If you are an iPhone user, you know how quickly your iCloud storage space can vanish, especially if you regularly update your phone’s data on the cloud. From photos and videos to documents and other essential files, the space can fill up real fast. What eats up more space than apps like Gmail, Instagram and Notes combined for a lot of users is WhatsApp. So, to ease off some of that storage load, WhatsApp is reportedly working on a new feature that will give iPhone users an alternative to store all their data without using their precious iCloud storage space.
What’s WhatsApp working on?
According to a report by WABetaInfo, the Meta-owned app is working on a new feature for iPhone users that will let them store all of their WhatsApp chat data on the company’s own cloud. This includes photos, documents and chat backup. The company will reportedly offer iPhone users 2GB of its own cloud storage space to store their chat data. Once this storage space gets exhausted, the company plans to offer additional storage in the form of paid storage. The report says that WhatsApp is working on several storage tiers, starting at 50GB for $0.99 ( ₹95.27 approximately). The company could offer higher storage tiers, including a 1TB tier, as well, but details around those remain scarce at the moment. Apple, on the other hand, offers 5GB of iCloud storage space free to iPhone users, beyond which they need to pay for more storage.
That said, iCloud is expected to remain the default option for iPhone users and the users who want to switch to WhatsApp’s storage will have to specially opt into the features. Furthermore, iPhone users who opt for WhatsApp’s storage space will be able to switch back to iCloud storage at any time.
As far as encryption is concerned, the report says that WhatsApp will offer end-to-end encryption as a default option to those who opt to store their chat backup on its cloud and that there is no way to turn this feature off. Apple’s iCloud, on the other hand, offers this feature as an optional one, which means users need to turn it on manually.
It is worth mentioning that WhatsApp, an older report by WABetaInfo mentions that the company is working on a similar feature for Android phones as well. When this feature is made available, users will be able to use WhatsApp’s own storage space instead of Google Drive for storing their chat backups.
When will WhatsApp’s new feature be available?
The report says that this feature is still in development and that it has just been spotted on TestFlight. TestFlight is Apple’s beta testing platform, wherein developers can safely testing their new products and features on various Apple OSes before publishing them on the App Store and making them available to the end users. There is no word on when it will be rolled out to users globally.
