I was so confident that WhatsApp was backing itself up to Google ever since I got my new pixel but I just wasn’t. Then yesterday I factory reset my phone to fix something else and I lost it all. Years worth of chats from so many times in my past just aren’t there, all my texts with my mom and my family, group chats with old friends… I can’t even look at the app anymore, I’ll never use Whatsapp as much as I used to. I just don’t feel right with this change. There’s no way to get those chats back and now it doesn’t feel like there’s any point backing up WhatsApp now! I really wanna cry like this is so unfair!! And all I had to do was check Whatsapp before I did a factory reset… the TINIEST THING I could have done and prevented this and I didn’t fucking do it!!!
How do I get past this?
The WhatsApp backups are stored in an area of your Google account that you can’t access, so you can’t really test without a new phone (or deleting all your data).
You can’t do anything yourself with those backups apart from delete or disable them:
I don’t know if this is country specific, but I can just download all my chats as .txt files and do so regularly, as I don’t trust Meta not to delete anything and only keeping the last x years or something like that.
I don’t see how - is from within WhatsApp? I can’t see anything by browsing on the phone (Android) or by connecting to a computer.
edit: I can see how to export a single chat from Settings > Chats > Chat backup but not how to get it all without a thousand clicks.
It’s going to take some time. I’ve been there as have plenty of people who came to me for support when it happened to them.
While right now you’re thinking of it in terms of loss, you can also celebrate the lightness that comes from not having the data anymore.
There’s more…
What was the funniest thing you remember that was in there?
Now consider that you remember it. You don’t need to check, you remember the things that made that memory funny.
So, take a deep breath, add it to the list of stupid things you’ve done to date that didn’t kill you and then go and drink a glass of water and go for a walk.
This too will pass.
Now consider that you remember it. You don’t need to check, you remember the things that made that memory funny.
I’m only 25 and it feels like so many of the things I have are just memories. It feels like my life is slowly coming to a close and I don’t know if the future is even there.
And you know what the worst part is? I don’t really remember much anyways.
My 20 year old cat died and all I can do is remember him and look at pictures. I don’t want to have to remember things just to keep them… I’m just not reliable enough.
No idea if you’d enjoy it but I’ve been keeping a (digital) diary since 2018 (in a .txt file) and for me it’s really fun either checking out what I did this day last year (two, three years ago) and also randomly reading around. It’s a really nice addition to having photos (and my dreams would be to somehow combine the two, easily). So many things I’d never remember without this, like the one time the electricity went out for a afternoon in my town. I’m just writing a few sentences each morning of what I did (ate, worked, watched, felt, thought) yesterday each morning.
you can also celebrate the lightness that comes from not having the data anymore.
For years after my son’s suicide I backed up our texts. From one daily android update to the next, phone after phone. I always bought a phone that I knew I could root so I could ensure the ability to restore these backups. Then I got careless during one rom flash and lost them. It was a huge weight lifted when that happened. I realized that I had never once gone and reread any of them since the week after his death. And the constant backing up caused so much stress.
Its not a backup if it doesn’t follow the 321 Rules of Backing Up
The 3-2-1 backup rule is a strategy that recommends having three copies of your data backed up. The first copy is your primary critical data backup. The others are two redundant backup copies. You should use two different methods to back up your data, such as local and online backups. Then, you should have one copy designated for disaster recovery.
That’s rough. But now that it’s all gone, consider moving to disappearing messages. It’s kind of freeing when you don’t have to worry about the burden of immutability.
If you want to prevent something like this in the future, use a tool like Syncthing to automatically sync the local backup to other devices like a computer.
