WhatsApp users rejoice, for your backups will no longer count against your Google Drive storage total from November 12th this year. The Google Drive team have emailed WhatsApp users who backup their chats to Drive with the notification around this earlier today and the recommendation that users manually back up before the policy goes into place on November 12th.
WhatsApp doesn’t have their own cloud storage, so they require users to backup chats to third-party cloud services. Users can choose to export their chats as a TXT file that can be emailed to them, or they can use online storage in Google Drive to back their chats up either automatically or manually.
The email from WhatsApp outlines the new agreement between Google and Facebook-owned WhatsApp, with the text reading:
Due to a new agreement between WhatsApp and Google, WhatsApp backups will no longer count against Google Drive storage quota. However, any WhatsApp backups that have not been updated in more than a year will automatically be removed from storage.
This policy will go into effect for all users on November 12, 2018 though some users may see the quota benefits earlier. To avoid the loss of any backups, we recommend that people manually back up WhatsApp before November 12, 2018.
If you haven’t been backing up your WhatsApp chats, then you probably should. WhatsApp has a comprehensive how-to FAQ on their support site which outlines how to both turn on the automated process of backing up to Google Drive, as well as how to initiate a manual backup.
Fantastic news for users who rely on WhatsApp heavily and Drive to backup their chats.
What services do you backup to Drive that you’d be happy to have the space back in your allowance?
