Recovering lost contacts in WhatsApp
If you’ve turned on WhatsApp contacts, your contacts will be saved to your WhatsApp account and will be restored automatically if you change phones or reinstall WhatsApp.
- If your contacts fail to restore, try deleting WhatsApp and reinstalling it again.
- In some instances, your contacts may be restored after a delay for additional security. You can still add or edit your contacts on your device, but the changes won't be stored and saved to your WhatsApp account until your previous contacts are restored.
- Your privacy settings will use the contact list saved to your WhatsApp account. For example, if you chose only for your contacts to see your Profile picture, all contacts saved to your WhatsApp account can still see your profile picture, even if they haven’t been restored in your contact list yet.
If you’ve turned off WhatsApp contacts, you can only restore contacts if you’ve previously made a copy of them using your phone’s features. If you give WhatsApp permission to access your device’s address book, WhatsApp will add any phone contacts with an account to your WhatsApp contact list.
Note: If you unblock a contact or phone number which wasn’t previously saved in your device’s address book, you won’t be able to restore it to your device.
