WhatsApp may soon cut out the middleman, as the platform is reportedly working on a native cloud storage system. This will give users more control over backups while tightening security with built-in encryption.
WhatsApp Encrypted Cloud Storage Backup at Work
As per a new report by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp is developing a feature which will allow users to opt for the platform's native first-party cloud storage solution. Currently, WhatsApp on Android uses Google Drive and iOS users rely on iCloud for storage backups.
As it is evident from the above image, in the near future, users will be able to choose WhatsApp's servers as their preferred cloud storage backup. It will offer 2 GB of free storage, with the report stating that the upcoming WhatsApp Plus subscription tier will unlock up to 50 GB of cloud backups.
The biggest USP of this change will be the mandatory end-to-end encryption for backed-up cloud chats. Currently, for chats backed up via Google Drive and iCloud, encryption is optional. However, with WhatsApp's first-party solution, users will need to enable Passkeys or use a 64-digit encryption key to access their backed-up chats.
This will greatly help WhatsApp reduce its third-party cloud storage dependency and help create its own independent system. Currently, it seems like WhatsApp cloud backups will be optional and not mandatorily enforced. However, that could change in the future.
That said, encrypted cloud storage backups on WhatsApp are currently under development with no clear idea of its beta or public release. We will know more once it moves into beta testing.
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