I need to send in my Pixel 8 for repairs because the screen is broken. This will take 3 weeks but they will give me a temporary phone but only after I hand in the Pixel.

What's the best way to bring my Whatsapp chats to the temporary phone and then later back to the repaired Pixel? I do not have (nor want to create) a Google account for a cloud backup and I won't have both phones at the same time in order to transfer the chats through the Whatsapp app.

I did back up my files from the folder /storage/emulated/0/Android/media/com.whatsapp/Whatsapp but this is all encrypted so not sure if it will work if I just copy these files to the new phone?

I have done this by making local backup of whatsapp and move com.whatsapp folder to PC, And then on new phone install whatsapp( With internet, Contact & Storage Scope enable to com.whatsapp & move back com.whatsapp folder to internal storage), during setup process restoring but local back up.
Just don't understand what do you mean by "this is all encrypted?"

    DarkLord

    My confusion is because Whatsapp says all data is end-to-end encrypted but then it seems that a new install on a new phone can just decrypt the chats that you put in the com.whatsapp folder. Signal asks for a backup passphrase when you restore a local backup. How come Whatsapp doesn't? There's no password. So the possible options are:

    1. There is an auto-generated password that's in the non-accessible parts of the file system (the app folder only Whatsapp can access) and if you do a cloud backup or transfer from phone to phone this key is transferred as well -> but then there's no way to backup this key and when you just backup the encrypted chat files from the com.whatsapp folder you won't be able to decrypt it as you're missing the key (that's what I'm afraid of).

    2. The decryption key is derived from the phone number which is registered in Whatsapp hence you don't need to enter a password -> but then Meta would be able to calculate the key as they know the password, so the whole E2EE is a lie

    3. It could also be a key derived from the phone number and some device identifier, which would mean Meta can't decrypt it, but restoring from a local backup would fail if it's a different phone (but might work if you just reset your phone as it keeps the same device ID)

    Just some thoughts! Maybe there's some genius way they developed to let you (and only you!) restore the encrypted backup without needing a password, in that case they should share it with the Signal developers...