WhatsApp has become one of the most popular messaging apps, with over 2 billion users worldwide. One of the key features that makes WhatsApp so useful is its backup function, which saves your messages, media, and settings to the cloud or your device’s storage. But does WhatsApp really back up everything every time?
What gets backed up in WhatsApp
When you enable WhatsApp backups, here are the key items that get saved:
- Messages – All your text messages, including your chat history.
- Media – Photos, videos, voice messages, GIFs, documents etc. that you have sent or received.
- Contacts – Your WhatsApp contacts list.
- Call history – Records of your incoming and outgoing WhatsApp calls.
- Settings – Your WhatsApp settings and preferences.
So in short, enabling WhatsApp backup saves almost everything from your account, including all messages, media, contacts and call logs. This allows you to restore your account seamlessly if you ever switch devices or lose your phone.
Backup frequency and limitations
Now coming to the key question – does WhatsApp really back up everything, every single time? The answer is no, there are some limitations to the frequency and extent of backups.
WhatsApp backups do NOT occur continuously or in real-time. Backups only happen periodically – once daily for Android users and once weekly for iOS users. So any new messages or media sent or received after the last backup will NOT be saved until the next scheduled backup.
This means you can potentially lose recent WhatsApp data if you switch devices or uninstall the app before the next backup occurs. The daily or weekly cadence of backups provides a snapshot of your account, but does not guarantee every single update is captured.
In addition, WhatsApp does cap the size of backups, especially for non-paid Google Drive accounts. This means very old media or messages may get deleted from backups over time. So years-old chat history or media may not get retained in backups.
Backup size limitations
| Platform | Free Backup Limit | Paid Backup Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Android – Google Drive | Up to 25MB | Unlimited |
| iPhone – iCloud | Unlimited | Unlimited |
As the table shows, free Google Drive accounts have a 25MB limit for WhatsApp backups for Android. So if your backup size exceeds this, older backups will continuously get deleted. You need a paid Google One subscription to get unlimited backup size.
For iPhones, even free iCloud accounts support unlimited WhatsApp backup size. So iOS users generally do not need to worry about hitting any size restrictions.
Media and call history limits
While messages and contacts get fully backed up everytime, there are stricter limits on media and call history:
- Media – Only latest media from the last 30 days is backed up. Older media is deleted from backups.
- Call history – Only last 100 call records are backed up. Old call logs get regularly erased.
This means very old media files or call history details may not restore properly when you recover your WhatsApp account from a backup. The backup retains only the latest snapshots as per the limits mentioned.
Backup exclusions
There are also a few items that WhatsApp backups explicitly exclude:
- Deleted messages – Messages you delete are not backed up.
- 3rd party app data – Data from 3rd party apps using WhatsApp Business API is not backed up.
- Linked devices – Linked devices like WhatsApp Web are not backed up.
So if you delete a message or link a device, it will NOT be restored when you recover from a backup. The backups only contain active data from your account.
How to verify backup contents
To view what exactly is contained in your latest WhatsApp backup:
- On Android – Go to WhatsApp > Settings > Chats > Chat Backup to see date of last backup and size.
- On iPhone – Go to Settings > [your name] > iCloud > Manage Storage > Backups to see WhatsApp backup size and date.
This will confirm what is being backed up and the frequency of backups occuring. You can also manually trigger backups anytime from WhatsApp Settings.
Conclusion
To summarize, WhatsApp does NOT back up every single update in your account. Backups occur only once daily or weekly, containing a snapshot of your latest messages, media, contacts and settings.
There are limitations on backup size, media retention period, and call history records. Very old content or deleted items also get excluded from backups. So you may lose some recent data or history when restoring from a backup.
However, WhatsApp backups do capture the core essentials – your chats, contacts, preferences etc. – on a regular basis. This allows you to easily migrate your account across devices or platforms when needed. Just be aware it is not an exact continuous copy of your live WhatsApp activity.