WhatsApp beta for iOS brings the long-awaited end-to-end encrypted backups

A month after WhatsApp announced it will be getting end-to-end encryption for backups, the new privacy and security feature is making its way to beta testers using iPhones, reports 9to5Mac.

End-to-end encrypted backups on WhatsApp for iOS are now rolling out to beta testers

WhatsApp beta version 2.21.200.14 is bringing the more secure backup option to some of the testers of the popular messaging app. With end-to-end encryption for the backups, you will be able to protect your data from everyone, including Apple, Facebook, and WhatsApp itself.

If you want to see if you’re one of the beta testers that have received the feature (not all beta testers have it for now), you can check from WhatsApp Settings > Chat > Chat Backup. You will have a toggle for “End-to-end Encrypted Backup”. If you have it and you’ve activated it, you can disable the iPhone backup for WhatsApp, as the one iCloud does to your WhatsApp chat is not end-to-end encrypted. You can do so from iPhone settings > iCloud > Manage Store > Backup, where you can scroll down to find “WhatsApp” and disable it.

There is no precise date of when this feature will be available for the general public, but as it’s making its way to beta testers now, it shouldn’t take long for an official release.

End-to-end encrypted backups for WhatsApp

Mark Zuckerberg announced this feature last month and he stated that this will add another layer of privacy and security to WhatsApp. He highlighted that WhatsApp is the first global messaging service at this scale to offer end-to-end encryption to both messaging and backups, and achieving it is a technical challenge, that, as he said, required an entirely new framework for key storage and cloud storage across operating systems. WhatsApp has had some issues with the public opinion on privacy from the beginning of the year, as many of you may have probably heard about the controversial WhatsApp terms change that had many people abandoning the chat service to go to other chat apps like Signal or Telegram. At the time, WhatsApp had introduced a controversial change in its terms, which, although it related only to Business accounts, had people refuse to accept to share data with WhatsApp (and in the end, the app didn’t enforce the rule, it applies now only to chats with Business accounts).

This end-to-end encrypted backups feature is now coming to give even more privacy and security to WhatsApp users.

Other recent WhatsApp features that improve the user experience

WhatsApp has been getting a lot of new features and has been working on developing new functionalities recently. One of these key features that will make everyone’s life easier is the possibility of multi-device support. The feature is currently in a beta period but is accessible for everyone (not only beta testers). WhatsApp for iPhone version 2.21.180 for iOS brought the multi-device support feature in the section “Linked devices”, and although this feature is still in beta, so it is not official, you are able to test it even without being a part of WhatsApp’s beta program (which is currently closed for registrations for quite some time).

Keep in mind that you can link only up to four separate devices at a time with your account, and none of these additional ones can be phones. You have the right to link only one, main device, which can be a phone, and the other devices can be computers or tablets for example. Recently, WhatsApp has also been reported to work on iPad support, as well as on the possibility to add two phones to the same WhatsApp account.