Can you Move WhatsApp and Signal to a New iPhone Without Re-Verifying Them?

[sclough]

I have done a lot of searches and I can't find clear answers so I want to know if anyone knows for sure the answers to this. Here is my situation: I have a phone I use when I'm outside the US with an international number and WhatsApp and Signal are tied to that number. My service does not work in the US so I cannot get SMS when I'm in the US.

I want to get a new iPhone to upgrade my phone when I'm in the US. I typically move everything over using an iCloud backup but I could also use the slower iPhone to iPhone transfer. My question is will any of these methods transfer my WhatsApp and Signal accounts to the new phone so I can use the new phone without being required to re-verify WhatsApp or Signal? I cannot get an SMS with my international number until I travel again so I don't really have an option to re-verify. (I do have an email linked to my WhatsApp but it's not clear to me if you can re-verify via email only.)

I see a few comments online that people have successfully transferred to a new phone without re-verification but it's not clear to me if this works and exactly what is required for it to work properly on an iPhone to iPhone upgrade.

 

[maerz001]

From my experience you need to verify with every new phone.

But not if you keep the old phone and just pop in a different sim card

 

[aihpcfl]

I did Signal XS > 16 Pro recently. I migrated apps and data first, then migrated Signal. See this reference. The caveat in this scenario is you need the old phone.

I don't know anything about WhatsApp.

 

[sclough]

I did Signal XS > 16 Pro recently. I migrated apps and data first, then migrated Signal. See this reference. The caveat in this scenario is you need the old phone.

I don't know anything about WhatsApp.

That's helpful - but it starts with verifying the phone number on the new device which is something I can't do in the US with a foreign number.

 

[aihpcfl]

@sclough OK, sorry. I don't remember having to verify the phone number. Not sure why I didn't need to do it.

 

[maerz001]

What sort of contract do you have? Never experienced that messages don’t work in roaming.

Maybe just switch to a different provider before traveling

 

[Slartibart]

you can of course link your iPhone as a Whatsapp companion device - moving will require confirmation

 

[sclough]

What sort of contract do you have? Never experienced that messages don’t work in roaming.

Maybe just switch to a different provider before traveling

My international phone has a local service plan that does not work in the US. It doesn't have roaming. So I can't receive SMS/Phone calls in the US.

 

[sclough]

In case it helps anyone else, I was able to move to a new phone without re-verifying Whatsapp and Signal via SMS. In case it helps anyone else, here is what I did:

My situation: I have a phone that I use outside the US. Whatsapp and Signal are both linked to a non-US number. But I'm in the US right now using the phone with only a US number only because my non-US number doesn't have roaming so no cellular service on that number while in the US. My US number is t-mobile via an esim.

In settings, I made sure that both WhatsApp and Signal were set to save data to iCloud. From what I read online I think this is probably required to make this work.

On WhatsApp I gave my account an email address in case I needed to recover the account using email. In the end I didn't use email to verify the account, but I'm mentioning this just in case having an email set is what allowed WhatsApp to re-verify without SMS.

I purchased the new phone at the Apple store but did not begin transferring data until I got home.

After starting the new phone, I did an iCloud restore to setup the new phone. During setup I skipped moving my US number to the new phone (I don't know if this mattered, but I decided not to move the number until I was sure the new phone was ready to go.)

I waited until the new phone had completely downloaded everything from iCloud and installed all apps.

I opened WhatsApp which recognized it was a new phone and wanted me to log in again. I put in my non-US number fearing that WhatsApp would try to send an SMS. However, WhatsApp said it would send a WhatsApp message to my old device to confirm using the WhatsApp account on the new device. And that's what happened. It sent a WhatsApp message (not an SMS) to my old phone with a code. I then entered that code on the new phone and WhatsApp successfully logged in on the new phone with my non-US number and then de-activated the WhatsApp non-US number on the old phone.

Then I opened Signal and had a prompt to activate signal with my number. Again, I feared the worst. However, once I put in my non-US number Signal recognized it was an existing number and gave me an option to move my account to the new phone. I said yes and it gave a QR code that I had to scan from the old phone. Once I scanned it the old phone transferred the account to the new one without asking me to re-verify the number in any way (note you must give Signal the "Local Network" permissions in your iPhone app settings for it to work). Once again, Signal was now active on the new phone with my non-US number.

After verifying that both WhatsApp and Signal were working fine on the new phone I then transferred my US esim from my old phone to my new phone. I have no idea if this made any difference or not, but I decided to do this last after I confirmed the setup worked.

I'm posting this just in case it helps anyone else.