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Android users who are hesitating to jump into the iOS ecosystem just because Apple does not allow you to easily migrate WhatsApp data from your Android device to an iPhone can now heave a sigh of relief.
Just a year ago, the Meta-owned messaging platform had enabled support for chat transfer from iOS to Android. However, the option to do the same in the opposite direction was missing. Thankfully, the company has officially announced today that it is adding support for transfers from Android to iOS through a statement from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
He wrote, "We’re adding to WhatsApp the ability to securely switch between phones and transfer your chat history, photos, videos, and voice messages between Android and iPhone while maintaining end-to-end encryption. This is a top requested feature. We launched the ability switch from iPhone–>Android last year, and now adding Android–>iPhone as well."
The news is a god sent for 450 million Indian WhatsApp users and the support for seamless data transfer between both OS ecosystems will only enhance the user experience. For too long, users had to rely on third-party apps to migrate data between those two ecosystems. The problem was that in Android, the data is usually stored in the Google cloud and in iOS, the data is stored in the iCloud. There was no compatibility between the two, not until today.
In a blog post on its website, WhatsApp added a new FAQ section on "how to migrate your WhatsApp data from Android to iPhone." The company has laid out a step-by-step guide to help Android users transfer their data effortlessly to their new iPhone.
Before migrating the data, however, the company said that the Android user needs to do a couple of things. Firstly, the user's Android device should be Android 5 or above. Secondly, the target iPhone should have iOS 15.5 or above installed. Thirdly, Move to iOS app must be installed on their Android phone. The user should make sure that the WhatsApp version on both phones is updated to the latest version. The user should use the same phone number for both devices. Lastly, the iPhone must be factory new or reset to factory settings to pair with the Move to iOS app on the Android device.
The Move to iOS app will be available on the Google Play Store in the coming weeks. Besides support for transferring WhatsApp chat data, files, contacts and more, the app will also look at the apps on a user's Android device and see if similar apps exist on Apple's App Store. If they do, the user will be notified and the user can just tap on the icons to finish downloading the apps on their new iPhone device.