WhatsApp users should be aware of a significant change this year that could potentially incur additional costs. It’s time to review your phone’s settings to avoid these new charges. Starting from 2024, WhatsApp chat backups for Android users will now be included in the Google cloud storage quota. Each Google Account is allocated 15GB of free storage, but if your combined use across Google Drive, Google Photos, and Gmail exceeds this limit, you might need to consider purchasing extra storage.
Google announced this update in a recent blog post, stating, ‘WhatsApp backups on Android will soon contribute to your Google Account cloud storage limit. This is in line with how backups are managed on other platforms.’ The change is initially being introduced to WhatsApp Beta users from December 2023 and will then be extended to all Android WhatsApp users early in the new year.
For those with personal Google Accounts, an option to manage storage is to delete items directly from WhatsApp. As explained by Google, removing items from WhatsApp will reduce the storage consumed by subsequent backups.
To ease this transition, Google has also mentioned that it will soon offer eligible users a one-time Google One promotion, as part of their post-Christmas communication to customers.”
