WhatsBackUp 1.2.1

Free for Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit. Download WhatsBackUp-Setup-1.2.1.exe below (237 MB) and run it — no admin password, nothing to install first. Existing installations update themselves on the next restart.

Windows will probably say "Windows protected your PC", because the installer isn't signed with a paid certificate. Click More info, then Run anyway.

Fixed in 1.2.1

AI sorting works with Google Gemini again. Gemini's 2.5 models reason before they answer, 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 with nothing parseable. Test connection reported that the model ignored the requested format and could not see images; both were the same cause, and neither was what it looked like. Thinking is switched off for these calls now, since labelling a photograph against a fixed schema has nothing to reason about. The connection test also judges a model on 300 tokens rather than 64, which was too mean a budget to judge one by.

Everything below arrived in 1.2.0, earlier the same week: videos that play in the gallery and full screen, a settings file that can no longer be lost, storage trouble reported as storage trouble, a log that rotates on Windows, and conversation paging that stopped hiding messages.

WhatsBackUp 1.2.0

Free for Windows 10 and 11, 64-bit. Download WhatsBackUp-Setup-1.2.0.exe below (237 MB) and run it — no admin password, nothing to install first.

Windows will probably say "Windows protected your PC", because the installer isn't signed with a paid certificate. Click More info, then Run anyway. Your antivirus may also object once: the app carries its own copy of Chrome, which is how it talks to WhatsApp Web, and that looks odd to a scanner on sight.

Existing installations update themselves on the next restart.

New

Videos play in the gallery. A video shows a real frame instead of a grey box, and plays silently while the pointer rests on it. Quick play runs them full screen one after another — one flick per video, sound when you open one.

Fixed

• Settings could be lost. A settings file that existed but couldn't be read for a moment was treated as no settings at all. That sent a configured machine back through first-run setup, and the next save wrote defaults over the media folder, the cloud folder and the stored AI key. Only a genuinely missing file counts as a first run now.
• A missing drive claimed WhatsApp was broken. A video that downloaded fine but couldn't be written — a cloud folder that had unmounted — counted towards capture looks broken, WhatsApp may have changed, sending people to look for an update when they needed to reconnect a drive.
• The log never rotated on Windows. The file was held open while being renamed, the rename failed silently, and once past the size limit the log reopened itself for every single line written.
• Conversations hid messages. Paging through a chat used a bare timestamp as its place-marker while ordering by timestamp and id. WhatsApp stamps whole seconds, so messages sharing a second with a page boundary were unreachable — present in search and export, missing from the thread. Live updates dropped messages arriving in the second just polled.
• Capture could fail silently. A media message that arrived with no data — the signature of WhatsApp renaming something — was skipped without counting as a failure, so the health warning never fired.
• Sorting cost what it said. Gemini and GPT-5 had no listed price, so work was charged against the monthly cap at the dearest rate known: a full sort counted $6.53 against a $5 ceiling and stopped halfway, reporting money that was never spent. Real prices added; the same run now counts $0.51.
• Restart handling in the desktop shell: a crash-restart timer could relaunch the engine during a migration, the window could get stuck on an error page if the tray was clicked before the engine was listening, and a port conflict popped a modal error every few seconds forever.
• A killed file copy during migration was reported as success.

Also

NVIDIA's endpoint (build.nvidia.com) is available as an AI provider, and the first-run wizard has a Back button on every step.

WhatsBackUp 1.0.1

Fixes the Start with Windows toggle, which reported itself as off after saving (Windows matches login items on the exact command line, and the read-back didn't pass the same arguments).

Everything else is unchanged from 1.0.0. If you already have 1.0.0 installed, this arrives automatically the next time you quit the app — or download the installer below.

WhatsBackUp 1.0.0

First release of WhatsBackUp as a Windows desktop app.

Download WhatsBackUp-Setup-1.0.0.exe below. Windows will show "Windows protected your PC" because the installer isn't signed — click More info → Run anyway. See INSTALL.md.

It installs for your user only (no administrator password), carries its own Chrome, and needs nothing else on the PC.

What it does

• Saves every photo, video, voice note, audio file, document and sticker you send or receive — you choose which types
• Optionally copies videos (and images) straight into a cloud folder: pCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox, a network drive
• Keeps message text locally so conversations stay readable and searchable, with a full transcript export
• Imports what's already in your chats, as far back as WhatsApp lets a linked device see

Set up in four steps

Consent → where to keep media → optional cloud folder → scan the QR code.

Upgrading from the older script version? It offers to import your media, messages and your existing WhatsApp link, so there's no new QR scan.

When WhatsApp changes something

WhatsApp updates its website without notice and that can stop capture dead — it already did once, silently, for a month. This build watches for it: three failed downloads in a row turn the tray icon amber, raise a notification and show a banner. Keep automatic updates on so fixes arrive.

Known limits

• Not an official WhatsApp client. WhatsApp's terms don't allow unofficial clients; an account could be limited or banned. Your call.
• Media older than a few weeks often can't be downloaded any more — WhatsApp drops it from its servers. The import reports these as skipped.
• Windows only, x64.