Currently, WhatsApp on Android offers free Google Drive cloud backup. No matter how big your WhatsApp backup is, the backup size doesn't count against the free 15GB Drive storage that Google provides to all accounts. However, that might be about to change.

According to new findings from reliable WhatsApp tipster WABetaInfo, WhatsApp cloud backup could soon start counting cloud backup storage size against the free Google Drive storage. The publication has shared a number of strings of code that specifically point to Google Drive limits that could be set in an upcoming WhatsApp app update.

Source: WABetaInfo

The report cites that WhatsApp was working on a feature that would allow users to manage their cloud backup size and let them decide which parts of their WhatsApp chat (media, messages, documents, or all) they want to be uploaded to the cloud. It seems that the feature is to allow users to lower their backup size so that they can shred it before they upload it to Google Drive and fill all their free storage.

Some of the strings suggest how the app will display the alerts, such as "Google Drive backup changing" to alert users that Google Drive backup is going to change in the future, "Google Drive almost full" to notify when the free storage is about to be filled, "Google Drive limit reached" to notify when the limit has been reached. The free storage could be capped at 2GB, but it is only speculation for now. After the limit has been reached, you'll still be able to upload WhatsApp cloud backup, but Google might count it against the free 15GB storage.

Not a lot of details are available just yet but we expect them to be available in the upcoming days/weeks. Though it's not surprising that Google is going to limit the size of free WhatsApp cloud backups. Last year, the company stopped offering unlimited Google Photos backups so this might be another push for paid Google One storage plans.

Source: WABetaInfo