It’s official: starting from the beginning of next year, Android Whatsapp users will no longer be able to benefit from free cloud space of their Google account for backups of their chats that will start counting towards reaching the storage limit, similar to how they are managed on other mobile platforms.
WhatsApp backups on Android will of course continue to work, as long as you have available space in your Google account storage. If you reach the storage limit, 15GB in the free version, you’ll need to free up space to resume backups, removing unnecessary items, or choose a paid Google One plan.
Currently, the most affordable plan is the Basic plan, which provides 100 GB for 1.99 per month. Google has made it clear that the storage quota of users with a Workspace subscription through work or school will not be affected at this time.
As stated by Google in a note published in the past few hours, the change will initially be extended to WhatsApp Beta users and then gradually arrive to all WhatsApp for Android users. With the latest WhatsApp Business beta update for Android, version 2.23.24.21 available on the Google Play Store, this change has already been rolled out.
The cessation of unlimited storage for WhatsApp backups on Android will undoubtedly have an impact on users who have enjoyed the convenience of automatic and unrestricted data backups in recent years. The agreement between Google and Whatsapp to have free and unlimited backups on Drive was made in 2018. This change, which had been talked about for some time, will be more felt by those who use the multimedia messaging app more frequently, whose backup files will have now reached a particularly large size over time.
In recent months, however, WhatsApp has implemented major improvements to backups, reducing their size, which could further limit the impact of these changes. Users can also always migrate their chat history to another device, eliminating the need to rely solely on Google Drive.
Although these changes are not yet active, it is still recommended that users start “preparing” for this change to avoid suddenly finding themselves in a difficult situation. Surely, it will be important to delete any large videos and documents that are no longer needed and check the automatic media download settings.
