The world’s most used messaging app, WhatsApp, is making one of its security features a lot better.
The messaging giant, which gained support for end-to-end encrypted chat backups in 2021, is now making those same backups significantly easier to access and maintain.
For reference, up until now, restoring a WhatsApp backup meant having to manually input a 64-digit encryption key, or a custom password that you created at the time of backup. While this is an incredibly safe way to maintain a backup, it is also a friction point — losing or forgetting the key or password meant losing your entire backup.
Meta understands the limitation, and that is precisely why it is now introducing passkey-encrypted backups.
Skip the key
WhatsApp was the first private messaging app to offer end-to-end encryption for your chat backups so that your old messages can stay with you. Today, we’re making it easier than ever to set extra security for your chat backups by introducing passkey-encrypted backups.
Highlighted by the messaging giant in a new blog post earlier today, passkey-encrypted backups have begun rolling out, and will become widely available gradually over the coming weeks and months. Support will be available for both Android and iOS users.
Once available, you should be able to replace your complex credentials with authentication systems already built into your devices, including FaceID, fingerprint, lock codes, and more.
To get started with end-to-end encrypted backups, head to Settings > Chats > Chat backup > End-to-end encrypted backup. Passkey support hasn’t rolled out to me just yet, so the section only highlights support for a password or a 64-digit encryption key.
