The ability to back up your WhatsApp chats to the cloud has been around for about a decade now. Android users can back up their chats on Google Drive, while iPhone users can back up their chats on iCloud. But WhatsApp could offer you the option to back up your chats to its own cloud storage in the future.
According to a report by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is developing a feature that will let users back up their WhatsApp chats on its own cloud storage, which will be encrypted.
The image below shows that Android users will have two options for cloud backup of their chats – Google Drive and WhatsApp’s own cloud storage, which offers 2GB of free storage.
WhatsApp users backing up their chats on WhatsApp’s encrypted cloud storage will have the option to secure their backup with a passkey, a password, or a 64-digit encryption key. While enabling encryption for backing up WhatsApp data to Google Drive or iCloud is optional right now, WABetaInfo reports that “if users choose to upload their backups to WhatsApp’s servers, encryption will be mandatory for all stored data.”
Additionally, WABetaInfo claims that WhatsApp plans to offer a 50GB cloud storage plan priced at around $0.99. That’s likely the monthly charge, but it could be useful, as 2GB of storage may not be enough for many users.
WhatsApp is still working on its encrypted cloud storage feature, and it’s unclear when exactly it will be available publicly to all users. But once its development is near completion, you can expect it to be available on the beta channel for beta users.