WhatsApp backup to count towards GDrive storage soon for Android users

Google provides up to 15GB storage for free with every account that is shared across its platforms such as Drive, Gmail and Photos

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WhatsApp’s chat backups on Google Drive for Android devices would soon count towards cloud storage, as announced by both Google and WhatsApp in November last year. According to news reports, chat backup for Meta-owned messaging platform has now started to count against Google account storage for select users as part of beta testing.

WhatsApp had previously announced that the change will start rolling out for all Android users in the first half of 2024. WhatsApp had said that it would notify users 30 days prior to the change with a banner in the Chat settings menu.

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It essentially means WhatsApp users can take cloud backup on Google Drive as long as there is sufficient storage available. If the user exhausts their storage limit, they will have to free up space or subscribe for more storage to resume backups. To reduce the size of the backup, WhatsApp provides an option that allows users to take a backup of chats without saving shared images and videos to their GDrive.
 

Google provides up to 15GB storage for free with every account that users can share across platforms like Google Drive, Gmail and Google Photos. For more storage, Google offers monthly subscription plans starting at Rs 149 in India with 100GB storage.

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WhatsApp has a built-in option to transfer chats data from Android to Android without the need of taking backup. Called WhatsApp Chat Transfer, the feature require both Android devices to have the Wi-Fi turned on. Network connectivity is not necessary for transferring WhatsApp data using this tool.