WhatsApp Android users have been able to back up their chat history and files for free via Google Cloud for years, but the two companies are making an important change as of December. For some users, this may require paying for additional cloud storage space with Google.

Google and WhatsApp have it Announce today That WhatsApp backups will once again count toward your Google account’s cloud storage limit starting December 2023. This is a major revision to the policy in place since 2018, under which WhatsApp backups no longer count toward your Google storage.

For many years, each Google account got 15 GB of storage space for free, which was shared by Google Drive, Gmail, and Google Photos. If you have a lot of photos and videos in your WhatsApp history, and you also have a Gmail archive that lasts for years, you may have reached your limit. If you want more cloud space, you’ll need to subscribe to Google One.

The cheapest Google One subscription costs €1.99 per month for 100GB. Google is currently having a discount promotion, where you pay just €0.49 for 100GB for the first three months.

Free up space

If the limit becomes too tight for you, you can also delete photos, videos, and other large files from your WhatsApp history. Then your next WhatsApp backup will be smaller. This can be a time-consuming task.

You can also free up more Google Cloud space by deleting files there or by deleting emails with large files, large attachments, or spam in Gmail. Google One offers a few of these Useful tools to.

The rollout is gradual

The change will be introduced for personal Google accounts starting in December and will be rolled out gradually. The new policy will come into effect for all WhatsApp Android users in the first half of 2024. Users will see a banner about the new policy in WhatsApp settings.

If you have a Google Workspace subscription through work or school, nothing changes at this time.

WhatsApp users with an iPhone can back up their WhatsApp history to Apple’s iCloud service, with the backup currently also counting towards your storage limit.

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