WhatsApp warned me last month that I would soon run out of Google’s unlimited backup offer and the day has already arrived. Now backup my WhatsApp I’m already deducted from Google storage. Almost 1 GB less for my photos, my emails or my Google Drive files.
Google has started to eliminate unlimited copying of WhatsApp and the truth is that you may not even have realizedbecause nothing is indicated in WhatsApp and seeing it in Google applications is a bit hidden, although we will tell you how.
My WhatsApp backup is not unlimited
There are phased rollouts that I’m eagerly waiting to be activated and they never happen and there are others that I wish would never happen that have already happened, as is the case of end of unlimited WhatsApp backup to Google Drive
Until now, the WhatsApp backup we kept in Google Drive It was not deducted from the total space (15 GB standard on free accounts) due to an agreement between the two companies in 2018. On iOS, iCloud copies were still taking up space.
After the warning, I was attentive to see when the prophecy would come true and the day finally arrived, although I had to be very careful to find out. To find out, you need to open Google Drive and in the side panel enter Storage.
The bar that shows the distribution of storage space includes a mysterious Others which in my case contains three items and takes up 2.24 GB. My backup takes up 789 MB, as I was able to verify by typing Discussions > Backup
Now Google Drive shows me the entire Other breakdown, which actually included phone backup (just 1MB), Google Drive, and just “Other”. This “Others” is WhatsApp backup and this corresponds exactly to the figure that WhatsApp offers me.
That is, WhatsApp backup is already taking up space, which is obvious because if I open the Google One storage management website in a browser, it suggests that free up space by deleting WhatsApp items.
This WhatsApp button links to https://wa.me/settings/storage-management, an address that only opens correctly in WhatsApp if you click on it from a WhatsApp chat. As expected, this takes you to the section Storage management
From there you can Find out which photos and videos take up the most WhatsApp storage space (and therefore also your backup and your Google account), to delete them. Remember though, what you delete here will also be deleted from your chats and not just from the backup.
Now that what you receive on WhatsApp is taking up space on Google, if you use backup it’s more important than ever choose what you want to save or not and perhaps from time to time clean up photos or videos that no longer interest you.
Also you can choose other strategies like going without WhatsApp backup (something dangerous, if you lose your phone or it breaks), or create a new Google account just for backup. New accounts include 15 GB of free storage.
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