A WhatsApp group archive your members can search

What does a WhatsApp group archive do?

It keeps the history of your groups outside the phone, on one web address with one search. When someone asks a question the group already answered, anyone can find the answer and link straight to it.

• Search every archived group at once, then narrow it to files, voice notes, threads, one person, or a date range.
• Photos, video, documents, voice notes and stickers stay with the message they were sent in, when WhatsApp provides the media. Voice notes play in the page.
• Quoted replies stay linked to the message they answer.
• Edits and deletions made after you connect update the archived copy.

Adding new members? WhatsApp can send each one up to 100 recent messages, and the archive lets them search what it holds from before they arrived. See how new members can read a WhatsApp group’s old messages.

How do I connect a WhatsApp group?

You link a phone that is an admin of the groups, the same way you would link WhatsApp Web. It takes a QR code and a few taps.

1. Open Linked Devices. On the phone you use as a group admin, open WhatsApp, then Settings on iPhone or the ⋮ menu on Android, then Linked Devices and Link a Device.
2. Scan the code. Scan the QR code shown during setup. Community Archives becomes a linked device, like WhatsApp Web.
3. Tick the groups. Choose the groups that belong to the community. Only groups where that number is an admin can be added, and only the groups you tick are imported.
4. Share the address. Your archive gets its own web address. Decide who can read it, then share the link with the group.

Community Archives never posts in your groups. The linked session is only used to find the groups you can archive and to import the ones you pick. If WhatsApp logs the device out, scan a new QR code and the same archive keeps collecting. Everything already archived stays readable in the meantime.

How much WhatsApp history does the archive keep?

New messages from the day you connect, while the phone stays linked, plus the recent history WhatsApp hands a newly linked device. How far back that reaches depends on WhatsApp and on the group. In practice it is anywhere from a few months to about a year, and it may not reach the group’s first message.

When the import finishes, you see how many messages came across and how many were skipped. WhatsApp can leave some messages out, or send some the archive cannot read, so a group can be partly imported.

Some things are never archived:

• One-to-one chats, status updates and broadcast lists.
• Reactions from before you connected. Reactions added afterwards are kept.
• Groups where the linked number is not an admin.
• Message types the archive cannot read. They are counted and skipped.

For edits, deletions, replies and files side by side with Slack, see what gets archived.

Who can read the archive, and how do members sign in?

Members only

Readers enter the phone number they use in WhatsApp, with its country code, and get a code on WhatsApp. Access follows the current member list of the groups you archive.

You can also make the archive Invite only, where people you invite by email get a secure sign-in link, or Public, where anyone with the link can read it.

Phone numbers stay hidden from other members.

What does a WhatsApp group archive cost?

One archive costs $9.99 USD/month after a 7-day free trial and covers every group in it. See pricing for limits and billing.

How is an archive different from exporting a WhatsApp group?

Exporting gives you a one-off file, and a backup only restores to your own phone. Our guide on how to export a WhatsApp chat compares every option side by side.