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Comment by soneca | Hacker News Reader

It is cool that this exists, but losing WhatsApp chat history is common enough (changing from Android to iOS, failing to keep backup up to date then buying new phone, losing, having it stolen, etc) that I don’t think it is a relevant barrier for changing apps.

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I seriously can't understand why a billion dollar company with hundreds of engineers can't and won't prioritize the abilitynto seamlessly transfer messages cross-OS. Its been years since the need for such a "feature", when it shouldn't even be a "feature" in the first place, it should be baked in!

I agree. It should not be that seamless since it needs explicit consent to break end-to-end encryption. But to force you to use iCloud or Google Drive for backup is weird. They should have a proprietary format and hosting for it.

By making the customers use an external storage they are relieving themselves of whatever regulations (such as GDPR) they might be imposed of.

There's even a third-party software that is able to do this: https://www.backuptrans.com/android-whatsapp-to-iphone-trans...

I've used it myself.

That looks pretty dubious

But it works, surprisingly! I paid $30 for it quite hesitantly but was impressed when it could actually do what is says. Makes me think why there isn't an open-source program that does this - using something proprietary is always... shady. Lack of incentive I guess.

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