It could soon start costing you money to save your WhatsApp chats under new changes recently announced by Google – which isn’t even the company that owns WhatsApp – unless you make an important change.
WhatsApp is free to use, which is partly why the chat app is one of the most popular in the world. Over the past few years, users of the Android version of WhatsApp have enjoyed totally free use, even when it comes to cloud backups of all their chats. Backups are important to keep updated so you can restore all your chats if you lose your phone or simply upgrade to a new handset.
You can backup all your WhatsApp chats and history on Android by linking a Google Account to your WhatsApp app. Although these backups are stored in Google’s cloud and linked to you, they did not count towards your Google cloud allowance – until now.
In a change announced in November, as of the start of 2024, WhatsApp backups on Android will count towards your Google cloud storage allowance. The tech giant gives every Google Account 15GB free storage, but if you have more than that over your Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail account then you will have to pay for more storage.
“WhatsApp backups on Android will soon start counting toward your Google Account cloud storage limit, similar to how WhatsApp backups are handled on other mobile platforms,” Google said in a blog post, referencing how WhatsApp backups on iPhones count towards iCloud storage limits.
“This change will first start rolling out to WhatsApp Beta users starting in December 2023, then gradually to all WhatsApp users on Android starting early next year.” Well, now it is ‘next year’ as we head into the first week of 2024.
If you have several gigabytes of WhatsApp history (this writer’s is over 4GB) you might find it tips your Google cloud usage over 15GB, which would mean paying at least £2.49 per month to bump up to the next storage tier of 200GB.
However you can get around this potential new charge by deleting large files saved in your Google Account to free up enough space to backup your WhatsApp history. It’s likely the bulk of the free storage is being taken up by large photo and video files on Google Drive. You can go to the Google Photos app or the desktop website and delete large files to give yourself more free space.
If you use Google Drive to store files then you may also find you can delete some items there, such as video or music files you might no longer need. If you can chisel your overall storage down to below 15GB then you might be able to avoid paying for Google cloud storage and continue to keep those WhatsApp chats backed up for free.
