Migrating your WhatsApp chats from one phone to another can be hard if the ideal conditions are not met. Currently, if you want to restore your chats from a fresh WhatsApp install, you need to have a previous backup on your device or cloud service of choice, and it needs to be from both the same phone number and the same platform (Android backups can be restored on Android only and iOS backups can be restored on iOS only). In the case of the latter, it was teased a few weeks ago that WhatsApp was working to allow chat migration from iOS to Android and vice versa, but chat history was still tied to your phone number. Now, WhatsApp might let you transfer your chat history to a different phone number as well.

This was teased on WABetaInfo, a site dedicated to exploring unreleased WhatsApp features, and they uncovered new screenshots of the iOS-Android migration tool, including one with a "Transfer to a different number?" link that would, presumably, take you to a similar tool that would migrate your chats and tie them to your new phone number. This is especially useful if you're making a move to a new smartphone and you can't bring over your current phone number for whatever reason. This way, you would be able to keep your chats instead of just creating a new WhatsApp account blank.

The keen-eyed among you might probably point out that WhatsApp already has a feature for switching phone numbers that doesn't delete chats and, therefore, allows you to migrate your chats from one phone to another. However, that feature allows you to keep your chats as long as the phone number change is performed on the same phone. This tool would presumably be more adequate for these kinds of cross-device transfers, especially since it's integrated into the cross-platform migration tool. In the case of iOS, you'll only be able to start this process only when you link a new Android phone to your WhatsApp account, and everything will be transferred to the receiving device, including media.

This feature is not yet live on WhatsApp on either iOS and Android, but we expect a prompt release within the next weeks.