Straight answer: back up your chats to Google Drive (Android) or iCloud (iPhone) through WhatsApp’s own Chat Backup setting before you touch a new SIM card, then use WhatsApp’s official Move Chats tool if you’re switching operating systems. Do it at least a day before the swap, not five minutes before, because a full backup with years of photos can take a while and fail if your storage is full.
The bit everyone skips: check your storage first
Before you back up anything, open your Google Drive or iCloud account and look at how much free space you have. Google gives you 15GB shared across Gmail, Google Photos, and Drive. iCloud gives you 5GB free, full stop. If you’ve had WhatsApp for six or seven years and never cleared your media, your backup could easily be 8 to 12GB once you count every voice note, meme, and video your auntie sent during lockdown.
I found this out the hard way in 2023 when I switched from a Samsung to an iPhone two days before a speaking gig in Manchester. I assumed the backup had run overnight because I’d ticked the box months earlier. It hadn’t, because my Google Drive was full of old Google Photos backups and WhatsApp’s nightly backup had been silently failing for weeks. No error popped up on my screen. I only found out when I set up the new phone and half my client group chats from the previous year were simply gone.
That’s the uncomfortable truth nobody puts in the headline of these guides: WhatsApp backups don’t reliably alert you when they fail. There’s no red banner shouting “your backup didn’t happen.” You have to go and check it yourself, under Settings, Chats, Chat Backup, where it shows the date and size of the last successful backup. If that date is older than a week, sort your storage before you do anything else.
Backing up on Android (step by step)
- Open WhatsApp and tap the three dots, top right, then Settings
- Go to Chats, then Chat Backup
- Check you’re signed into the correct Google account, not an old one from a phone you sold two years ago
- Tap Back Up Now, and leave the phone on Wi-Fi and plugged into power until it finishes
- Set the frequency to Daily if you’re not switching for a few weeks, so you always have a recent copy
One thing that catches people out: under the backup settings there’s an option to include videos. Videos are what bloats the file size, so if storage is tight, untick that, back up, then reinstate it once you’ve cleared space. Your photos and messages still transfer, just not every 40 second video of someone’s dog.
Backing up on iPhone (step by step)
- Open WhatsApp, tap Settings at the bottom
- Tap Chats, then Chat Backup
- Turn on iCloud Backup if it isn’t already, and confirm you’re signed into iCloud with enough free space
- Tap Back Up Now
- If it says “Not Enough iCloud Storage,” you have two choices: buy more iCloud storage (£0.99 a month gets you 50GB, which is usually plenty) or turn off other iCloud backups like Photos temporarily so WhatsApp has room
Apple’s free 5GB tier is tight once you factor in Photos, device backups, and Mail, so most people switching phones end up paying for a month of extra storage. It’s less than a coffee, and it’s cheaper than losing three years of client conversations, so just pay it.
Same phone brand, new device: the easy case
If you’re going Android to Android, or iPhone to iPhone, this is the simplest scenario. Back up as above on your old phone, then when you set up WhatsApp on the new one, it will detect the backup automatically and ask if you want to restore it. Say yes, wait for it to download and decrypt (this can take 10 to 20 minutes depending on size), and your chats, photos, and settings land back exactly where they were.
The mistake people make here is skipping the “keep the old phone switched on and connected to Wi-Fi” step. If your Android backup wasn’t fully synced to Google Drive because you closed the app too quickly the night before, the restore on the new phone will be missing your most recent messages.
Switching between Android and iPhone: the case nobody explains well
This is where most guides go vague, and it’s exactly the scenario I got caught out on. Android and iPhone don’t share a backup format. A Google Drive backup won’t restore onto an iPhone, and an iCloud backup won’t restore onto an Android phone. You need WhatsApp’s own cross-platform migration tool, which they built a couple of years ago and it now works well in both directions.
Android to iPhone:
- On your old Android phone, open WhatsApp, go to Settings, Chats, Chat Backup, and tap Transfer Chats to iPhone (or use Apple’s Move to iOS app during the new iPhone’s setup screen, which includes a WhatsApp option)
- Keep both phones next to each other, on the same Wi-Fi network, with Bluetooth turned on
- Follow the on-screen QR code pairing between the two devices
- Don’t touch either phone until the transfer confirms complete, this can take anywhere from 5 minutes to over an hour depending on how much media you’re moving
iPhone to Android:
- On your new Android phone, during WhatsApp setup, choose “Transfer from iPhone”
- Scan the QR code shown on the Android with your iPhone’s camera
- Keep both devices connected and unlocked until the transfer finishes
This has to happen during the initial WhatsApp setup on the new device, before you verify your number the old way. If you’ve already set WhatsApp up as fresh on the new phone and skipped this step, you generally can’t go back and pull the chats in afterwards. That’s the part people find out too late, usually while standing in a mobile phone shop with a sales assistant hovering.
