WhatsApp Backups Will Stop Counting Toward Your Google Drive Storage

WhatsApp has expanded its partnership with Google to start offering Android users added benefits to use WhatsApp backups on Google Drive.

The Facebook-owned company has revealed through an FAQ page, WhatsApp backups will no longer count towards the Google Drive storage quota starting November 12—It is also important to note that WhatsApp backups that haven’t been updated in more than one year will be automatically removed from Google cloud storage service.

This helps Android users to use the available Google Drive space to store important files and data other than the regular WhatsApp data. While there isn’t any restriction on the Drive front, to back up your WhatsApp data, you still need to fulfil the minimum requirements that include a Google account activated on your phone along with Google Play services. The handset also needs to have enough free space to create the Google Drive backup.

“To avoid the loss of any backups, we recommend you manually backup your, Backing up your chats and media to Google Drive is helpful because when you change Android phones or get a new one, your chats and media remain transferable.

“We recommend connecting your phone to WiFi prior to backing up your chats via Google Drive, as backup files can vary in size and consume mobile data, causing additional charges,”—WhatsApp users can still set up their account to automatically back up any chats to the cloud or your device’s local storage, or they can do it manually by going into the app’s “settings” tab. WhatsApp said in an update on its FAQ page.

The latest move is quite valuable for the Android users who don’t have plenty of storage space on Google Drive to regularly back up their WhatsApp chats. However, it doesn’t bring any change to iOS users since WhatsApp for iPhone uses iCloud as the source to store backups.