How to backup and restore WhatsApp chats in Android smartphone

WhatsApp is unarguably one of the most popular social messaging apps in the world. People across age groups and time zones use the Facebook owned social messaging app to chat with their family and friends and share their special moments in the form of text messages, videos, photos and Status updates. But many-a-times it so happens those moments stand a chance of getting lost.

Sometimes because you are upgrading to a new smartphone and other times owing to a malware attack (we see a lot of them these days).

The end result is that you have to format your old phone, which usually erases all traces of the crazy, happy and memorable moments that you had with your friends and family. It also wipes clean the angry chats that you had with your best friend or your partner that you might want to save for a conversation later.

Good news is that there is no need for you to worry about the rainy day as you can backup your WhatsApp chats and restore them on to a new smartphone just as easily as you have those conversations.

If you own an Android smartphone, first thing you need to ensure is that your backup game is in place. This means that you backup all your WhatsApp chats regularly so that you can restore them when needed.

Follow these steps to backup WhatsApp chats on your Android smartphone:

– Open WhatsApp on your Android smartphone and tap on three dots on the top right corner.

– Tap on Settings and then on Chats to open chat settings.

– Now tap on Chat Backup option.

– In the Google Drive Settings tap on Back up to Google Drive option. (Doing so will open a menu that will allow you to pick up a backup frequency.)

– Pick up a backup frequency that suits you, preferably Daily.

– Now, under Back up Over option, you can pick if you want you backup to take place only when you are connected to Wi-Fi or not.

– You can also toggle the Include Videos options to ensure that all your videos are secure.

– Lastly hit the Backup Chats options to save all your chats to Google Drive.

Here’s a insider tip: Google Drive gives you 17GB of space to store your data in its cloud for free. But that that does not include your WhatsApp backup. “WhatsApp backups no longer count towards the Google Drive storage quota,” WhatsApp wrote in its FAQ page for Restoring your chat history. Meaning, you don’t have to worry about exhausting your Google Drive space.

Now, that all your chats have been safely saved in Google Drive, let’s talk about restoring your chats back to your Android smartphone.

When you change your smartphone and install WhatsApp on your new smartphone, once you install and log into your WhatsApp account using your registered WhatsApp number, a WhatsApp prompt will give you an option to restore your WhatsApp chats. Just follow these steps to restore your WhatsApp chat history:

– A prompt will ask you to find and restore your backup from Google Drive. All you need to do is tap on Continue.

– Now tap on Give Permission to allow WhatsApp to check Google Drive for a backup.

– Now tap on the account that contains your WhatsApp backup.

– Tap on Restore and you are good to go.

Alternatively, you can also restore your WhatsApp chat history by looking for your recent WhatsApp backup in Google Drive and restoring it in the event you reinstall WhatsApp on your smartphone.