New Delhi: According to a recently released feature leak, WhatsApp is working on a useful new feature that will allow users to monitor and manage the size of their backups. This is one of the most serious problems WhatsApp users have experienced and the workaround has been rigid, forcing users to delete messages, pictures and other important information. This is the second backup-related feature of the popular encrypted messenger under development; It has just started beta testing encrypted cloud backups for some users.

The feature leaker WABetaInfo has discovered the new WhatsApp function, which is currently being developed by Facebook’s own encrypted messaging service. In the latest beta of WhatsApp for Android (version 2.21.21.7 beta), a new feature called “Manage Backup Size” was discovered that allows users to regulate their backups uploaded to the cloud.

To understand why WhatsApp is working on this feature, keep in mind that WhatsApp backups can get incredibly large as more messages and attachments come in. Many users have accumulated many terabytes of WhatsApp backup data over the years, and some of these chats and files are uploaded to Google Drive or iCloud every night. Also read: Instagram is testing a feature that will soon warn users about in-app outages

According to a screenshot posted by WABetaInfo, a user should be able to “exclude” certain media types – such as photos, audio, videos, documents and “other media” – from the chat backup in order to reduce the size of the backup.

One of the reasons why WhatsApp is working on this feature, according to WABetaInfo, is that Google Drive’s unlimited space for WhatsApp backups may be limited in the future. WABetaInfo mentions the recent limitation on Google Photos’ unlimited free storage, but it’s worth noting that no communication has been made about it at the time of this post. Also read: Gmail suffers a massive outage in some parts of India

WhatsApp has been working on a number of privacy enhancement features lately, including the ability to hide certain aspects of one’s profile from certain contacts and end-to-end encryption for cloud backups. The latter was just included in the last beta releases while the privacy features for profiles are still in the works. It is unclear whether WhatsApp’s “Manage Backup Size” feature will be available to users in its current form or will be improved before it is rolled out by the company.

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