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