WhatsApp has announced a partnership with Google to allow its 1 billion users to back up their WhatsApp data on Google Drive without sacrificing their storage space. The deal was signed earlier this year and it has come into effect from November 12.

Earlier, WhatsApp users could back up their chat messages, images, audio files and videos on Google Drive, however, this counted towards the user’s storage quota on Google Drive, which was limited to 15GB for most users. Now, users will be able to store unlimited WhatsApp data without having to worry about the size.

While announcing this feature, WhatsApp had also announced that any backup that has not been updated for over a year will be removed from Google Drive. Currently, you can choose to either backup your data automatically daily, weekly or monthly or opt to backup manually.

This feature is only useful for Android users as Apple devices use iCloud to backup the WhatsApp data.

Some users had received an email from the company mentioning this partnership. It said, “Due to a new agreement between WhatsApp and Google, WhatsApp backups will no longer count against Google Drive storage quota. However, any WhatsApp backups that have not been updated in more than a year will automatically be removed from storage.”

How to create a Google Drive Backup

• To create a Google Drive backup, you will need to first link a Google account and install Google Play services on your device.
• Then, open WhatsApp and tap on Menu > Settings > Chats > Chat backup.
• Tap Backup to Google Drive and select a backup frequency.
• Your WhatsApp data will be backed up automatically according to the frequency selected.