Whatsapp May Soon End Unlimited Google Drive Backups

Oct. 12, 2021

After rolling outend-to-end encrypted chat backups to beta userslast week, WhatsApp is now testing a new option to manage chat backup size. Alongside this option,WABetaInforeportsthatWhatsApp may soon end unlimited Drive backups and switch to a limited planto backup your WhatsApp data in Google Drive.

Whatsapp May End Unlimited Google Drive Backups

AsWABetaInforeports, the upcomingbackup size manager will let you choose to include (or exclude) photos, audio, videos, documents, and other mediain your WhatsApp chat backup. The feature was spotted in WhatsApp beta 2.21.21.7 on Android and isn’t generally available even for beta testers. You can check out the interface below:

However, it doesn’t look like all your WhatsApp backups are going to count against your Drive storage.WhatsApp and Google are likely to introduce an upper limit of 2000 MB per user for free chat backups. Backups exceeding this limit would potentially count against your Drive quota.

Considering howGoogle ended free unlimited storage for Google Photosearlier this year, the report doesn’t come as a surprise. That said, both companies haven’t revealed their plans to end unlimited storage just yet. Hence, now would be the correct time to backup your vast WhatsApp meme collection for free before Google potentially enforces a limit.

On an unrelated note, WhatsApp is also working on anew Community featurefor groups. According toWABetaInfo, Community is a way for users to organize WhatsApp groups better. Much like backup size manager, WhatsApp Community is still under development and will potentially be available on a future release.

Subin writes about consumer tech, software, and security. He secretly misses the headphone jack while pretending he’s better off with the wireless freedom.