With over two billion active users, WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps in the world, aIt’s also one of the few apps to offer end-to-end encryption by default. This means that no one other than you, the other party, can read your conversations. Even WhatsApp can’t read your chats because it doesn’t have the key to decrypt your chats.

All of this was true, with the exception of one scenario: WhatsApp chats backed up to iCloud were all unencrypted, so if someone gets their hands on your iCloud backup, they can read all your messages enough easily. But nNow, WhatsApp has an optional feature to protect your WhatsApp backups with the same two-factor authentication using a password or a secure key.

How to enable end-to-end encryption for WhatsApp backups on iCloud

Before you start, you should know that WhatsApp end-to-end encryption depends on a password. or a 64-digit secure key. If you lose your password, you will not be able to restore your chats, so be sure to use a yet recognizable password. If you are using something complicated, be sure to save it in your password manager (this can be ICloud Keychain or a third party service like Bitwarden).

To get started, first update your WhatsApp app to the latest version. WhatsApp is slowly rolling out this feature on its two billion users, so if you don’t see it yet, try again in a few days.

Open WhatsApp, and from the “Settingstab “, go to”Discussions. ” Here, select “Chat backups“and press the”End-to-end encrypted backup” button. Press the “Light up“and from the next screen, choose the”create a password”Option.

Here, create a password consisting of at least six characters and one letter. Then press the “Next” button.

Once everything is configured, press the “To create”To switch to end-to-end encrypted backup. Give WhatsApp time to switch to encrypted backups.

If you want to turn off this feature, go back to Settings > Discussions > Chat backup > End-to-end encrypted backup > Switch off.

While WhatsApp has moved to encrypted backups, your iPhone still backs up all of iPhone data to iCloud, in the same unencrypted format. For security reasons, we suggest that you turn off iCloud backups completely. To do this, open the “Settings“and press your Profile top banner. Then go to “iCloud“and deactivate the”ICloud backup”Option.