WhatsApp chat backups are stored on Google Drive for all Android users. And so far, Google has offered unlimited space for storing these backups. Meaning, WhatsApp users could store chat backups on Google Drive indefinitely and it won’t count as a part of the standard storage space that the company provides to all Google account holders. But that is about to change as a new report says that the company might offer a limited space for storing WhatsApp chat backups.
According to a report by WABetaInfo, Google is planning to stop offering the unlimited plan to store WhatsApp backups to Android users. A screenshot of WhatsApp’s code shows that the messaging app will show users their backup limit for their chata on Google Drive. In addition to that, the code shows that WhatsApp will also warn users when the limit for their chat backups on Google Drive has reached or when the allocated Drive space is almost full.
Furthermore, the report says that Google will still offer a certain quota of storage space to Android users for storing WhatsApp backups for free, but it will be a limited plan. Details about the new storage plan remain unknown for now.
It is worth noting that this feature was first reported back in October last year. At the time, reports suggested that WhatsApp was working on a feature called Manage Backup Size that would show users the size of their WhatsApp chat backups and give users toggle buttons to exclude certain file types such as photos, audio, videos, documents and other media file from chat backups on Google Drive. At the time, it remained unclear why WhatsApp would offer a functionality to manage chat backups when Google Drive offered unlimited space for storing WhatsApp chat backups.
But in light of the recent findings, it is safe to assume that Google will not provide unlimited Google Drive space for storing chat backups. That said, neither WhatsApp nor Google has made a formal announcement in this regard, so we’ll have to wait for the companies to clarify how this feature would work.