Switching devices: what happens to your encrypted chats
New device, and the chats are gone. Why that is the logical result of real encryption, and how to move house cleanly anyway.
New phone, new laptop, or the old browser has been wiped. And suddenly the question: where are my chats? Stay calm. This is not a bug, it is the logical consequence of how end-to-end encryption works. Still, it pays to understand it beforehand rather than afterwards.
Why your history does not simply follow you
With real end-to-end encryption the keys live on your devices, not with the provider. The server only carries unreadable packets. That is exactly why it cannot place your old history on your new device: it never had it in plaintext, and usually it does not have it at all.
That is the uncomfortable flip side of a promise you actually want. A provider who can conjure your entire chat history onto an unfamiliar device at the press of a button holds either your keys or your messages. Both would be worse than the hassle of moving house.
The backup is where encryption gives way
Because the server cannot help, messengers solve device changes through backups. And this is where it gets interesting, because a backup is a copy of your messages outside the encryption. Whether it is protected depends on who holds the key.
WhatsApp offers an end-to-end encrypted backup for this, explicitly as an "optional" extra layer of security for backups stored in Google Drive or iCloud. You secure it with a password or a 64-digit key. If you choose a password, the actual key sits in a hardened vault (a hardware security module) that releases it only after a successful password check and renders it permanently inaccessible after a limited number of failed attempts. Translated: forget your backup password and the backup is gone. Nobody can help you, and that is the point.
The same applies at Apple's system level. Under standard protection the keys to your iCloud backup sit with Apple. Only once you switch on Advanced Data Protection is the iCloud backup end-to-end encrypted and controlled solely by your own devices. A checkbox most people have never ticked.
How the others handle a device change
| As of July 2026 | History on the new device | Key |
|---|---|---|
| via cloud backup, end-to-end encryption optional | password or 64-digit key | |
| Signal | via Secure Backups, opt-in: text messages plus 45 days of media for free, more for US$1.99 a month | 64-character recovery key, "never shared with Signal's servers" |
| Threema | Threema Safe backs up ID, contacts and groups, explicitly not the chats | password |
| PriChat | contacts come back, the history does not, unless you transfer it yourself | your password or passkey, plus six words for the transfer |
Nobody performs magic here. All four pay the same bill, just in different places. Whoever wants to keep their history needs a key they keep themselves.
What actually happens at PriChat
Your messages live encrypted in your browser and nowhere else. The key is created from your password when you sign in and exists only in memory; if you enable passkey login, the same key is unlocked by your passkey instead. There is no message history on our server that we could read, only a mailbox for undelivered messages: encrypted beyond our reading, deleted on delivery, and after 14 days regardless.
So when you sign in on a new device:
- Contacts come back. They sit on the server as an encrypted block that only your key opens, and your group memberships return the same way. To be honest about it: group names and group pictures do sit in our database in plaintext, the member list does not.
- Your old message history does not. It exists only on the old device. That is not a failure, it is the design.
- Your new device has to be approved. If your account already has a trusted device, you confirm the new one there with a short code. Your identity key travels encrypted from device to device; our server only relays the unreadable envelope.
- The 12-word phrase rescues the account, not the chats. With it you set a new password and recover your identity. It contains no messages, because it cannot.
If you do want to bring the history along, you do it deliberately and by hand: under Settings, in the "Data" tab, you create a transfer file. It is encrypted with six words that are not stored in the file, and by default it contains only your contacts. The message history comes along only if you tick that box. If you would rather not carry the file around yourself, you can park it on our server once. Even then it stays encrypted with your six words, which we never see, and it is deleted after the restore.
An exported history is a decryptable copy of all your messages. As long as it exists, it no longer matters that yesterday's keys are long gone. That is precisely why this is a decision here, not an automatism.
What this means for you
Before you switch devices, whichever messenger you use:
- Work out who holds the key to your backup. Only you? Good. The provider or the cloud? Then it is not an end-to-end backup.
- Write down your backup password, key or recovery phrase and keep the paper where your passport lives. No provider can replace it for you.
- Transfer while you still have both devices. A lost phone transfers nothing.
- And decide deliberately whether you need the history at all. A chat that no longer exists cannot show up in a search, a theft or a data breach.