In the coming months, there will be a substantial change for WhatsApp users who store their chat backups on Google Drive. Some time ago, WhatsApp released a statement reminding users of the situation, and now the predictions have come true.
This new feature, initially proposed in mid-November, is currently underway for users participating in the WhatsApp beta program.
According to the users enrolled in the beta, Google Drive storage quotas now take into account their chat and multimedia backups. This means that the storage used by these backups will contribute to the overall limit imposed by the Google account storage for free users, limited to 15 gb.
These 15 GB of Google storage encompass all the data stored in Google Drive, including Google Photos and Gmail. But if this amount seems insufficient to you, the situation for iOS users is even worse: only 5 GB of cloud storage compared to the 15 GB offered by Google.
This change in the treatment of backups is not immediate for all Android users. It is expected that Meta, the parent company of WhatsApp, will implement it in the first half of 2024. To facilitate the transition, users will be notified 30 days in advance through a banner that will appear in the chat backup settings of the app.
For those who prefer not to consume their Google Drive storage with WhatsApp data, there are alternative strategies. One option would be to opt for local backups (on the mobile device) and take advantage of the built-in WhatsApp Chat Transfer tool to effortlessly migrate the data to a new device.
Another possibility is to back up only text messages, excluding multimedia files. Text messages usually take up very little space compared to images, videos, and audios, which easily fill up storage space.
