Manual method
- On Android, open a chat and use its menu, More, then Export chat. On iPhone, open the contact/group information and choose Export chat.
- Choose whether to include media. Save through the device share sheet to a private folder, avoiding email attachment limits.
- Repeat for each conversation you want to preserve. Give each export a separate dated folder.
- Open the text transcript and sample attachments. Check the oldest and newest messages; retain an app backup separately if restoration is also required.
What you get: The export is a readable text archive, not a restorable WhatsApp backup. Media inclusion can be partial; view-once and unavailable content should not be expected. Advanced Chat Privacy can disable chat export. The separate account-information report is not your conversation history. Provider instructions. Supporting reference 1. Supporting reference 2.
Size and waiting time
Planning example: 2 GB; light/heavy scenarios: 0.01–20 GB. These are estimates, not a measured population average or fixed limits. A selected set of exported chats with hundreds of photos and voice notes. A whole phone’s WhatsApp storage can be much larger and is not this export’s scope.
Preparation: Local preparation normally happens while you wait; allow minutes per chat as a planning estimate, plus manual repetition and transfer. No universal bulk export is documented.
Network transfer of 2 GB: about 38 min at 10 Mbps, 8 min at 50 Mbps, or 4 min at 100 Mbps. This assumes 70% sustained throughput and excludes preparation, manual work and extraction. For local exports, this is a comparison for transferring the saved files online; disk speed determines local copy time. Online backups use your upload speed. Transfer calculations and large-file examples.
Store and check your archive
An encrypted external SSD or hard drive is a good main archive for this collection. Allow roughly 6 GB of working space for the example, including an original, an extracted working copy and room to check it. Very compressed packages can need more. A USB key is useful for a spare copy, but should not be the only one. An encrypted online copy protects against losing the local devices.
Keep the original in whatsapp/YYYY-MM-DD/original/. Record the account alias, selected scope, date range and missing items. Open old and recent records and sample attachments offline, then compare file sizes or checksums after copying. Keep the source account until you have checked the result. Storage and recovery instructions.
Sources and review
Official-source information was reviewed through search-index evidence on 27 October 2026. The full current provider page could not be independently checked. No signed-in export or restore was performed; verify the displayed provider instructions before proceeding.