After so much clamour on WhatsApp privacy and security, the Facebook-owned messaging app has recently added encryption in the backup feature and it now allows Google Drive and iCloud to also carry out end-to-end encrypted backups.
But apart from the secure cloud backup, one can store WhatsApp data and then transfer it to another phone completely offline via a file compression app like RAR.
The method works by basically taking an offline backup of your files, getting all the data into a single folder, and then transferring that folder across to another phone. You can do it without any internet if you follow these steps here:
Create a local backup on WhatsApp
Go to WhatsApp Settings/ Chat/ Chat Backup and tap on ‘Back Up’. You now have a local backup created in the phone’s internal storage.
Now you can uninstall WhatsApp from this device.
Install RAR or any other file compression application
Now download a RAR app to compress the entire WhatsApp data and make it a single file. You can also choose any other app of your choice.
Compress your WhatsApp data
Your phone’s internal storage directory will be there in the RAR app. Navigate to the Android/ Media and look for the ‘com.whatsapp’ folder.
Select the tick mark next to the com.whatsapp folder and press the add archive button on top (shaped like a ‘+’). The entire folder should now begin turning into a .rar file.
Compressing is a time-consuming process. You can also choose to make it a .zip file instead. The only point of making the whole folder into a .zip file or a .rar file is to make the whole transfer process easier.
Move the data to your new phone
Move the new com.whatsapp.rar file (or com.whatsapp.zip file if you made a zip) to your new phone where you want to set WhatsApp up.
Use RAR once more to unzip the same file in the new phone’s internal storage and place the extracted folder (should be named ‘com.whatsapp’) in the same directory, which is Internal Storage/ Android/ Media.
Install WhatsApp on your new phone
You can now install WhatsApp on the new phone and while going through the initial process, skip the Google Drive backup prompt so the app tries to look for a local backup instead. This will make WhatsApp detect the files we restored in the specific directory in Step 4.
Restore the detected back up and continue to go through the rest of the installation process. Once done, your WhatsApp account is now ready on the new phone. You can now delete the .rar or .zip file that you created and copied to the new phone in Step 4.
