Back up your Whatsapp chat history before it’s too late

From 1 November, Whatsapp will stop supporting devices that run Android version 4.0.4 or older – check Settings, then ‘About phone’ to see which version of Android you’re running.

If your phone is affected, the only solution is to upgrade to a newer model that runs Android 4.1 or later. And unless you take action before the 1 November deadline, you could end up losing your chat history. We recommend waiting until just before the November deadline to back up your chat history – otherwise any messages you send or receive after you’ve backed up may be lost.

First, open Whatsapp, then tap the menu (three dots) icon and select Settings, Chats, followed by Chat backup. Here, tap Google Account and enter your Google login details. Enable the ‘Include videos’ option, then tap Back Up (see screenshot above). This will save a copy of your chats to your Google Drive account.

As a precaution, you can also export individual chats with groups or contacts as a .TXT file. To do so, open the chat you want to export, then tap the menu icon and select ‘Export chat’. You’ll be prompted to Include Media (photos, GIFS and so on) or export Without Media. We suggest selecting Without Media here, because Whatsapp limits the number of messages it will export if you choose to include media (you can always save individual photos that you want to keep separately). Make your selection and you’ll be presented with some sharing options – you can choose to save to Google Drive here or send your TXT file to yourself as an email attachment.