WhatsApp backups on Android will soon use your Google Account storage space

WhatsApp chat backups for Android users have been free for the longest time. But that is about to change as WhatsApp and Google have announced changes to how WhatsApp chat backups get stored in a Google Account. The two companies have announced that soon WhatsApp backups on Android will soon start counting towards a user’s Google Account cloud storage limit.

As of now, WhatsApp backups are not counted as a part of a user’s Google Account cloud storage limit. This means that an Android user can store a fresh backup of their WhatsApp chat history even if they have run out of free cloud-based storage space in their Google Account. But this is about to change. “WhatsApp backups on Android will soon start counting toward your Google Account cloud storage limit, similar to how WhatsApp backups are handled on other mobile platforms,” Google wrote in an update on its Android community page.

When will this change come into effect?

Both WhatsApp and Google say that they will start rolling out this change to WhatsApp’s Beta users starting December 2023. After successfully testing it with a small batch of people, it will roll this change out to all WhatsApp users on Android in the first half of 2024.

WhatsApp says that it will inform users 30 days before this change comes into effect via a banner within the app. This banner can be accessed here: Settings > Chats > Chat backup.