The encryption gap most people don’t know about
Your WhatsApp messages themselves are end-to-end encrypted while they travel between phones. But your Google Drive or iCloud backup of those messages is not automatically encrypted to the same standard unless you switch on end-to-end encrypted backup, a separate setting under Chats, Chat Backup, End-to-End Encrypted Backup. Without that toggle on, Google or Apple technically hold a key that could, in theory, let the message content in your backup be accessed under certain legal or account recovery circumstances.
Most people never turn this on because it’s buried two menus deep and WhatsApp doesn’t make a big deal of it during setup. If you’re a business owner with client conversations, supplier quotes, or anything sensitive sitting in your chat history, it’s worth the sixty seconds to switch it on, set a password, and store that password somewhere you won’t lose, because there’s no reset option if you forget it. WhatsApp is blunt about that in the app itself, and for once I think that’s the right call.
What gets lost even with a “successful” backup
A few things people assume carry over and don’t:
- Starred messages sometimes lose their starred status after a cross-platform transfer, even though the message itself survives
- Disappearing messages that have already expired obviously won’t come back, backup or not
- WhatsApp Business catalogue items and quick replies don’t always transfer cleanly between Android and iPhone, so if you run your WhatsApp Business account for customers, screenshot your product catalogue and saved quick replies separately before switching, just in case
- Group admin status and some group settings occasionally need re-syncing after a big platform change
If WhatsApp is central to how you run client communication, and for a lot of small businesses now it is the main channel, treat the phone switch like you would any other business continuity task. I keep a simple checklist for this kind of operational admin now, the same way I keep one for the tools that touch client data, because the five minutes it takes to check saves the half day it takes to fix.
What to do the week before you switch
- Clear space in Google Drive or iCloud, seven days out, not the night before
- Run a manual backup and check the timestamp confirms it worked
- Turn on end-to-end encrypted backup if you haven’t already
- Export any single conversation you can’t afford to lose using WhatsApp’s Export Chat feature, which emails a text file version of that chat to yourself as a separate safety net
- Note down which chats have starred messages you rely on, in case the star status doesn’t survive the move
That export chat feature is underused. Settings, then the specific chat, then More, Export Chat. It sends a plain text (or with media) version to your own email, completely separate from the WhatsApp backup system, and it’s saved me twice when a client contract discussion needed to be pulled up months later for a completely different reason.
Why this matters more than it used to
WhatsApp isn’t just a personal chat app for most of the people reading this. It’s become the default channel for client enquiries, supplier updates, and quick decisions that never make it into email. If you’re running any part of your business through it the way I do, alongside the usual mix of email tools like the ones covered in my look at Mailchimp alternatives, a botched phone switch isn’t just annoying, it’s a genuine gap in your business records. Treat the backup step with the same seriousness you’d give backing up your laptop, because for a lot of small business owners now, it holds just as much.
I have written more around this on the site: Why WhatsApp Web Stops Working (And How To Fix It For Good), How Do I Set Up a Business Account on WhatsApp for Customers?, Best Free AI Tools for Small Business in 2026.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a WhatsApp backup take before switching phones?
It depends entirely on size and connection speed. A light chat history with few photos can back up in under five minutes. Someone with years of media and voice notes, easily 5 to 10GB, can take 30 minutes to over an hour, and it needs a stable Wi-Fi connection, not mobile data, or it will stall.
Can I back up WhatsApp without Google Drive or iCloud?
You can create a local backup that sits on the phone itself, which happens automatically each day whether you use cloud backup or not, but it only helps if you’re restoring onto the same physical device. For moving to a new phone, you need the cloud backup (Google Drive on Android, iCloud on iPhone) or the official Move Chats transfer tool.
Will I lose my WhatsApp messages if I switch from Android to iPhone?
Not if you use WhatsApp’s official transfer tool, which pairs both phones directly and moves chats, photos, and voice notes across during the new phone’s initial setup. You will lose them if you set up WhatsApp fresh on the iPhone first and try to transfer afterwards, because the migration only works during that initial setup step.
Does WhatsApp backup include photos and videos?
Yes, by default, which is usually why backups run into storage limits. You can exclude videos specifically under Chat Backup settings to shrink the backup size, while keeping photos, voice notes, and text intact.
Further reading
Related reading: How to Recover WhatsApp Messages When You Have No Backup and How Do I Access WhatsApp Business on My Desktop? (The Real Steps, No Faff).
