Back in April, we learned that WhatsApp was developing a feature that would let its Android users back up their WhatsApp chats on its own encrypted cloud storage. Now we hear that the Meta-owned company is testing this feature on iOS as well.
This revelation comes from the folks at WABetaInfo, who discovered this development on beta version 26.28.10.16 of WhatsApp for iOS.
Right now, Android users can back up their chats to Google Drive, while iOS users can back up theirs to iCloud. This new feature allows Android and iOS users to choose between Google Drive/iCloud and WhatsApp’s cloud storage solution, which offers 2GB of free storage.
However, WhatsApp is also considering offering paid storage options, with a 50GB cloud storage plan reportedly priced at $0.99/month.
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. But it’s worth mentioning that chats backed up to WhatsApp’s cloud storage will be end-to-end encrypted by default, and the only way to turn off encryption would be to switch back to Google Drive (on Android) or iCloud (on iOS), as encryption is optional right now for these cloud storage solutions.
WhatsApp is still working on its encrypted cloud storage feature for Android and iOS, and it’s unclear when exactly it will be released publicly. But once its development is near completion, you can expect it to be available on the beta channel for beta users before rolling out to everyone.
