Meta recently rolled out a wave of upgrades and changes to its popular instant messaging platform, WhatsApp. Among these was a shift in chat backup storage, as announced in their updated terms and conditions last year. Starting in January 2024, chat backups would no longer utilise WhatsApp’s dedicated space, but would instead rely on Google Drive. And indeed, as January draws to a close, WhatsApp has already transitioned to Google Drive for backing up chats and media.
Regardless of whether you’re on the free or paid plan of Google’s cloud storage service, WhatsApp now saves chat backups to your Google Drive, using the storage space associated with the Gmail account linked to your WhatsApp account. So apart from all the backups of your Google Photo, Gmail and more, now your WhatsApp will eat up your space in Google Drive.
However, in case you don’t have a paid Google Drive account or if you are using WhatsApp beta and want to avoid chat backups occupying your entire Google Drive storage space altogether, you can opt to not back up chats to the cloud service. Instead, you can use the built-in WhatsApp Chat Transfer tool when switching to a new phone.
But that chat transfer will require both the old and new phones to be on the same Wi-Fi network and does not require an active internet connection. Alternatively, you can purchase additional storage space on Google Drive by subscribing to a Google One plan.
Another option is to exclude images and videos when backing up your WhatsApp chat history, as they can significantly increase the size of your backup.
You can check if your WhatsApp has started the backup process in Google Drive by going to WhatsApp Settings > Chats> Backup. If the Google Drive chat backup is in process you will see this message in the chat backup section- , “Back up your chats and media to your Google Account’s storage. You can restore them on a new phone after you download WhatsApp on it.
Notably, iPhone users have long relied on iCloud storage for chat backups, and now Android users are catching up. While iPhone users have been using the the convenience of icloud backup for some time, WhatsApp is finally extending this capability to Android users, allowing them to store their chat history securely in Google Drive.
Meanwhile, in another update, WhatsApp is reportedly working on a hidden “third-party chats” section. Discovered in the iOS beta version by WABetaInfo, this feature would allow users to access and manage conversations from other messaging platforms like Telegram and Discord within WhatsApp itself.
This development aligns with the European Union’s Digital Markets Act, which promotes interoperability between major messaging apps. The aim is to give users the freedom to easily communicate across different platforms, reducing the need to download separate apps simply due to their popularity.
Source: Business Today
