[General Questions and Answers] Marvolo1590:
OK, here are some updates, as the information on this thread on the last pages has turned out to be only partly working or downright wrong. So don't bother trying to rely on old information in this thread - I'm going to summarise the status quo as of April 2024 and what I've found out:

How to get the key:

There are several possibilities depending on your starting position:

If you have a working WhatsApp as of today (April 2024) with your number and you created a backup today and want to make sure that IN THE FUTURE you can access this backup of today, then you need to extract your key for this backup.

1.) If your phone is rooted, find the key in your WhatsApp directory on your phone as described in the pages before. This hasn't changed.

2.) If your phone is NOT rooted, use this simple tool: WhatsApp Key Database Extractor Master. You need to have Python installed on your computer. Also, this tool doesn't work with the most reason Android versions, so it's good to have a phone running Android 10 or lower. My most recent Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra on Android 14 didn't work, but my old Huawei P20 Pro and P30 Lite phones (running Android 10) DID work with this script. This script does two things: (A) it will extract the key so you can use it to decrypt your databases and (B) it will decrypt your entire database and save it as a decrypted file on your computer so you can access all your chats within this decrypted database WITHOUT needing the key. Also, you can make changes based on this decrypted database, for example if you want to merge two different backups into one (e.g. chats going from 2018 to January 2020 on phone 1. Then change of phone and starting all new without former chats from January 2020 up to today). You can merge the two different phone chats togheter and have it all in one.

If you have a backup of your past chats (the encrypted databases etc) on your computer, but you did NOT (as 99% of everyone else here) copy the respective key-file so you could decrypt them later because you didn't know that the phone had to be rooted to do so, it becomes a little more difficult to get the key back for an older backup that is NOT CURRENTLY RUNNING on your phone.

If your number stayed the same for the old backup you now want to get the key for, you can try to use the key of your CURRENT WhatsApp setup (by extracting it like above). For me, my current key worked for a couple older backups in the past going back for about a year or so. I could decrypt them with the current key of my currently working WhatsApp.

HOWEVER: apparently, the current key does NOT unlock EVERY BACKUP that has EVER been created with the SAME number. For me, it only worked about a year back (beginning 2023). This means: contrary to some users' statements a couple pages ago: the key is NOT universal for EVERY backup you have EVER made with the SAME number. Apparently, and I haven't figured out why, the key changes from time to time even though the number stays all the same...

The second possibility to get a key for an old backup is to have WhatsApp reassign a new one for you. That's the way to go if you can't unlock your backups with the currently existing key (method above), as it will only unlock a temporal time span (roughly a year or so for me). Now try to load the old backup into the WhatsApp database folder on the phone, log into WhatsApp with the same number and hope that WA will now find the old backup and based on the same number will "realize" this backup belongs to you and restore it. Once it is restored, quickly make a new backup via settings -> Chats so that the old backup you just restored (perhaps an old .crypt12/9/7/5 version) will become the most recent *crypt14 backup. Over the years, WhatsApp changed its table structure to a more or lesser degree, so it's wise to have old backups in the most recent shape by making a new backup right after restoring it and then saving the new backup. Also quickly extract the key using the Key Extractor above (or if phone is rooted, find it there). This way, you will have permanent access to the old backup you just restored.

HOWEVER: Apparently, WhatsApp refused to recognize backups that are older than a couple months.

For me, it DID recognize a backup made in December 2023, but it didn't recognize one from February 2022 and further back. I have no idea why. I'm still trying to get WhatsApp to recognize older backups, as this is THE ONLY WAY to get a missing key to those backups. If WhatsApp doesn't restore the backup, there's no way to extract the key with the methods above. The unofficial versions of WhatsApp (modded version) such as Fouad WhatsApp DO recognize the older backups upon setup and I can restore them. HOWEVER: right after restoring is finished (100%) it tells me that it couldn't restore the backup and no messages have been restored. So I'm still trying to find a way to get older backups restored because otherwise there won't be any key and all the backups created over the years are then just data rubbish. There's no way to crack them.

How to view decrypted messages:

If you have managed to obtain the key for the encrypted databases, there are several ways to view them.

Many on here mentioned "WhatsApp Viewer", but as many pointed out, the most recent version gives out an error message saying you should use an older version. This error can be fixed and you can get WhatsApp Viewer to display your crypt14 messages

HOWEVER: WhatsApp viewer is very basic and simplistic and doesn't view messages very well. Neither does it include media such as pictures, videos or audio messages, nor does it display quoted messages and such. It's almost as basic as looking at exported chat messages via TXT file (WhatsApp chat settings -> export chat as txt file)

A better option ti view the messages is the aforementioned BackupTrans software which not only lets you decrypt your messages by using the key, it can also display them well, shows media and even opens media if you click on them in your chats. Unfortunately, it's not for free, but not overly expensive.

How to edit / alter / merge / combine chat messages from different phones (but same number):

If you have the problem that you have 2 different chat histories (because you changed phones and didn't take the old chats to the new phone), there are ways to merge / combine several histories into one mega history.

To do so, you need to have your chats decrypted. The key file and the encrypted file isn't enough here, even though it would be enough to just view your messags. You need the database totally encrypted as a file on your computer (not *crypt14, but *db). That way, you can load it into DB BROWSER FOR SQLITE (a software for databases) and then reunite different chat histories by deleting overlapping messages. The above mentioned Database-Key-Extractor-Script will not only create a key file, but - like mentioned - a decrypted *db-file which you can use to work on.

Alternatively, any modded WhatsApp version such as Fouad WhatsApp will do the same as it has a special Backup Feature embedded that will create a decrypted database plus key file.

HOWEVER: even though several users apparently managed to merge / combine two different chat histories, the methods have changed over the years and due to updated WhatsApp versions.

So what worked in 2015 according to this thread, doesn't necessarily work today. In order to get WhatsApp to recognize the merged database, it needs to be encrypted again and even though Whapa seems to be able to do this, WhatsApp doesn't always recognize the encrypted / merged database and if it does, chats may be displayed wrongly in the wrong places and wrong orders...

A word of caution regarding unofficial / modded WhatsApp versions such as Fouad / Yo / GBWhatsapp:

apparently, WhatsApp temporarily or even permanently BANS accounts that are detected using an unofficial version. So I'd be careful using these, even though they have quite some features that many of us need in order to restore backups or obtain keys..

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My personal objective is to get old WhatsApp backups restored (but I don't have the key for them and WhatsApp doesn't want to recognize backups that are older than a couple months only) and if they are restored, I want to decrypt them and then merge old chats / backups all into one super/mega chat history using the above mentioned merging method.

So in the end, idealy, I would have all my backups decrypted and all the chats from several backups all in my current main WhatsApp...

Seems quite some way to go, still. How to get the keys for older backups?!