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I have an iPhone 14 Pro, of which I regularly perform full backups (with encryption) using iTunes running on Windows.

I uninstalled WhatsApp by mistake on the iPhone; I reinstalled it, but now all my chat history is gone. I know that's backed up somewhere in iTunes, but I don't want to perform a full restore of the whole iPhone, which would overwrite all my other apps, settings, messages etc.

Is there any way to only restore WhatsApp contents from a iTunes backup?

I'm open to using third-party solutions (even paid ones); but they should be able to get WhatsApp contents from an iTunes backup and place them back on the iPhone itself. A bonus point would be the ability to merge restored data with the new WhatsApp messages I sent and received after reinstalling WhatsApp.

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  • Doesn‘t WhatsApp have its own in-app backup?
    – nohillside
    Commented Jan 2 at 12:31
  • Yes, but I didn't enable it. I only have the full iTunes backup of the iPhone.
    – Massimo
    Commented Jan 2 at 12:44

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After testing (and even buying!) several "recovery" softwares which promised to do that, I wasn't able to find a working solution and ended up having to perform a full restore of the iTunes backup.

Which, even when performed on the very same device where the backup had been taken, still royally screws up several applications (esp. authenticators, ID and banking apps).

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  • Banking apps etc usually need to be re-authenticated to prevent people from just stealing your backup, restoring it to a different phone and accessing your bank account.
    – nohillside
    Commented Jan 2 at 16:59
  • I know the underlying logic... and that's the reason I try to never have to restore my phone from backup in the first place. A software which could extract from a backup only the data you need (in my case, WhatsApp chat history) and place it back on the phone without having to perform a full restore would be really helpful. Unfortunately, I only found scams.
    – Massimo
    Commented Jan 2 at 17:44

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