WhatsApp users may be in for a very unpleasant surprise in the coming weeks. The app will offer a major and paid change to one of its most popular features.
Google has recently taken a radical decision regarding the use of WhatsApp on Android smartphones. In the coming weeks, online storage of your messages and backups will be cut from your Google Drive. This may prevent some people from storing and retrieving their conversations (for example when changing their phone) if they no longer have enough storage space on their Google Drive account.
Until now, Android smartphone owners had an advantage over WhatsApp users on iPhone. On Apple phones, users must store all their conversations and messages in their iCloud account, which can lead to their free account quickly filling up. As a reminder, iCloud only has 5 GB of space in its basic free version. So it is enough to save a few chats with photos, videos or somewhat heavy documents to fill this space and no longer able to save more data from WhatsApp.
WhatsApp users on Android smartphones, however, have had unlimited storage space through Google Drive until now. It was then possible to save a large number of conversations and messages there for retrieval on another device.
But in a few weeks, Google will change the way it backs up your messages. This will now take up space on your Google Drive storage which, as a reminder, is limited to 15 GB in its free basic offering and included with your account. Add to this the fact that Google Drive also manages your photos and Gmail emails, and you will understand that it is very easy to completely fill up the available storage with your WhatsApp conversations. Fortunately there is a small workaround to solve this problem.
We can recommend you to create a dedicated Gmail account for your WhatsApp backup. To do this, create a new Gmail account on the site or in a dedicated application. Then go to WhatsApp Settings, then to the “Chat Backup” section where you can select the Google account you want to use for your backup.
