17 days later

riX
Do you mean there is also local backup? I have my backup in Drive and Whatsapp is disconnected from my former phone.

    I just gave up my whatsapp history. Inconvenient? Sure. A fresh start. Then I started doing it from time to time. Just uninstall and reinstall without restoring. Feels fresh, you should try it.

    Let it go.

    2 months later
    9 months later

    paneos Thanks, did not work...

    I had the same experience, and found I needed to grant WhatsApp itself the Contact permission. Not via Contact Scopes, it needed the full permission before it'd pick up my existing Google account =/.

    Anyone know if it can be limited more than that? What does it actually need from Contacts for this to work...?

        Shados Open the App info for WhatsApp > Permissions > 3 dots > All permissions. You'll notice that the permission "find accounts on your device" is listed under Contacts.

        So it seems it requires the contacts permission to be able to see your Google account.

        This seems to be something specific to the way that WhatsApp does backups to Google Drive.

        I say that because Cryptomator can also integrate with Google Drive for backups, and doesn't require the Contacts permission to do that.

        I haven't looked into it any further than this, but this hopefully helps to provide you some additional context.

          Kinda interesting. I don't think it helps re. contact scopes, though... there doesn't appear to be any specific contact I can add to the scope that will let it pick up my google account (including a contact w/ the same email as my google account).

          3 months later

          This worked for me for the "This account already exists on your device" issue:
          After 2 days of trial and error, I was finally able to restore my chat history. Here's what I did:

          1. Install WhatsApp using Google Play Store but don't start the setup.
          2. Navigate to Settings > Passwords and Accounts > Delete the Google account associated with the google drive where your WhatsApp backup is stored.
          3. Grant all permissions to Google Play Services (reverse this after installing WhatsApp).
          4. Complete WhatsApp setup > enter Google account info when prompted
          5. WhatsApp will then prompt you to restore from backup. (enter your encryption key if you encrypted your back up)
          6. Revoke all permissions granted to Google Play Services in step 3.
            All chat history should be restored
            Worked for me... hope it helps someone recover their history
            8 days later
            a month later

            smx73

            I'd like to point out how i got mine to work.

            I tried installing whatsapp by doing a restore from google, after typing in the email it asked to add account again. When i did it said "already in use".

            I gave google play store, google services framework, and google play services permission to contacts via the "apps" app in grapheneos.

            gave whatsapp every single permission possible

            I went into play store, and logged out of all my google accounts.

            went back to whatsapp and entered the google email to restore again, and it worked like a charm.

            go back and disable every permission possible that you don't want on those apps.

              There's no need to grant every single permission. Google Play Services requires the contacts and network permissions, and WhatsApp requires both the contacts permission and the media permission (can simply set up storage scopes instead), as well as of course the network permission.

              a month later
              a month later

              Same, this is the only method that worked for me. Thank you all. And I wish that all managers at facebook and all developers who programmed this piece of turd of an app burn in hell for eternity.
              To be clear, as of mid 2023 it is no longer possible to restore a backup by moving manually the files if you have Android 10 or higher (as officially stated here), like we always did... Of course not, this is the easiest, most straight-forward, most clutter-free solution, that has worked since computers were invented, but the GENIUS people at whatsapp had to reinvent the wheel with a proprietary solution that is worse that cat shit wrapped in dog shit that does not work and only makes the simplest of things, like restoring a backup, worse than a nightmare. And of course the could backup option is only with the most proprietary, invasive, evil and Orwellian company of them all: Google; the couldn't in a million years have thought to let us upload the backup files on a cloud provider of our choice, as it would have been such a big brain move the universe would have imploded. Thank you, you at facebook are really the most phenomenal programmers humanity has ever seen. I hope you die.

              The only two methods that now work are: whatsapp's dogshit "chat transfer" functionality, which does not require a GDrive backup, and the usual GDrive backup method. Now, before joining the dark side, I of course tried the chat transfer, but since those braindead people at whatsapp don't even know how to properly implement wifi direct or any other method, 2/2 times it gave me errors, after HOURS of saying "chat restore in progress", and the second time it even deleted my local backup... what a fucking joke of a company you are, facebook, and thank you for deleting without my approval gigabytes and YEARS of data. Luckily, as I have an IQ higher than my room temperature expressed as degrees Celsius, unlike those retarded developers at facebook, I did a full backup on some hard drives. And for those of you reading, the easiest method is to use adb (with GNU/Linux, as it is clutter-free), with this command from terminal:
              adb -a pull /path/on/your/smartphone/ /path/on/your/computer/, and it is lightning fast too.

              So the only method currently working, or at least that worked for me, transferring chats from a normal Android phone to one with GOS installed, is to join the dark shitty side and upload all your data to those greedy mf's at G corp, sell your soul and your virginity, and download it again on GOS. You should avoid all the pain and stress and jump directly to this.

              I wanna point out that the procedure is easier than previously explained here, as you don't even need to touch Google Play Store (probably you don't even need it installed, but I installed it anyways), and you can install whatsapp by downloading the apk from their official website (https://www.whatsapp.com/android/); also, you don't need to give every permission to Play Services, as I only gave contacts, photos and videos, network and notifications. This worked perfectly for me, and I only inserted the Google account when whatsapp prompted me, without any problems.

              After this, nuke everything google related from your phone, uninstall any of their services, and if possible nuke the G account itself (it is easier if you create one from scratch just for the whatsapp backup and then you delete it).

              Thank you GrapheneOS developers and community for this amazing OS you created. It is my first time using it, but I am amazed already. You really deserve all the glory in this world. Keep fighting the good fight.
              Cheers

                19 days later
                5 months later

                ToffoliGate
                Hello everyone, I am a new member here. I give my love to everyone and I am asking Why is WhatsApp making it so difficult to restore backups on Android 10 and higher, especially when the manual file transfer method was so straightforward? Should users really have to rely on Google Drive and deal with such issues? I would be very happy if you could let me know, thanks