WhatsApp with a big change. You have 30 days to prepare for it
At the beginning of 2024, WhatsApp is introducing a change that every messenger user who backups data to Google Drive should be prepared for.
All you need is an internet connection to be able to make normal phone calls via WhatsApp – both voice and video – locally and internationally. This messenger is a great alternative to expensive conversations with people outside the European Union, regardless of whether they are in the United States or even countries in Asia. This includes: This is why WhatsApp is loved by millions of users around the world, including in Poland.
The first change in WhatsApp in 2024
We didn’t have to wait long for the first significant change in WhatsApp in 2024. Starting from January 1, you must prepare a place in your Google Drive for a backup copy of your messenger data. Of course, provided that you use Google cloud backup at all.
This is important because in the case of the basic version of a Google account, each user has only 15 GB of free cloud space at their disposal. I wrote “only” because this package also includes data from other popular Google services such as Gmail, Photos, Docs, etc.
The change is that until now, the WhatsApp backup on Google Drive was not included in the 15 GB pool and functioned outside of it. From now on, however, data from the messenger will subtract valuable space from the free Google account package.
30 days to make space for your WhatsApp data
Starting from January 1, you have exactly 30 days to prepare free space in your Google Drive for a WhatsApp backup. If you use the messenger occasionally and don’t have many conversations started, your requirement will probably be a relatively small number of megabytes. In extreme cases, when conversations are accompanied by the exchange of multimedia, such as videos, photos or voice recordings, this may even be gigabytes of space necessary to be freed.
What should people do if they don’t have enough free space in their Google Drive to store a WhatsApp backup there? In their case, the only option is to purchase a package of additional 100 GB of cloud storage, which involves a monthly fee of PLN 8.99.
