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Business News/ Technology / App News/  WhatsApp might soon stop backing up your status updates. Here’s why

WhatsApp might soon stop backing up your status updates. Here’s why

Danny Cyril D Cruze

  • WhatsApp is planning to introduce the change due to storage restrictions caused by back-ups

FILE PHOTO: A 3D printed Whatsapp logo is placed on a computer motherboard

WhatsApp stores back-ups for users in Google Drive as well as on the device’s local storage. So far, the company does save back-ups of the status updates locally or on Google Drive. However, the instant messaging platform recently rolled out a beta update which stopped back-up for status updates.

According to a report by WABetaInfo, a website that tracks new features on the platform's beta versions, WhatsApp's latest Android beta version 2.21.13.6 does not upload backups of status updates.

Also Read: WhatsApp new feature: Voice messages can be played faster. Here's how

According to the report, WhatsApp is planning to introduce the change due to storage restrictions caused by back-ups, mostly on local devices of users. Google Drive provides unlimited storage for WhatsApp back-ups.

As few users tend to post a lot of videos as status updates, this increases the size of the back-ups substantially. Providing the option to stop updating back-ups will help users save a substantial amount of data.

The instant messaging platform has already started excluding status updates from back-ups on Apple iOS devices in order to save space in the iCloud.

WhatsApp also officially dropped a lot of information about the high-in-demand features such as multiple-device support, a disappearing mode, and a dedicated version of the app for Apple iPad.

The multiple device support will introduce support to use four separate devices without the need for the primary device to be connected to the internet or even to be switched on. Currently, users can only use WhatsApp Web on a separate device, and the primary device needs to stay connected to the internet at all times.

WhatsApp will also be introducing a new disappearing mode as well. When the mode will be turned on, all messages being sent will disappear within a stipulated period. Currently, users need to activate disappearing mode within individual chats. Additionally, WhatsApp will also borrow a feature similar to whats found on Snapchat; 'View Once' feature. As the name suggests, such messages or media will only be able to be viewed once.

The above-mentioned features were confirmed by Facebook Chief Mark Zukerberg and WhatsApp CEO, Will Cathcart. The features are expected to be released in the coming months.

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