How to restore a WhatsApp backup?

ToffoliGate

lova7 Please note that you are not giving "great app advice", as "Whatsapp plus" is an unofficial whatsapp apk that is probably highly insecure, could contain malware/spyware/trackers etc., is in clear violation of WhatsApp's terms of service and will very probably lead to a ban of your account.

The only official sources from where you can safely download WA are the official website (https://www.whatsapp.com/android/) and the Google Play store (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.whatsapp). Any other source (even Aurora store) is to be considered highly insecure and could lead to a ban of your account. For your own safety, refrain from using unofficial sources.

atw

Easiest solution, just performed this as i didn't get the "Recover your chats from backup" prompt.

1) Copy \android\data\media\com.whatsapp\databases\msgstore-xxxxx
(your latest backup) to a safe location

2) uninstall Whatsapp.
3) Place your msgtore backup file manually in the same location, by creating \com.whatsapp\databases manually
4 Install Whatsapp.

Now you will get prompted to restore your latest backup if you have allowed whatsapp to scan your device.

ToffoliGate

Continuing this thread, and for the sake of clarity, has anyone tried any backup or transfer method on GrapheneOS? For now, the only reportedly working method is the Google Drive backup, but I wanted to know is anyone tried and succeeded with other methods, because with the GDrive route the backup can have a maximum size of 15 GiB, if you do not wanna pay Evil G for extra space.

The only other official method is to use the "Transfer chat function". This, however, is obviously not a backup, as it requires you to have a perfectly working phone, because it uses Wi-Fi direct to transfer the data, and it also requires a functioning camera and a functioning touchscreen. So this is useless for recovery. Also, this method never worked for me, probably because the backup was too large.
I've seen some reports here on the forum and in general around the web that some users transferred WA's folders manually and successfully recovered the data via this method (in 2024) (see here), here and here). This, however, is in contrast to what WA officially says on its website, as this method should work "only if you’re using Android OS 9 or below".
The idea should be to manually transfer the entire folder structure with all the media to the new phone from the old one (or from a "backup" of said folders on a disk) and trick the app into thinking that's the same phone as the old one and this is a re-installation process.
The overall procedure should be something like this:

1) Install WA on the new phone. Just open it once but do not do absolutely anything. Then close the app, force stop it, clear the cache and storage, and don't allow it to run in background.
2) from the old phone (or from a manual backup of the folder structure) copy (using ADB pull) the entire com.whatsapp folder onto /storage/emulated/0/Android/media/.
3) Open WA, choose language, and enter in verification code to activate.
4) Now immediately turn airplane mode on to block WA from contacting Google's services.
5) Grant all permission requests that come up, especially contacts and storage access.
6) Let WA try to access Google Drive. It should say that it cannot connect to GDrive. A prompt should pop up. Skip, and you should be prompted to restore from a local backup.
7) If it does not restore anything because it "cannot find a backup", just start blank and let it delete all the folders; then force stop the app, copy all your media and databases in the folders, uninstall whatsapp keeping the content, reinstall it and redo the procedure again; now should hopefully find the backup.

But I do not trust this method, as it seems very prone to error, and Shitapp can always change some little thing and break the entire procedure in the future. Because, of course, the most sane and straight-forward backup procedure of having a local backup that can be manually transferred (like Signal, SimpleX and Threema have) was a concept so big-brain that Zucc's monkeys working at Shitebook could not handle.

Has anyone successfully tested the "manual" backup in 2024? If so, please report it by updating this thread and helping all GOS users. Thank you.

Viewpoint0232

ToffoliGate 5) Grant all permission requests that come up, especially contacts and storage access.
6) Let WA try to access Google Drive. It should say that it cannot connect to GDrive. A prompt should pop up. Skip, and you should be prompted to restore from a local backup.

