There is no going back: everything that your WhatsApp is downloading, and you back up to Drive as a backup, will take away space from your Google account. After breaking the agreement for unlimited copying, now There is a greater risk of filling the 15 GB that Google provides with each account. Although, as always, there are several tricks to get around this problem.
The photos from the last wedding that fill the group chat of friends, the good morning greetings that appear punctually every morning through the family conversation, the videos of funny cats, memes… This audiovisual content, which is funny during the first seconds, ends up accumulating on the phone to expand storage to the limits. And the same thing happens with the backup that WhatsApp makes frequently: all the mobile’s gigabytes end up in Google Drive. This is now a problem.
Your Google Drive is going to be filled with copies of WhatsApp
With the end of the privilege that Android maintained with the WhatsApp backup, since Google did not subtract any space from the accounts that used the service (quite the opposite of iCloud on the iPhone), users are already seeing how their Drive is filling up dangerously. Even alerts are popping up with lack of space to save Gmail emails or save copies of Google Photos, it can be a somewhat serious problem.
WhatsApp backups can take up a lot of space because automatic downloading of messages is usually active. And everything ends up in Google Drive, without it being a problem in itself: Not losing important conversations because they were backed up in the cloud is a guarantee of security. The problem is all that content that is worthless and that ends up filling a Google account until Gmail stops working, for example.
The simplest solution so that Google accounts do not fill up with WhatsApp backups would be to pay for the Google Drive service: 1.99 GB per month for the 100 GB account on Google One would be more than enough. But it is not the only way to avoid the risks of filling all the available space, I solve it in three different ways.
The first thing: that Google Drive only saves what is essential
It seems obvious, but space is not wasted just because most of us do not clean our WhatsApp of all the photos, videos and audios that we have. They don’t even deserve to open. Absurd gifs, memes, prank videos… This is a major problem in group chats where we do not control everything that ends up spilling into the conversation.
I have been restricting the download of any multimedia content on WhatsApp for years. Do I know that the photo they send me will interest me? So if I download it, the rest is pending. To configure this operation:
- Access your WhatsApp settings and go to «Storage and data».
- Go to “Download with mobile data” and uncheck all the options.
- Repeat with the rest of the sections.
From this moment WhatsApp will show the files in the chats with an arrow to download them: Only by clicking on the arrow will they be saved on the mobile. This prevents filling your phone with unwanted content and, by extension, the backup copy that is backed up to Google Drive will not fill up either.
The second: an exclusive Google Drive account for WhatsApp
If the WhatsApp account accumulates many chats, and most of them are group chats, said account has all the numbers to use up the Google account space where the backup is saved. So, to prevent applications like Gmail or Google Photos from stopping working, it is best to have an account just for the messaging app.
The previous process is to open a new Google account going to this link. My recomendation is use the main account as a recovery email, so you can restore the secondary account from the first one. Once created, you just have to change the destination of the WhatsApp backup:
- Open WhatsApp settings.
- Go to “Chats”.
- Go down to “Backup”.
- Go to “Google Account” and fill out the section with the account you created.
The space on the main Google account will no longer be filled, all WhatsApp backups will go to the parallel account.
The third: Google One with Google Opinion Rewards
Balance available on Google Play and earned from Opinion Rewards
Does the Google account continue to get cluttered with WhatsApp backups or do you simply want to continue using the main one for this purpose? Well, there is a way to have Google One for free: through Google Opinion Rewards surveys.
Google rewards give you money to spend on Google Play by dint of Respond to surveys and upload purchase receipts. You must have your Android location active for Google to save the activity and, once Rewards are registered, the application will offer different actions for which you will pay.
On average, Rewards gives more than two euros per month if all surveys and receipt plans are completed: you only need to move around commercial locations. A simple daily and weekend walk is usually enough. As it is not something fixed, it could happen that one month there would be a drought of activity in Rewars, this must be taken into account.
To redeem money for an extension of space for your Google account, do the following:
- Download the Opinion Rewards app and make sure you have at least two euros worth of surveys completed before moving on to the next step.
- Download the Google One app.
- Open Google One and select the Basic plan, the 100 GB plan. It costs 1.99 euros per month and you will have more than enough space for your WhatsApp backup.
- Accept the terms of service. Then a floating window will appear with the selection of the payment method. Click there.
- Choose “Google Play Balance» and pay with what you have earned from Google Rewards.
From our experience, and as long as the activity outside the home is common (going from home to work, going shopping, leisure…), Rewards should give more than the two euros per month that the cheapest Google One subscription costs, enough to cover WhatsApp. And you’ll have enough to back up all your images with Google Photos to the cloud.
In Voonze | I have set up my own Google Photos, I am no longer worried about running out of space
