WhatsApp is one of the most popular mobile chat apps in the world with over 1.5 billion daily active users and more than 60 billion messages sent per day, according to data released back in February. And all those messages and files you exchange every day sure pile up. Yes, you can delete some of them to save space, but you’ll probably want to save most of them and back them up, especially when it comes to switching devices. The good news is that if you’re a Google Drive user, you now get free WhatsApp data backups, which is a great perk to have.
Backups were free before the announcement as well, but the WhatsApp data you saved to Google Drive counted towards your total available storage. But Facebook and Google inked an agreement that will make WhatsApp storage in Google’s cloud completely free. You’ll be able to back up all the data you want without having to worry about upgrading cloud plans to hold it.
The notification came unexpectedly via email, as seen in the following screenshot from xda-developers:
To qualify for the new WhatsApp backup plan, you’ll need to update your backups at least once per year. The new policy will come into effect for all users on November 12th, according to the notification, with some users likely to get it earlier. The email from the Google Drive team also advises users to manually back up WhatsApp before that date in order to avoid losing any data.
The deal is good for anyone who already backs up plenty of WhatsApp data with Google Drive, as it can potentially save you precious gigabytes of storage.
