Migrate Whatsapp chats history from Android to iOS.
- Media files and shared locations are not imported (got placeholders instead)
- Messages from contacts that changed ids (phone numbers) are not linked
- Mac with installed Xcode and iTunes
- Decrypted
msgstore.db
from Android - Installed and activated Whatsapp on your iDevice
Whatsapp.ipa
of the same version (google will help)
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Check that Whatsapp is activated on iDevice. You should see the list of group chats when you open the app. Most likely, there won't be any messages prior to moving to iOS. You can even send/receive a message or two to be sure that there is something to back up.
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If you're on Mac OS 10.14 or later, enable full disk access for your terminal app.
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Build the migration utility (I'll assume
~/Downloads
folder):cd ~/Downloads git clone https://github.com/residentsummer/watoi cd watoi xcodebuild -project watoi.xcodeproj -target watoi
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Create an unencrypted backup to local computer (not iCloud) with iTunes.
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Find out the ID of the latest backup and export it into an env var for later use
scripts/bedit.sh list-backups # total 0 # drwxr-xr-x@ 266 user staff 8512 Nov 19 22:25 3105fe2b1e4688d54920d5b7eff3a06a71fd5957 # <= this is the latest # drwxr-xr-x 20781 user staff 664992 Aug 16 14:19 e38ebede76a7801807fe98684fd6d0b7fc3e64ba export BACKUP_ID="put ID of the backup here" # For example (do not copy-paste the line below, your ID will be different!): # export BACKUP_ID=3105fe2b1e4688d54920d5b7eff3a06a71fd5957
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Extract whatsapp's chat storage and backup important files
export ORIGINALS="originals/$(date +%s)" mkdir -p $ORIGINALS scripts/bedit.sh extract-chats $BACKUP_ID $ORIGINALS/ChatStorage.sqlite scripts/bedit.sh extract-blob $BACKUP_ID Manifest.db $ORIGINALS/Manifest.db cp $ORIGINALS/ChatStorage.sqlite ./ChatStorage.sqlite
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Extract the contents of
Whatsapp.ipa
(we'll need CoreData description files):cd ~/Downloads/watoi unzip ~/Downloads/WhatsApp_Messenger_x.y.z.ipa -d app
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Run the migration:
build/Release/watoi <path-to-msgstore.db> ./ChatStorage.sqlite app/Payload/WhatsApp.app/Frameworks/Core.framework/WhatsAppChat.momd
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Replace database file inside the backup with the updated one:
scripts/bedit.sh replace-chats $BACKUP_ID ./ChatStorage.sqlite
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Restore the backup with iTunes