datahoarder
Who are we?
We are digital librarians. Among us are represented the various reasons to keep data -- legal requirements, competitive requirements, uncertainty of permanence of cloud services, distaste for transmitting your data externally (e.g. government or corporate espionage), cultural and familial archivists, internet collapse preppers, and people who do it themselves so they're sure it's done right. Everyone has their reasons for curating the data they have decided to keep (either forever or For A Damn Long Time). Along the way we have sought out like-minded individuals to exchange strategies, war stories, and cautionary tales of failures.
We are one. We are legion. And we're trying really hard not to forget.
-- 5-4-3-2-1-bang from this thread
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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).
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.
Sorry, I meant just that, yes. I don't want to archive any chat, just the one with emotional value to me. I do it once a year, so it's not too bad doing this for single chats.