WhatsApp Backups Won’t Eat Into Your Google Drive Storage Anymore

If you are an active WhatsApp user, chances are you have backups that are at least 80MB big. WhatsApp obviously doesn’t store messages on its servers, so users need to store the backups of their chats on Google Drive or iCloud on iOS. On Android, WhatsApp users can store these backups on Google Drive, so they can recover their messages when they move from one device to another.

WhatsApp is making a big change to these backups for Android users. For those who store their WhatsApp backups on Google Drive, these backups will no longer eat into their Google Drive storage from November 12. The company teamed up with Google to let users store backups without having to waste their Drive storage, but it will automatically remove old backups that haven’t been removed in the last year.

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The change will be welcome to many WhatsApp users, as backing up chats and its contents (video and music) can take up gigabytes of space. If you are on iOS, you are obviously out of luck — at least for now, unless WhatsApp decides to go into an agreement with Apple for iCloud, too.

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Conversation 9 comments

  • m_p_w_84

    18 August, 2018 - 8:05 pm

    <p>This should not be presented as a feature to benefit users. As usual this benefits Facebook, I will never allow unfettered access to my messages</p>

    • MikeCerm

      20 August, 2018 - 9:13 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#302816">In reply to m_p_w_84:</a></em></blockquote><p>WhatsApp users are already locked into Facebook's chat platform. If anything, it's really a benefit to Google because it gets WhatsApp users locked into their storage platform. </p>

  • Gavin Groom

    19 August, 2018 - 12:18 am

    <p>Nice, but I'll keep using Telegram.</p>

  • waethorn

    19 August, 2018 - 11:05 am

    <p>Why charge for storage when Google can "monetize" it?</p>

  • VancouverNinja

    Premium Member
    19 August, 2018 - 1:39 pm

    <p>Skype is about to launch integrated text message for phones. May very well be a good option instead.</p>

  • Bats

    19 August, 2018 - 10:04 pm

    <p>I'm surprised that these two tech companies are getting in bed with each other. After all, WhatsApp is really Facebook, aren't they?</p>

  • nageshroy

    24 October, 2018 - 3:03 pm

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