
I was never able to restore any messages between backups done on stock and GOS.
I get a generic error message that the backup could not be restored.
I was never able to make it work, I might be an isolated case, but I felt like it was still useful to write it here and let people know.

DirtyDan

Since this question specifically asked about restoring from Google Drive, I'll also outline how to do that.

On the profile you wish to use with WhatsApp, install Play Services and Play Store from Apps. Login to your Google account. Install Google Drive from the Play Store. Confirm you're logged in to Google Drive.

Then install WhatsApp from the Play Store on that same profile and restore normally from Google Drive using the app as you would on normal Android.

The most important step is to make sure you install WhatsApp AFTER you have Google Drive installed and you're logged in or WhatsApp won't be able to find the backup nor will it be able to make cloud backups in the future.

If you do go this route, be sure to turn on end-to-end encrypted backups in WhatsApp if you haven't already.

After this, WhatsApp will function basically the same as it does on stock.

Another helpful hint is to remind you about Contact and Storage scopes features available on GrapheneOS, which come in handy with apps like WhatsApp that demands contacts and full storage permissions despite not needing them to function.

Viewpoint0232

aurocha

I don't have that function. I'm just using the local chat backup (and automatically sync the com.whatsapp folder to a trusted cloud storage with Foldersync). I don't have a Google account or Play Services.

Nevertheless, I am not asked for a password nor have the option of setting one. So I'm worried that what I'm backing up is not actually enough to restore it (i.e. missing decryption key) if I lose or break my phone? Or are the files in com.whatsapp not encrypted? The files all have the ending .crypt14 so I would have thought they are.

edit: according to AI:

The decryption key is generated by the WhatsApp server at registration time and is stored locally in the /data/data/com.whatsapp/files/key directory on your phone. However, this file is not accessible to users without root access. When you restore WhatsApp from a local backup, the app retrieves the decryption key from the server using the phone number verification process.

Main source for this seems to be: https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/136072/how-can-whatsapp-restore-local-or-google-drive-backups

Which makes me wonder think that if the decryption key is indeed on the server, how can Whatsapp still be end-to-end encrypted?