History sync

After connecting successfully, the socket downloads and processes your existing chats, contacts, and messages from WhatsApp. This data arrives asynchronously through the messaging-history.set event.

Handling the history payload

Listen for messaging-history.set and persist the data however you like. At minimum, store messages so you can return them from your getMessage callback.

sock.ev.on('messaging-history.set', ({
  chats: newChats,
  contacts: newContacts,
  messages: newMessages,
  syncType,
}) => {
  // Persist chats, contacts, and messages to your store
})

syncType tells you which kind of sync delivered the payload (full vs. incremental), so you can decide whether to overwrite or merge.

Requesting full history

By default, Baileys connects with a Chrome browser profile, which limits how much history WhatsApp returns on the initial sync. To get full history, use the macOS desktop browser preset and set syncFullHistory:

import makeWASocket, { Browsers } from '@whiskeysockets/baileys'

const sock = makeWASocket({
  browser: Browsers.macOS('Desktop'),
  syncFullHistory: true,
})

Full-history sync significantly increases startup time and memory on large accounts.

Disabling history sync

If you don’t want history at all, return false from shouldSyncHistoryMessage:

const sock = makeWASocket({
  shouldSyncHistoryMessage: () => false,
})

On-demand history sync

Beyond the initial sync, you can ask the main device for older messages at any time using sock.fetchMessageHistory:

await sock.fetchMessageHistory(/* count, oldestMsgKey, oldestMsgTimestamp */)

This is useful for paginating through history on demand instead of pulling everything up front.

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Handling the history payload

Requesting full history

Disabling history sync

On-demand history sync

​Handling the history payload

​Requesting full history

​Disabling history sync

​On-demand history sync

Handling the history payload

Requesting full history

Disabling history sync

On-demand history sync