Can't back up or restore your chat history

Android
iOS
Having access to your chats is crucial. We recognize that they contain valuable information and cherished memories, and we understand how distressing it can be to lose them, or accidentally delete them.
Note: Unfortunately, we can't restore your chats for you because your chat history isn’t stored on our servers.
If your backup gets stuck while uploading or downloading, or you receive any of the following error messages:
  • "WhatsApp seems to be having trouble reading your chat history and will try to recover it. This can take several minutes."
  • "Unfortunately WhatsApp was unable to recover your chat history. Please delete and reinstall WhatsApp.”
  • "Sorry something went wrong while trying to recover your chat history. Please try again.”
  • “Couldn’t restore your chat history.”
  • “Couldn’t complete backup.”
Try these troubleshooting tips to resolve the issue:
  • Turn your Wi-Fi off and on, or use mobile data.
  • Check your device has enough storage space to restore or create a backup. To have enough space, your available iCloud account storage must be at least 2.05 times bigger than the size of your backup. Learn how to reduce your backup size here.
  • Check that your iPhone is updated to the latest iOS and WhatsApp version. Learn how to manually update WhatsApp here.
  • Close and reopen WhatsApp.
  • Check that your device’s battery is fully charged or plugged into a power source.
  • Turn iCloud Drive off and back on. Go to iPhone Settings > tap your name > iCloud > iCloud Drive > Sync this iPhone
  • Check that iCloud Drive is turned on for WhatsApp. If it is, turn it off and then back on again. Go to iPhone Settings > tap your name > iCloud > iCloud Drive > Apps Syncing to iCloud Drive > check that WhatsApp is turned on.
  • Check that you’re restoring data from the same phone number and iCloud account that the backup was created on.
  • If you’re restoring an end-to-end encrypted backup, check that you’re using the correct password or 64-digit encryption key. Learn more here.
If none of these troubleshooting tips work:
  • Sign out of iCloud entirely and restart your iPhone by turning it off and on. Then, sign back into iCloud and attempt to back up or restore again.
  • If backing up continues to fail or get stuck, try deleting your backup from iCloud and starting a new one. Your chats won’t be deleted as long as you don’t uninstall and reinstall WhatsApp.
Note:
  • If you've tried all the recommended troubleshooting steps and are still unable to restore your backup, your backup is most likely corrupted. Backups can become corrupted due to an interruption in the backup creation process, force-closing WhatsApp, sending or receiving corrupted files, or for other reasons. Unfortunately, WhatsApp can't restore a corrupted backup for you or determine what caused the corruption.
  • Partial or incomplete backups can occur due to various reasons such as an unstable internet connection, insufficient storage space on your device, or interruptions during the backup process.
  • iCloud only stores one backup per account. Each new backup overwrites the old one, so there’s no way to restore a previous iCloud backup.
  • If your chat history has been corrupted, you can’t restore your backup.
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