MARK Zuckerberg has announced that WhatsApp users can now easily swap from Android phones to iPhones.
The billionaire Meta boss – who runs Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp – revealed the change in a social post.
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Zuckerberg says that the change was in high demand.
“We’re adding to WhatsApp the ability to securely switch between phones and transfer your chat history, photos, videos, and voice messages between Android and iPhone while maintaining end-to-end encryption,” said Zuckerberg.
“This is a top requested feature. We launched the ability switch from iPhone–>Android last year, and now adding Android–>iPhone as well.”
It’s rolling out from today.
Until now, it’s been nigh-on impossible to move your WhatsApp chats from Android to iPhone when swapping phones.
Now Apple and WhatsApp have teamed up to finally make it happen.
The long-awaited feature has been one of Apple’s most requested updates.
If you’ve got an Android phone, you’ll need to install the latest version of Move to iOS from the Google Play Store.
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This app already exists, and is designed to shift your Android texts, photos and more over to a new iPhone.
But it’s now being upgraded to include support for shifting WhatsApp messages.
You’ll have to give permission for the data to be moved.
It will then be packaged up – while remaining encrypted and impossible for Apple to see – then moved over to iOS.
When you log in for the first time on the iPhone, the WhatsApp data is decrypted and automatically appears.
The feature is available today with the WhatsApp beta on Android – a test version of the app used to trial new features.
You can join the beta for free, although the feature will eventually go live in the general release.
There’s no need to be connected to the internet for the transfer to work – it’s peer-to-peer.
And there’s no need to update WhatsApp, as the change is done on the company’s own servers.
If you want to try new WhatsApp features before everyone else, follow our guide to join the beta below.
How to join WhatsApp beta
To download WhatsApp beta for your smartphone you need to go to Google Play on your Android and search for WhatsApp.
Scroll down the page until you see “Become a Beta Tester”.
Tap the “I’m In” button and then click “Join” to confirm.
Now all you have to do is wait for the update to the beta version of the app.
Joining the WhatsApp beta on iPhone is more difficult, and has limited capacity.
Follow Apple’s guide here.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
