Unable to Restore WhatsApp Messages from Local Backup (Crypt14 Files Present)

[shayman]

Hi all,

I’m hoping someone can point me in the right direction as ive really mucked up here. I recently moved from my old device to a new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold. Unfortunately, I did not have Google Drive backups enabled for WhatsApp. When I reinstalled WhatsApp on the new phone, all of my chat history was gone.

I’ve since gone back to my old device (Samsung S23 Ultra) and located multiple local backup files in the path:

Internal Storage > Android > media > com.whatsapp > WhatsApp > Databases

The files look like:

• msgstore-2025-09-12.1.db.crypt14
• msgstore-2025-09-19.1.db.crypt14

File sizes are around 114 MB for the main backups, so they appear intact. (but small for 20 years of messages even if just the text)

Here’s what I tried so far:

• Copied the backup file and renamed it to msgstore.db.crypt14.
• Placed it back into the Databases folder.
• Uninstalled WhatsApp → reinstalled from Play Store → verified my number.
• Unfortunately, I did not get any option to restore from the local backup, I even tried turning on airpolane mode to force local backup restore

I still have over 11 GB of WhatsApp Media (photos, videos, voice notes) and the database files on the old phone S23

My question:
How can I get WhatsApp to recognize and restore chats from these .db.crypt14 files? Is there a reliable method or tool that works when cloud backups were never enabled?
Thanks in advance for any advice — I really don’t want to lose years +20 of chat history.