If you are one of over 1 billion WhatsApp users around the globe, chances are that you have received an email from Google in your inbox. But that’s no cause for alarm. In this new development, WhatsApp has joined a partnership with Google which will benefit WhatsApp users on Android. Starting November 12, 2018, WhatsApp backups on Google Drive without affecting their Google storage quota.
A caveat though is that any WhatsApp backups that haven’t been updated in more than one year will be automatically removed from Google Drive storage. For this reason, if you’re a WhatsApp user, make sure to manually back up their WhatsApp chats before November 12 to avoid the loss of any old backups.
One more thing to note is that the media and messages you back up aren’t protected by WhatsApp end-to-end encryption while in Google Drive. From this point on, the encryption shifts to Google, which ought to be secure enough to keep your data safe.
Unfortunately, iOS users have nothing much to celebrate at this point in time. WhatsApp for iPhone uses iCloud to store backups, unlike Android users. As such, this new development is not applicable to them. Sorry guys!
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How to Backup WhatsApp chats
- Open WhatsApp.
- Press Menu > Settings > Chats > Chat backup.
- Go to Back up to Google Drive and select a backup frequency other than Never.
- Tap BACK UP to begin your Google Drive backup. This process might take a few minutes.
- Select a Google account that you’ll back up your chat history to. If you don’t have a Google account, press Add account when prompted and enter your login credentials. Please remember the Google account you’re using for the backup.
- Press Back up over to choose the network you wish to use for backup. Please note that backing up over a cellular data network might result in additional data charges.
