How to Transfer WhatsApp to New Phone

WhatsApp is a must-have app on lots of people's smartphones. However, what if you need to turn to another mobile phone or a new SIM card? Give up all the chat history and media files? No way.

Part 1. How to Transfer WhatsApp to New Number

One WhatsApp account is linked with one phone number, so the first thing we need to do is to change the number linked with WhatsApp account. It can be done within WhatsApp.

Step 1. On old phone, open WhatsApp and go to Menu > Settings > Account > Change number.

Step 2. Tap NEXT, then enter your old phone number and new phone number.

Step 3. Tap DONE, and wait for a verification SMS to be sent to your new phone number.

Step 4. Enter the 6-digit code on the screen and wait for verification.

Step 5. Create a manual backup by going to Settings > Chats > Chat backup > BACK UP.

Warning: The backup you made before are associated with the old phone number, so now it is necessary to make a new backup, which will be associated with the new phone number.

When the verification is done, you’ll be able to log in WhatsApp with new phone number. All your account information and settings will be inherited to the new number, while the old account associated with your old number will be deleted. You can just use the account with new number on your old phone, or use it on your new phone after transferring chat history.

Part 2. How to Transfer WhatsApp to New Android

In part 1, we managed to transfer WhatsApp account to a new phone number, but the chat history won’t be transferred to new phone by itself. As we all know, WhatsApp allows us to make backups to Google Drive and local storage. We have to transfer WhatsApp backups to the new phone by ourselves.

Important: If you changed to a new number as described on Part 1, please make a new backup on the old phone with the new number. Otherwise, the new phone won’t find backup.

Transfer Google Drive WhatsApp backup to new Android phone:

If your WhatsApp chat history is backed up to Google Drive, it is convenient to do the transfer. Firstly, make sure you have set up Google account and enabled Google Drive sync on your new phone. Then follow these steps:

Step 1. Open WhatsApp on your new phone.

Step 2. Verify with your new phone number.

Step 3. Tap Restore when WhatsApp finds Google Drive backup.

Transfer local WhatsApp backup to new Android phone:

If your WhatsApp backup is in the local storage of the old phone, you have move it to the new phone manually. Here we present a brief instruction. If you have any problem, please leave a comment.

Step 1. Install WhatsApp on your new phone but don’t run it.

Step 2. Connect both your old phone and new phone to computer via USB cables.

Step 3. Find the backup files on your old phone via Windows Explorer. The location is usually sdcard/WhatsApp/Databases.

Step 4. Copy the whole Databases folder and paste to sdcard/WhatsApp on the new phone.

Step 5. Run WhatsApp on your new phone and verify phone number.

Step 6. Tap Restore when WhatsApp finds backups from phone storage.

Notice: If WhatsApp found there are both Google Drive backup and local backup on your phone, it would only present Google Drive backup. To solve this problem, you can disconnect WhatsApp backup from Google Drive temporarily or sign out Google account on your phone. 

Part 3. How to Transfer WhatsApp to New iPhone or New Android

It is not very hard to transfer WhatsApp chat history between Android devices. However, what about the transfer of WhatsApp between Android and iPhone? Android users back up WhastApp chat to Google Drive, while iOS users make WhatsApp backup with iCloud. It seems impossible to do the switch.

Luckily, here is an excellent WhatsApp manager app, WhatsMate, which can transfer WhatsApp to new iPhone or new Android from the old device. Please download and install WhatsMate on your PC. 

Step 1: Run WhatsMate, and select “Transfer WhatsApp between Devices”.

Step 2: Connect both your Android and iOS devices to PC. You can click the “Flip” button to exchange the source phone and destination phone.

Step 3: Choose the WhatsApp data you want to transfer, and click “Transfer”.

If you lost WhatsApp messages due to updates or other problems, you can recover deleted Android WhatsApp messages without backup.