Why can’t I import my Google Drive backup?

WhatsApp on Android can back up to Google Drive, but it stores that backup in a private application-data folder that only WhatsApp itself can read. Google's Drive API isolates app data per application: even if you signed in to ThreadVault with your Google account and granted every Drive permission, Google would only show us our own app data — never WhatsApp's. There is no permission, setting or consent screen that changes this.

Tools that claim to download the Drive backup do so by impersonating WhatsApp towards Google with your Google password or a long-lived token. That breaks Google's and WhatsApp's terms of service and would mean handing your Google credentials to a third-party program — something ThreadVault will not ask you to do.

What works instead

• Local backup (recommended). On the phone: WhatsApp → Settings → Chats → Chat backup → Back up. Turn on the end-to-end encrypted backup with the 64-digit key so the desktop app can open the file; see Getting started with the desktop app. ThreadVault cannot start that backup for you — Android does not allow another app to trigger WhatsApp's backup — so the app shows the steps and rescans your phone when you are done.
• Already on an iPhone? Make an iTunes/Finder backup of the phone and open it with the desktop app; see Exporting from an iPhone.
• Restored a Drive backup onto a phone? After the restore WhatsApp writes a local backup again, which the desktop app can read over USB.

The data stays on your devices in every case; nothing is fetched from Google.