There’s no going back: anything your WhatsApp downloads and you save to Drive as a backup will take up space on your Google account. After breaking the unlimited copying agreement, now There is a greater risk of filling up the 15 GB provided by Google with each account. Although, as always, there are several tricks to get around this problem.
The photos of the last wedding that fill the group chat of friends, the greetings that appear occasionally every morning through the family conversation, the videos of funny cats, the memes… This audiovisual content, funny during the first seconds, ends up piling up on the phone to expand storage to the limits. And the same thing happens with the backup that WhatsApp frequently makes: all the gigabytes of the mobile end up in Google Drive. This is now a problem.
Your Google Drive will be filled with copies of WhatsApp
With the end of the privilege that Android maintained with WhatsApp backup, since Google did not subtract any space from accounts that used the service (the complete opposite of iCloud on iPhone), users are already seeing how dangerously their Drive is filling up. Even alerts appear when there is no space to save Gmail emails or save copies of Google Photos, this can be quite a serious problem.
WhatsApp backups can take up a lot of space because automatic downloading of messages is usually active. And everything ends up in Google Drive, without that being a problem in itself: Not losing important conversations because they were saved in the cloud is a guarantee of security. The problem is all that content that’s worthless and ends up filling up a Google account until Gmail stops working, for example.
If your Google account is full, you will no longer receive emails from Gmail, you will no longer be able to save files or upload photos.
The simplest solution to prevent Google accounts from filling up with WhatsApp backups would be to pay for the Google Drive service: 1.99 GB per month for the 100 GB account on Google One would be more than enough. But this is not the only way to avoid the risks of filling all the available space, I solve it in three different ways.
The first thing: that Google Drive only saves the essentials
It seems obvious, but space isn’t wasted just because most of us don’t clean our WhatsApp of all the photos, videos, and audios we have. They don’t even deserve to open. Absurd gifs, memes, prank videos… This is a major problem in group chats where we don’t control everything that ends up in the conversation.
I have restricted downloading any media content on WhatsApp for years. Do I know that the photo they send me will interest me? So if I download it, the rest is pending. To configure this operation:
- Go to your WhatsApp settings and go to “Storage and data“.
- Go to “Download using mobile data” and uncheck all options.
- Repeat with the rest of the sections.
From this moment, WhatsApp will display the files in chats with an arrow to download them: Only by clicking on the arrow will they be saved on the mobile. This avoids filling your phone with unwanted content and, by extension, the backup copy saved on Google Drive will not fill up either.
The second: an exclusive Google Drive account for WhatsApp
If the WhatsApp account accumulates many chats, and most of them are group chats, said account has all the numbers to use the Google account space where the backup is saved. So, to prevent applications like Gmail or Google Photos from stopping working, it is best to have an account only for the messaging app.
If you create a Google account only for WhatsApp backups, you ensure that your main account is not populated
The previous process involves opening a new Google account by accessing this link. My recommendation is use primary account as recovery email, so you can restore the secondary account from the first one. Once created, all you need to do is change the destination of the WhatsApp backup:
- Open WhatsApp settings.
- Go to “Discussions”.
- Go down to “Backup”.
- Go to “Google Account” and fill out the section with the account you created.
The space on the main Google account will no longer be filled, all WhatsApp backups will go to the parallel account.
The third: Google One with Google Opinion Rewards
Balance available on Google Play and earned through Opinion Rewards
Does the Google account continue to get cluttered with WhatsApp backups or do you just want to continue using the main account for this purpose? Well, there is a way to get Google One for free: via Google Opinion Rewards surveys
Google Rewards gives you money to spend on Google Play for Complete surveys and download purchase receipts. You need to have your Android location active for Google to record activity, and once rewards are recorded, the app will suggest different actions for you to pay for.
On average, Rewards give more than two dollars per month if all surveys and reception plans are completed: you just need to travel to the commercial locations. A simple daily and weekend walk is usually enough. As this is not something fixed, it could happen that one month there is a drought of activity in Rewars, this must be taken into account.
To exchange money for a space extension for your Google account, follow these steps:
- Download the Opinion Rewards app and make sure you’ve completed at least two surveys before taking the next step.
- Download the Google One app.
- Open Google One and select the Basic plan, the 100 GB plan. It costs 1.99 dollars per month and you will have enough space for your WhatsApp backup.
- Accept the terms of service. Then a floating window will appear with the selection of the payment method. Click here.
- Choose “Google Play Balance» and pay with what you earned through Google Rewards.
According to our experience, and to the extent that activity outside the home is common (going from home to work, shopping, leisure activities, etc.), The rewards should give more than the two dollars per month that the cheapest Google One subscription costs, enough to cover WhatsApp. And you’ll have enough to back up all your images with Google Photos on the cloud.
In Xataka Android | I created my own Google Photos, I’m no longer afraid of running out of space
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