You Can Now Transfer WhatsApp Chats Across iOS and Android; But There’s a Catch!

WhatsApp users have long been requesting the ability to transfer their chats between Android and iOS devices. As part of the Galaxy Unpacked event last night, WhatsApp announced that cross-platform chat transfer is finally coming, but there’s a catch. It might come as a disappointment to many, but the WhatsApp chat transfer option will initially only be available on Samsung’s new foldable phones.

Transfer WhatsApp Chats from iOS to Android

WhatsApp chat migration on Samsung phones will be part of the company’s Smart Switch tool. Smart Switch currently lets you transfer a variety of data from your old phone, including schedules, alarms, call logs, photos, and more. It will be initially available only on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Z Flip 3. Support for other phones will come through 2021.

To transfer WhatsApp chats from your iPhone to your Samsung phone, you will need to use a Lightning to USB-C cable. After connecting the two phones together, you can scan a QR code to migrate your WhatsApp chats. The feature supports iPhones running iOS 10.0 and above and Android phones with Android 10 or newer.

“We are excited for the first time to make it easy for people to securely transfer their WhatsApp history from one operating system to another. This has been one of our most requested features from users for years and we worked together with operating systems and device manufacturers to solve it,” said Sandeep Paruchuri, product manager at WhatsApp. This is what the WhatsApp chat transfer flow will look like:

While keeping a basic feature like chat migration behind an exclusivity window seems a bit unnecessary, it’s good to see that WhatsApp is finally allowing users to take their messages across platforms. Until it becomes generally available to all Android and iOS users, you will have to rely on third-party tools to transfer WhatsApp data from iPhone to Android.