WhatsBackUpv1.2.1

Release 1.2.1 · 24 August 2026

Take a copy.

Free and open source. About five minutes from here to every photograph I am sent is now kept.

Download for Windows

FileWhatsBackUp-Setup-1.2.1.exe
Size237 MB
RequiresWindows 10 / 11, 64-bit
Installsper user — no admin password
Sourcegithub.com/tasty-foods/whatsbackup

§ 00 This release

New in 1.2.1

Existing installations update themselves on the next restart. 1.2.1 repairs AI sorting against Google Gemini; everything below it arrived in 1.2.0, earlier the same week.

Sorting works with Gemini again
Google's 2.5 models reason before answering, and the reasoning is spent from the same token allowance as the reply — so a request for a short, structured answer was thought past the limit and came back as nothing usable. It looked like a model refusing the format, and it stopped sorting dead. Thinking is switched off for these calls now: labelling a photograph against a fixed shape has nothing to reason about.
Videos play in the gallery
A video shows a frame instead of a grey box, and plays silently while the pointer rests on it. Quick play runs them one after another, full screen, one flick per video — with sound when you open one.
Settings can no longer be lost
A settings file that existed but could not be read for a moment was treated as no settings at all, which sent a configured machine back through first-run setup and could overwrite the folders it had been given. Only a genuinely missing file counts as a first run now.
A missing drive says so
A video that downloaded but could not be written — a cloud folder that had unmounted — counted towards capture looks broken, WhatsApp may have changed. Storage trouble is now reported as storage trouble.
Nothing fails silently in the log
Log rotation never worked on Windows: the file was held open while being renamed, the rename failed quietly, and past the size limit the log reopened itself for every line written. Both fixed.
Conversations stopped hiding messages
Paging through a chat used a timestamp alone as its place-marker. WhatsApp stamps whole seconds, so messages sharing a second with the page boundary were unreachable — present in search, missing from the thread.
Sorting costs what it says
Gemini and GPT-5 had no listed price, so a run was charged against the monthly cap at the dearest rate known and could stop halfway through reporting money that was never spent. Also adds NVIDIA's endpoint as a provider.

§ 01 Installation

Five steps, start to finish

  1. 01

    Run the installer

    Double-click WhatsBackUp-Setup-1.2.1.exe. There is nothing to install beforehand — no Node.js, no Chrome, no developer tools. The app carries everything it needs.

  2. 02

    Get past the blue warning

    Windows will most likely say "Windows protected your PC". That is expected: the installer is not signed with a paid certificate, so Windows does not recognise the publisher. It says nothing about whether the app is safe. Click More info, then Run anyway.

    Your antivirus may flag it once too. The app carries its own copy of Chrome — that is how it talks to WhatsApp Web — and "an app with a browser inside it that reads messages" looks suspicious to a scanner on sight. If it gets quarantined, restore it and allow it.

  3. 03

    Answer four short questions

    A notice to read and accept; where to keep your media; optionally a cloud folder — pCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox or a network drive — so videos sync off the PC by themselves; and whether it starts with Windows. Recommended, since it only captures while running.

  4. 04

    Scan the QR code

    On your phone: WhatsApp → Settings → Linked devices → Link a device, then scan the code on screen. Exactly the flow you know from WhatsApp Web. From that moment, everything you send or receive is kept automatically.

  5. 05

    Pull in what you already have

    Open ⚙︎ Settings → History → Import history now. It walks your existing chats and downloads the media WhatsApp still holds — frequently years of photographs. Anything WhatsApp has already deleted is reported as skipped rather than silently missed.

§ 02 Requirements

What you need

Operating system
Windows 10 or Windows 11, 64-bit
Disk space
About 600 MB for the app, plus room for your media
Administrator rights
Not needed — it installs for your user alone
Other software
None
A phone
The one your WhatsApp account runs on, for the single QR scan
An account with us
There isn't one
Updates install themselves
It checks GitHub for new releases and updates quietly in the background. Keep that on: when WhatsApp changes its site and breaks capture, an update is how the fix reaches you.
Uninstalling leaves your files
Remove it from Apps & features and every photograph, video and message stays exactly where it is. Ordinary files in ordinary folders — nothing is locked inside the app.
Rather build it yourself?
Reasonable — it is a stranger's unsigned binary that reads your messages. The full source is public: clone it, read it, then npm install and npm run dist produce the same installer.
If something goes wrong
⚙︎ Settings → App → Copy diagnostic report gathers everything useful into the clipboard. Your API key is never in it.

§ 03 Disclosure

Before you install

  1. This is not an official WhatsApp app. It connects the way WhatsApp Web does, through an open-source library WhatsApp does not endorse. Their terms do not permit unofficial clients, and there is a real if small chance an account gets limited or banned for using one. If that risk is unacceptable to you, don't install it.
  2. It archives other people's media too. Everything sent to you is kept, and none of the senders agreed to that. Keep the copies to yourself.
  3. It only captures while it is running. Anything arriving with the app closed is missed at the time, though Import history can usually collect it afterwards.

How it compares to the backup you already have · Questions · What leaves your PC