IPhone – Is it possible to temporarily skip media restore in WhatsApp

backupicloudiphonerestorewhatsapp.app

I use WhatsApp on an iPhone X. I have chat history and media backed up on my iCloud. The total size of the backup is around 6 GB.

I had to send in the iPhone X for repair, and I’m using a temporarily loaned iPhone 6.

I restored the WhatsApp chat history from iCloud, but the iPhone 6 is a 16 GB variant. I’m unable to restore the media onto this phone since “system files” are around 11 GB. If I turn off iCloud Drive, it goes down to 7 GB but with that turned off, I can’t backup/restore WhatsApp. The only thing enabled in iCloud Drive is WhatsApp so I don’t know why it’s consuming 4GB on the phone when I haven’t restored media.

Is WhatsApp backup cumulative?

If I skip the media restore, and continue backing up the chat history, will I be able to restore the entire chat history and media on my iPhone X when I get it back?
Will the media part of the backup be erased from iCloud if I skip media restore and do a chat history backup on the temporary phone?

Best Answer

The important thing is that you restore the backup on the iPhone 6. Once restored, it disables the backup of that iPhone 6 so that it does not replace the original copy of the iPhone X. Then when you have your iPhone X again, you will be able to restore the copy original.

On the other hand I recommend that you make a backup in iCloud of all the content and a backup in iTunes.

Related Solutions

ICloud – What happens when WhatsApp from an old phone is connected again

If you have a Mac, you can navigate to the following folder using terminal:
```
~/Library/Mobile Documents/
```
List all hidden files (from the terminal) to see a folder which looks like: 12HJ1123DHJ~net~whatsapp~WhatsApp, i.e. random alpha-numeric sequence ending with net~whatsapp~WhatsApp. cd into this folder.
Next, navigate into Accounts/<PhoneNumber>/backup from this folder.

Finally you'll be in a folder whose path which looks like this (check with pwd):

~/Library/Mobile Documents/12HJ1123DHJ~net~whatsapp~WhatsApp/Accounts/<PhoneNumber>/backup

Your chat backup and history is stored in this folder. (Hidden files, can be seen with ls -al)

-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  177 Jun  2 17:20 .BackedUpKeyValue.sqlite.enc.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  159 Jun  2 17:21 .Backup.plist.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  174 Jun  2 17:20 .ChatStorage.sqlite.enc.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  165 Jun  2 17:20 .Document.tar.aux.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  162 Jun  2 17:20 .Document.tar.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  158 Jun  2 17:21 .GIFs.tar.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  161 Jun  2 17:21 .Media.tar.aux.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  159 Jun  2 17:21 .Media.tar.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  161 Jun  2 17:20 .Media_1.tar.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  168 Jun  2 17:20 .Ranking.sqlite.enc.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  168 Jun  2 17:20 .Sticker.sqlite.enc.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  162 Jun  2 17:21 .Stickers.tar.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  167 Jun  2 17:21 .Thumbnail.tar.aux.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  163 Jun  2 17:21 .Thumbnail.tar.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  167 Jun  2 17:21 .Thumbnail_1.tar.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  172 Jun  2 17:20 .UserDefaults.plist.enc.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  161 Jun  2 17:20 .calls.log.enc.icloud
-rw-r--r--@  1 pse  staff  177 Jun  2 17:20 .current_wallpaper.jpg.enc.icloud

You can make a copy of this folder (cp -r)

Technically these are just Apple binary property lists:

$ plutil -p .calls.log.enc.icloud 
{
  "NSURLFileResourceTypeKey" => "NSURLFileResourceTypeRegular"
  "NSURLFileSizeKey" => 1411
  "NSURLNameKey" => "calls.log.enc"
}

The quest to find the actual data still goes on :-)

IPhone – How to restore less recent Whatsapp backup from iCloud drive

Do you backup WhatsApp messages in WhatsApp settings or iPhone Settings? If so, you cannot access or view the backup files in iCloud Drive because it is not saved in iCloud Drive. It is unreachable like your iPhone backup. As for the situation that you just got one chat history back, I think it is a bug. You can reinstall WhatsApp and try again.