Phone and Tablet Tips
Brilliant things to do on your device
ANDROID & iOS
Encrypt WhatsApp backups with a passkey
WhatsApp has long offered the option to protect your account with a passkey. This allows you to verify your identity using your fingerprint, face or other screen-lock method when you log into your WhatsApp account on another device – such as when using WhatsApp Web in your desktop browser.
It has now added passkey support to its end-to-end encrypted backups of your WhatsApp chats. The existing options let you secure these backups with a password or automatically generated 64-digit encryption key. If you forget or lose either of those, you won’t be able to restore your encrypted backups.
The new passkey method is more convenient and prevents you from being locked out of your backups. It’s particularly useful when setting up WhatsApp on a new phone, because you can use the passkey to verify it’s you and quickly transfer your chats.
To set up the feature, tap your profile icon and choose Chats, then ‘Chat backup’. Select ‘End-to-end encrypted backup’ and tap ‘Use passkey’ (see screenshot below left).