How to restore WhatsApp chat history on Android and iOS

WhatsApp has over 1.5 billion monthly active users globally. It is also the most popular messaging app in India. WhatsAp has continued to roll out new features and updates at an impressive frequency while keeping the app simple to use.

WhatsApp offers some useful features to help users manage their data on the app. One can delete all messages or export the conversation as email.

Sometimes message that wasn’t supposed to be deleted gets erased. In order to recover the deleted messages on Android and Apple phones, you can follow these steps.

For Android

1. Uninstall WhatsApp and then reinstall it again from Google Play Store

2. Verify your number on the app

3. After verifying the number, the user will be prompted to ‘RESTORE‘, tap on it

4. Chats will be restored from the Google Drive, once done tap ‘Next’

5. Once initialization is done chats will be displayed after which WhatsApp will start restoring media files

What needs to noted is that if the Facebook-owned app is reinstalled without any prior backup from Google Drive, WhatsApp will automatically restore the chat from user’s local backup file.

For iOS

For restoring backup on an Apple device, one must ensure that he/she has access to the iCloud, and the iCloud Drive should be turned on. As per WhatsApp, the user must have 2.05 times the space of the size of the backup on the device and iCloud.

— Ensure that chats are backed up in iCloud. To check, follow these steps:

• Go to WhatsApp settings

• Tap on Chats

• The page that opens is of Chat Backup

— If the date of the last backup is visible, delete and reinstall the app from App Store

— Verify your number on WhatsApp

— Follow the prompts to restore chat history