You know that age-old question: “How do I get my WhatsApp messages?” especially when your friends move from an Android smartphone to an iPhone or vice versa? Well, it looks like that may become a thing of the past with an upcoming update to the Facebook-owned app. The new feature was first reported by WABetaInfo which also reported the emergence of multi-device support earlier.
The new feature seems to be under development for a future update. However, like a few updates that have been tracked in the past, there’s no guarantee that the feature will come to the app. That said, the update seems to be built on top of the multi-device feature that seems to be making its way to the app soon. It wouldn’t be hard to see the feature being rolled out after the multi-device feature debuts or together with the feature. It looks like the interplatform synchronisation will be implemented as a real-time chat migration which might indicate that users may need to be signed in to both devices for migration to be done.
Chat migration between Android and iOS isn’t impossible at the moment. However, it requires the use of third-party apps that may put user data at risk. In addition, migration of the messages itself is a violation of WhatsApp’s Terms of Service. Before, backing up chats and migrating between the platforms wasn’t such a complicated process. In fact, users could back up or restore messages from Google Drive or other cloud storage services. However, the feature was limited to Apple’s iCloud when Apple and WhatsApp tightened data protection policies on their platforms.
