WhatsApp has announced a major new security feature that makes protecting your chat backups easier than ever. The company is introducing passkey-encrypted backups. This new option will give users a faster and more secure way to keep their private messages safe across devices.
With this update, WhatsApp becomes the first private messaging app to offer such a seamless and device-agnostic end-to-end encrypted backup system. The feature will be available for both Android and iPhone users and will gradually roll out in the coming weeks and months.
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To turn on this new feature, users can go to: Settings → Chats → Chat backup → End-to-end encrypted backup.
In simple terms, users will now be able to secure their chat backups using biometric authentication such as fingerprint, face ID, or even their phone’s screen lock code. This replaces the need to remember or store a password or a 64-digit encryption key.
“Now, with just a tap or a glance, the same security that protects your personal chats and calls on WhatsApp is applied to your chat backups,” the company explained in its blog post.
WhatsApp first introduced end-to-end encrypted chat backups in 2021. It allowed users to protect their message history with a password or encryption key. The new update simplifies this process and makes it easier for users to enable top-level security without the hassle of managing passwords.
The company says the goal is to make strong encryption more accessible to everyone, especially since over 3 billion people use WhatsApp worldwide.
