WhatsApp is currently informing users about an important change that owners Meta and Google announced back at the end of 2023.
Many people are now receiving a warning about backing up their chats which should not be ignored.
Specifically, this concerns Android users who back up their chats and contacts via a Google account. Previously, this did not use any additional storage space in Google Drive, but was stored separately. This is now changing.
For many WhatsApp users, the storage space on Google Drive may not be sufficient to back up all their data. By default, Google only provides 15 GB across all Google services, but this is quickly used up with many long chat histories and larger files.
If you want to continue backing up all your chats, messages and pictures from WhatsApp, you need to act now – because you only have 30 days from receiving the warning to back up your data.
Your options for backing up WhatsApp data
Before the 30-day period has expired, you have the opportunity to make sure your WhatsApp chats back up properly. There are several options for this.
Firstly, you can check how much storage space your data actually takes up. To do this, simply go to Settings, then to Storage and data. Under Manage storage, you can see how many megabytes are currently occupied by all your chats.
If you tap on it, you can also see which files and chats are taking up the most storage space. If you don’t need some of them, it might be worth clearing it out.
Another option for more storage space and also more security is the self-deleting messages that have been available on WhatsApp since 2020. Alternatively, you can deactivate the option to automatically download images, GIFs and videos in your group chats in order to use less memory in future.
Alternatively, you can of course also book more storage space in Google Drive. This costs extra, but you can get 100 GB for just £1.99/$1.99 per month. Alternatively, you can back up your chats using another method, such as an external hard drive.
For more like this, see all of Tech Advisor’s other WhatsApp articles.
This article originally appeared on our sister publication PC-WELT and was translated and adapted from German.
Author: Laura Pippig, Staff Writer, PC-WELT
Laura is an enthusiastic gamer as well as a movie and TV fan. After studying communication science, she went straight into a job at PCMagazin and Connect Living. Since then, she has been writing about everything to do with PCs and technology topics, and has been a permanent editor at our German sister site PC-WELT since May 2024.