The new feature has not been officially announced, but it has appeared in beta versions of the app. according to WABetaInfo A select group of users already have access to the option.

When you transfer WhatsApp to a new iPhone, you currently need to restore the iCloud backup. This is simple if you’re setting up a brand new phone, but can be a bit clumsy if you just want to migrate your WhatsApp chats to a device you’re already using.

Transfer to iPhone

The new “Transfer chats to iPhone” button should make it possible to quickly transfer your chats to another iPhone. Conversations are encrypted without iCloud interference. The new functionality is under Settings in the “Chats” category.

WhatsApp already has a button on the iPhone to transfer chats to an Android device in a similar way. For a long time, this was a pain point for WhatsApp, which was difficult to migrate to Android due to its backups to Apple’s iCloud service. With the new option, this mainly works with newer iPhones and Android phones.

outside iCloud

By shifting chats out of iCloud, users also no longer need to rely on Apple’s storage service. This can be useful if, for example, you have a free subscription with 5GB of data and you’d rather not use cloud storage for WhatsApp backups.

It remains to be seen when the new WhatsApp feature will come out to everyone. The chat service is currently testing with a small group of users and will likely expand this testing first.