Transfer WhatsApp backup from Android to Mac, no cable

Macs and Android phones have never been great at talking to each other over a cable. macOS has no built-in way to copy files from an Android phone, and the old Android File Transfer app is gone. The good news is that you don't need a cable at all to move a WhatsApp backup. You need the right file, a wireless hop, and your 64-digit key.

This guide covers the Easy path in Chat Hoarding: a small Android app finds your WhatsApp backup, packages it, and hands it to whatever wireless transfer you already use. On the Mac, Chat Hoarding decrypts it locally and saves it as a .tarc archive you can keep forever. If your media folder is huge, there are faster USB paths too, and we'll point out when it's worth switching.

What you need

• An Android phone running Android 8.0 or newer with WhatsApp or WhatsApp Business installed
• End-to-end encrypted backup turned on with the 64-digit key option (not a password or passkey)
• Your 64-digit key saved somewhere safe, like a password manager
• A Mac running macOS 14 or newer with Chat Hoarding for Mac installed and activated
• Chat Hoarding for Android, the companion app (it shows up as Chat Hoarding on the phone)
• One wireless transfer method that works on both devices: LocalSend, a Quick Share receiver, Google Drive, or similar

How the wireless path works

WhatsApp writes its backup to a folder on your phone every night, usually Android/media/com.whatsapp/WhatsApp/Databases/msgstore.db.crypt15. That file is encrypted under your 64-digit key, so moving it around is safe as long as the key stays with you. The tricky part is that most file managers bury that folder, and Android's share sheet can't send a whole folder of media.

The companion app solves both. It scans the known WhatsApp backup locations (current and legacy, for both WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business), shows you the newest backup, and writes a single file to your phone's Downloads. From there, you send that one file to your Mac like any photo or PDF. If you want the full background on where the file lives and why, see Where Android WhatsApp stores backups (Where Android WhatsApp stores backups).

Step 1: make a fresh backup on the phone

1. 01Open WhatsApp on your Android phone.
2. 02Go to Settings → Chats → Chat backup.
3. 03Check that End-to-end encrypted backup is on, and that you have your 64-digit key saved.
4. 04Tap Back up and wait until Last backup shows the current time.

A fresh backup matters because the companion only sends what's on disk. If you skip this, you might archive yesterday's chats and wonder where this morning's messages went.

Step 2: install the companion from your Mac

The easiest way to get the Android app is to start from the Mac. Open Chat Hoarding, click Start on the Get a backup card, and step through the setup screens. On the screen titled Copy the WhatsApp folder to your Mac, pick the Easy tier and click Continue. The next screen shows a QR code. Scan it with your phone's camera to download the companion.

Open the app on your phone. On Android 11 and newer, the first screen says full file access is needed to find WhatsApp backups. Tap Grant file access, switch the toggle on in Android's settings page, and come back. The app has no INTERNET permission at all, so it can't upload anything even if it wanted to.

Step 3: let the app find your backup

After a short Scanning storage… pause, the app shows a card with your Latest backup: the file name, its date and time, and the Folder on phone it came from. A small chip tells you how old the backup is. Fresh means under two hours, Within a day is self-explanatory, and Old backup or Very old means you should go back to WhatsApp and run a new one before going further.

If you have both WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business on the same phone, you'll see tabs for each one. They have separate backups and separate 64-digit keys, so pick the right tab for the key you have.

If you see No WhatsApp backup folder found instead, WhatsApp hasn't written a local backup yet. Go back to Step 1, make sure end-to-end encrypted backup is on, run a backup, then tap Rescan.

Step 4: choose what to send

Under the backup card, the app asks How do you want this on your Mac? The options you see depend on how big your media folder is. For a cable-free transfer, you want one of the first two.

Below the options there's a checkbox labelled Phone contacts as vCard, ticked by default. Leave it on. WhatsApp stores chats by phone number, and its own contacts database (wa.db) sits in a private folder that no app can read without root. Your phone's address book is how the Mac turns +44 7700 900123 into Sarah K. When you tap Continue with the box ticked, Android asks for contacts permission once.

