For a long time, the most popular texting platform – WhatsApp allowed users to save their backups on Google Drive for free. For free in the sense that your WhatsApp backup files would not be counted when it came to using your space on your Google Drive. Meaning if you had a 6GB WhatsApp backup on your Google Drive, it wouldn’t be considered part of your allocated storage space.
However, all good things come to an end and so do the unlimited WhatsApp backups to Google Drive. A lot of people seemed to have got it confused when Google announced in November that unlimited WhatsApp backups would no longer be considered free. What Google has meant is that WhatsApp Backups will now be mounted towards storage. So, what can you do?
WhatsApp Backup Options
Now, by default, every personal Google Account comes with 15GB of free storage space with Google Drive. That is good enough storage space for most people. And, if you are someone that uses Google Drive to back up your chats from WhatsApp, you might want to think about it. First of all, not everyone’s WhatsApp backup field would be bigger than 5GB or 6GB so, it will be perfectly alright for them to back up to Google Drive.
But, if you are someone whose WhatsApp backup size is larger than 5GB, you might want to consider a few alternatives. Since this is about WhatsApp backups on Android devices, you have a lot of freedom in storing your backups.
Save Your Backup To Your Device’s Local Storage
A lot of us out there will be using devices that have at least 128GB or higher storage options. So, the best place to back up your WhatsApp chats is by storing them on your device itself. This can be done easily. Here are the steps that you can follow.
- Launch WhatsApp. Tap on the three dots menu at the top right corner and choose Settings.
- Navigate to Chats > Chat Backup.
- Under Backup to Google Drive tap and choose the Never option.
- You will see a green button at the top that says Backup. Tap on the button.
A WhatsApp backup will now be created on your phone’s storage. You can find the files in the Android > Media folder.
Exclude Videos In WhatsApp backups
If you still plan to use your Google Drive account to back up your WhatsApp chats, you can make a few changes to your backup file size so that it does not take away a ton of your storage space. For this, it would be ideal to exclude the video field from backups the backup size will be reduced drastically.
If you’re someone who sends and receives videos over WhatsApp regularly, your WhatsApp backup file gets bigger. If the videos on WhatsApp don’t matter to you, you can exclude them from your backups. You can still copy them separately to any device storage. Here is how to exclude videos from backup.
- Open WhatsApp on your Android smartphone.
- Tap on the three dots at the top right corner and choose Settings from the three dots menu.
- Now tap on Chats and then Chat Backup.
- At the bottom of the Chats Backup page, you will see a toggle next to where it says Include Videos.
- Make sure that the toggle has been turned off.
With videos no longer added to your WhatsApp backups, you can expect a smaller backup size for WhatsApp on Google Drive.
Save Your Backups To Your PC
One of the better ways to save your backup from WhatsApp is by transferring the backup files to your PC course. You would have to first save them on your device’s local storage. Once you have that done, you can simply browse through your phone’s files on your PC and copy the WhatsApp folder from your phone to your PC.
Once you connect your phone to your PC using the USB cable, make sure to choose the Storage option when the pop-up appears on your phone.
On your PC, navigate through the folders from the internal storage of your Android and then copy the full WhatsApp folder to your PC. Before that make sure to take a backup for your WhatsApp chats.
Export Chats That Matter to You
WhatsApp has a great feature that will let you only export chats that mean to you. This becomes important as it helps reduce unwanted chats and clutter from chats you might not be bothered about. Here is how you can export chats of your choice in WhatsApp.
- Go to WhatsApp Settings.
- Now, tap on Chats followed by Chat History.
- Choose Export Chats.
- Now, a list of all the chats that have taken place on WhatsApp will appear here.
- Simply select the chats that matter to you or the important ones.
- You will be asked if you plan to include media or not.
Bonus Tip: You can also export chat for single contact, by opening conversation which you want to export, then tap three dots icon > More > Export Chat
If you don’t choose media, you will get a smaller file size that can be exported anywhere you want to. You can choose to save it to your Google Drive, or other cloud storage service, or send it to another person using WhatsApp or any other messaging platform.
Get a Google One Subscription
If the free 15GB storage option on Google Drive is not enough, you can always choose to get more storage for Google Drive with a monthly subscription. This is the perfect option for those who would like to have more storage space in Google Drive not just for WhatsApp backups but also for their other files and media. Here’s how much Google One Subscription costs.
Closing Thoughts
This concludes the guide on the various options that you can choose to save your backups from WhatsApp. The change from Google Drive not counting WhatsApp backup as storage to now counting it as storage is not a big deal.
If your Google Drive is usually empty and the only thing stored on it are WhatsApp backups, then you do not have to worry about anything else. Or you can manually choose to create backups on your local storage and then upload them to any other cloud storage service that you might be using.
If you have questions or queries, feel free to leave them below.
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