In detail
Yes, if you approve it. Your chats never leave the WhatsApp Business app on your phone. Sharing your past chats with your platform is your choice, made in the app. If you turn it off, nothing from your history comes across, though new messages still mirror from then on.
If you share, one-to-one messages from the 180 days (about six months) before you connect are imported. They come across in stages, so older chats can take a little longer to appear. Each imported message keeps its last status, such as sent, delivered or read. Photos, videos and documents come with their files only if they were sent in the last 14 days; older media appears as a placeholder, and the original stays in your app. Group chats aren't imported.
Your WhatsApp contacts come across too, with the full name and first name saved on your phone. Contacts you add, edit or remove later keep syncing.
The import is a one-time step. Meta allows 24 hours from connecting for it; if it doesn't finish, you'd have to disconnect and sign up again. Keep the WhatsApp Business app open on your phone for a few minutes while it runs. It usually takes minutes, depending on how much history you have and your internet speed. To run the import again later, you'd disconnect and connect afresh.
This is the big change coexistence brought. Before February 2025, moving a WhatsApp Business app number to the platform meant deleting the app account, and the history on it was lost. Meta still recommends backing up your chats before you connect or disconnect anything.
Key points
- History sharing is optional and decided in the app.
- Up to 180 days of one-to-one chats.
- Media files only for the last 14 days.
- Group chats not imported.
- One-time import, finished within 24 hours.
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