Step 5: send the file to your Mac

Tap Continue. The app shows Packaging… with a running byte count, then a banner that starts with Saved to. The file now lives in your phone's Internal storage/Download/Chat Hoarding/ folder. With contacts ticked you get a .zip. With Just chats and contacts unticked, you get a single .crypt15 file.

Tap Send to Mac. This opens Android's normal share sheet with the file attached, so any app that can receive files works. The companion itself never sends anything over the network. The app you pick does the transfer. Here's how the common choices compare.

LocalSend (our pick)

LocalSend is free, open source, and runs on both Android and macOS. It sends files directly over your Wi-Fi network, with no account and nothing going through a server. Install it on both devices, keep them on the same network, pick LocalSend in the share sheet, then tap your Mac. The file lands in your Mac's Downloads folder.

Quick Share and AirDrop

Quick Share is built into Android, but Google doesn't ship an official Quick Share app for macOS. Some newer Android phones can send straight to a Mac through AirDrop from the Quick Share menu, and unofficial Mac receivers like NearDrop exist. If one of those already works for you, use it. If not, LocalSend is less hassle.

Google Drive, email, or a messaging app

These work fine for a Just chats file, since it's tiny and the .crypt15 inside is encrypted under your 64-digit key. Upload from the share sheet, then download it on the Mac. Just remember that you're putting a copy in the cloud, so delete it once you're done.

Step 6: open it on the Mac and enter your key

Back on the Mac, if you're still in the setup flow, click Continue until you reach Open the archive. Otherwise click Start on the Get a backup card again and step through to the same screen.

1. 01Click Choose WhatsApp Folder…. Despite the name, the picker accepts a WhatsApp folder, a .crypt15 file, or a .zip archive. Pick the file you just received in Downloads.
2. 02The Create archive sheet opens with step 1 already filled. A status panel shows Messages database with a green check, and Media folder if you sent media.
3. 03Under Paste the 64-digit encryption key, paste your key. Spaces and other non-hex characters are stripped and capital letters are lowercased automatically, and a counter turns green when it reads 64/64.
4. 04Optionally, add your contacts under Add contact names (optional). More on that in the next section.
5. 05Under Choose where to save, click Choose… and pick a location. The default name is WhatsApp- followed by today's date and .tarc.
6. 06Click Create. You'll see Decrypting messages database…, then Copying media… if you included it. When it says Saved, click Open.

Decryption happens entirely on your Mac. The key never leaves the machine and nothing is uploaded. A wrong key stops with an error, so you never end up with garbled messages. If that happens, check you're using the key for the right account (WhatsApp and WhatsApp Business have different ones).

Getting contact names into the archive

When you ticked Phone contacts as vCard, the companion put a contacts.vcf inside the zip. The Mac doesn't pull it out of the zip on its own, so it takes one extra step. Double-click the zip in Finder to expand it, then in the Create archive sheet click Pick file… under Add contact names (optional) and choose contacts.vcf from the expanded folder.

If you've already created the archive without contacts, that's fine. Open the archive, click Update Archive in the toolbar, and add the .vcf there. Any sender that still shows up as a number can be named by hand. Open a chat, use Assign Contact on that sender, and the name is saved in the archive. You can review all of those under Manage Contacts.

Troubleshooting

• No WhatsApp backup folder found: WhatsApp hasn't written a local backup yet. Turn on end-to-end encrypted backup, tap Back up, then Rescan.
• Not enough free space on this phone: the copy in Downloads needs room. Free some space, or switch to Just chats, which is much smaller.
• Contacts permission was denied: the file was saved without your address book. Allow Contacts for Chat Hoarding in Android settings and run it again, or add a .vcf on the Mac later.
• The Mac says no msgstore.db.crypt15 was found: you probably picked the wrong file or folder. Pick the .zip or .crypt15 the companion saved.
• The transfer is crawling: wireless tops out around 6 to 25 MB/s. For a big media bundle, a cable with OpenMTP or the Advanced (adb) tier is much faster.

FAQ