Since its inception, WhatsApp chat backups on Android were always provided free of charge. However, this is about to change.
According to announcements made by Google and WhatsApp, chat backups on WhatsApp will now be included in your Google account storage allocation.
For those who don’t subscribe to Google One or a similar cloud storage service from Google, a 15GB free data limit is available.
This 15GB encompasses data from various Google applications such as Gmail and Google Photos. With the recent update, your chat backups will also contribute to this storage limit.
Depending on the duration of your WhatsApp usage and the volume of media shared, your backup size could become significantly larger.
The implementation of this change will commence next month for WhatsApp Beta users, gradually extending to all WhatsApp Android users throughout the first half of 2024.
A notification banner will be displayed in WhatsApp Settings > Chats > Chat backup 30 days before this alteration takes effect.
If you want to upgrade your Google storage, a 100GB storage will costs you RM84.99 annually, a 200GB is priced at RM119.99, while a 2TB storage is RM429.99 per year. Google is also offering monthly plans as well.
If you don’t want to upgrade your cloud storage, you can also backup your files and chats locally on your phone and here’s how to do it:
- Open WhatsApp and go to Settings.
- Tap on Chats and then select Chat backup.
- Under the Google Drive settings section, tap on “Back up to Google Drive”.
- From the options available, select Never to stop WhatsApp from uploading a backup to Google Drive.
- Now, tap on “BACK UP” and WhatsApp will start creating a local backup on your Android phone and save it to the internal storage or a SD Card or an external USB-C storage device.
