Migrate Whatsapp chats history from Android to iOS.
Thanks to our excellent community members, there are few guides that may be easier to follow than one written by me. Some of them include instructions on how to extract whatsapp database from Android phone.
Many users also contributed tips on how to get certain prerequisites done.
msgstore.db
from AndroidWhatsapp.ipa
of the same version (google will help)Check that Whatsapp is activated on iDevice. You should see the list of group chats when you open the app. Most likely, there won't be any messages prior to moving to iOS. You can even send/receive a message or two to be sure that there is something to back up.
If you're on Mac OS 10.14 or later, enable full disk access for your terminal app.
Build the migration utility (I'll assume ~/Downloads
folder):
cd ~/Downloads
git clone https://github.com/residentsummer/watoi
cd watoi
xcodebuild -project watoi.xcodeproj -target watoi
Create an unencrypted backup to local computer (not iCloud) with iTunes.
Find out the ID of the latest backup and export it into an env var for later use
scripts/bedit.sh list-backups
# total 0
# drwxr-xr-x@ 266 user staff 8512 Nov 19 22:25 3105fe2b1e4688d54920d5b7eff3a06a71fd5957 # <= this is the latest
# drwxr-xr-x 20781 user staff 664992 Aug 16 14:19 e38ebede76a7801807fe98684fd6d0b7fc3e64ba
export BACKUP_ID="put ID of the backup here"
# For example (do not copy-paste the line below, your ID will be different!):
# export BACKUP_ID=3105fe2b1e4688d54920d5b7eff3a06a71fd5957
Extract whatsapp's chat storage and backup important files
export ORIGINALS="originals/$(date +%s)"
mkdir -p $ORIGINALS
scripts/bedit.sh extract-chats $BACKUP_ID $ORIGINALS/ChatStorage.sqlite
scripts/bedit.sh extract-blob $BACKUP_ID Manifest.db $ORIGINALS/Manifest.db
cp $ORIGINALS/ChatStorage.sqlite ./ChatStorage.sqlite
Extract the contents of Whatsapp.ipa
(we'll need CoreData description files):
cd ~/Downloads/watoi
unzip ~/Downloads/WhatsApp_Messenger_x.y.z.ipa -d app
Run the migration:
build/Release/watoi <path-to-msgstore.db> ./ChatStorage.sqlite app/Payload/WhatsApp.app/Frameworks/Core.framework/WhatsAppChat.momd
Replace database file inside the backup with the updated one:
scripts/bedit.sh replace-chats $BACKUP_ID ./ChatStorage.sqlite
Restore the backup with iTunes