Hi just wanted to say thank you because this approach made Whatsapp try to restore from a local backup rather than insisting on checking Google Drive. Just to add to this, the first attempt restore from local backup failed because it wanted Internet for some reason, but at this stage I could then turn off the airplane mode and get it to work.

dhhdjbd

ToffoliGate
Viewpoint0232

Do you, or anyone else know please,
if it matters/ still works if i have End-to-End encypted backup turned on?

i feel like this option doesnt really even affect a local backup, but like i still want to be sure before i lose of my chats..

dhhdjbd

ToffoliGate
i just disabled end to end encryption and then did it as described, thank you it worked

I too had to turn internet back on to load the local backup tho (it prompted me to)

meleelord

ToffoliGate Just want to say thank you! This is still working today!

DeletedUser235

WhatsApp backup system works on GrapheneOS but they require giving certain permissions to Google Play services in addition to WhatsApp which can then be revoked afterwards.
https://nitter.poast.org/GrapheneOS/status/1839035423894405370#m

jajajajajajaja

DeletedUser235

As other people in this thread have reported, this is simply not true @GrapheneOS @treequell
Seems like you never tried 😅

DeletedUser433

Here's to hoping WhatsApp dies a fast death so we can have a better app

31xooijasdf1

My input is providing a guide to properly create and restore from local backup.

Creating a local backup

Creates a tar archive of the com.whatsapp directory

adb shell "cd /sdcard/Android/media/ && tar -cf /sdcard/whatsapp.tar com.whatsapp"

Verify:

$ adb shell ls /sdcard/whatsapp.tar
/sdcard/whatsapp.tar

Pull the archive and saves it to your computer:

adb pull /sdcard/whatsapp.tar ~/Downloads/whatsapp/

To verify that the whatsapp.tar archive contains the exact same data as the source directory on the phone, we can generate a checksum for every file in both locations and compare them.

Generate checksums on the phone

adb shell "cd /sdcard/Android/media/ && find com.whatsapp -type f -exec sha256sum {} +" > phone_hashes.txt

Extract the archive we copied from phone to computer earlier:
```
cd ~/Downloads/whatsapp/
tar -xf whatsapp.tar
```

Generate checksums on the computer

find com.whatsapp -type f -exec sha256sum {} + > computer_hashes.txt

Compare the two sorted lists

sort phone_hashes.txt -o phone_hashes.txt
sort computer_hashes.txt -o computer_hashes.txt
diff phone_hashes.txt computer_hashes.txt

The diff command should produce no output.

Restoring backup

After flashing GrapheneOS, do the following:

Install Whatsapp on the new phone but don't open it
Run the following commands

adb shell mkdir -p /sdcard/Android/media/com.whatsapp
adb push ~/Downloads/whatsapp/whatsapp.tar /sdcard/Android/media/com.whatsapp/

Extract the archive

adb shell "cd /sdcard/Android/media/com.whatsapp/ && tar -xvf whatsapp.tar"

Move all content from the nested directories

adb shell mv "/sdcard/Android/media/com.whatsapp/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/*" "/sdcard/Android/media/com.whatsapp/"

Remove the now empty nested directory

adb shell rm -r "/sdcard/Android/media/com.whatsapp/com.whatsapp"

Check we have the correct directory structure

➜ adb shell ls -a /sdcard/Android/media/com.whatsapp/
.Shared
.StickerThumbs
.Thumbs
.trash
Backups
Databases
Media

Go to Settings -> App and Choose "Google Play Service" to allow all permission (for now)

Open Whatsapp, before you do anything else, go to App Whatsapp and allow all permission (for now)
Open Whatsapp again, choose language.
Turn on airplane mode immediately to block Whatsapp from contacting Google's services.
A prompt should pop up. Press Skip, and you should be prompted to restore from a local backup.

After verifying the backup is restored, we can remove the tar:

adb shell rm /sdcard/Android/media/com.whatsapp/whatsapp.tar

wrapper

31xooijasdf1

Thanks for this guide, just managed to use it succesfully. If anyone is wondering, you don't need Google Play Services at all, I installed WhatsApp through Obtanium. The other thing was that the correct path for me was:

/sdcard/Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp

As long as the Databases folder is in here, it should pick up the backup and ask if you want to restore it. I did not need to use Airplane mode or anything, as Google Drive options appear not to be there if Google Services are not present.

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