Google Drive now includes WhatsApp backups in storage quota: What you need to know
IIE Digital Desk : WhatsApp, the popular messaging app, is undergoing a change that affects how backups are stored. Users who have been using the beta version of WhatsApp have already noticed these changes.
What this means is that WhatsApp users will need to start managing their backup data or they might have to pay for extra Google Drive storage.
WhatsApp Backup Storage Changes in Google Drive
In WhatsApp, there's a feature that lets users back up their chats and media to Google Drive. This is really useful because if you change phones, you can just restore your WhatsApp chats from this backup. But now, there are changes to how this storage works.
In the settings of WhatsApp, you can check how much space your WhatsApp data is taking up in the cloud storage. This is shown in the managed storage section of the Google Drive app.
Google Drive also stores other things like emails from Gmail, photos, and files. WhatsApp backups are listed under 'other' in your storage.
Until now, these backups didn't count towards your Google Drive storage limit. But with the new changes, they will.
The exact reasons why WhatsApp and Google are making these changes haven't been explained. But it seems like it might be because there are so many people using WhatsApp, and offering free storage for all these backups isn't practical anymore.
Options for WhatsApp Users Amidst Storage Limit Changes
WhatsApp users don't need to worry too much. They can still back up their data without paying more, as long as they stay within the 15GB free cloud storage limit that comes with their Google Account. This includes any additional storage they might have bought, like with Google One.
Google offers different plans for more storage. They start with 100GB and go up to 2TB, which is a lot of space. These plans are for people who need lots of storage for things like photos, videos, and documents.
The big question is how these WhatsApp backup storage changes will affect users. Will they decide to buy more storage, or will they try to free up space by deleting things? We'll have to wait and see how things go once the new policy is fully in place.
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