You have just installed WhatsApp on a secondary smartphone, which you would like to keep as confidential as possible and, in this regard, you would like to deactivate the backup function included in the application, in order to prevent your storages from being uploaded to remote servers. I understand your reasons, however, let me tell you: did you think about it before carrying out an operation of this kind?
If you turn off the WhatsApp backup , you will lose the only way you have to restore your chats if you reinstall the app, format your smartphone or switch to another phone. You will, therefore, be forced to give up all the conversations you have made on the platform, the photos and videos you have received from your friends and so on. Are you well aware of all this and are you still convinced of your intentions? Perfect, then let me help you achieve your goal.
Below you will find explained how to disable the automatic backup of WhatsApp on all major mobile platforms. Furthermore, if needed, I will show you the procedure to follow to delete any WhatsApp backups already present on the Google and Apple servers (where the WhatsApp backups on Android and iPhone end, respectively). You just have to carve out five minutes of time and follow the directions I am about to give you. Happy reading and, above all, good luck for the fate of your communications on WhatsApp!
Index
- How to disable WhatsApp backup on Android
- Disable WhatsApp Google Drive backup
- Disable local WhatsApp backup
- Delete Android WhatsApp backup
- How to disable WhatsApp backup on iPhone
- Disable WhatsApp iCloud backup
- Disable local WhatsApp backup
- Delete iPhone WhatsApp backup
- How to disable WhatsApp backup on PC
How to disable WhatsApp backup on Android
Let’s start this guide by discussing how to disable WhatsApp backup in particular on Android smartphones . Below you will therefore find explained how to proceed with regard to backups on Google Drive, locally and how to delete those already present.
Disable WhatsApp Google Drive backup
If you want to find out how to disable WhatsApp backup on Google Drive , the cloud service where WhatsApp data is saved on Android, open the official WhatsApp application , go to the Chat tab , press the ⋮ button located at the top right and select the Settings item from the menu that opens.
Now, go to Chat> Chat Backup , tap on the Backup to Google Drive item, put the check mark next to the Never item and the game should be done. The procedure also applies to WhatsApp Business , the version of WhatsApp intended for commercial activities.
To make sure that WhatsApp no longer accesses your Google Drive account (the cloud service that is used for Android online backups), connect to this web page , log in to your Google account (if necessary) and search for WhatsApp in the list of applications that have access to it.
At this point, click on the WhatsApp Messenger icon , press the REMOVE ACCESS button and confirm, by answering OK to the warning that appears on the screen.
Disable local WhatsApp backup
In addition to Google Drive, the Android version of WhatsApp also makes backups locally , therefore on the memory of the smartphone or tablet in use. This means that, even if you disable the automatic execution of backups to the cloud, the application could create backup copies of the conversations. In that case there is no way to disable local WhatsApp backups.
To delete WhatsApp backups generated locally by the application and old backups saved on Google Drive, refer to the instructions in the next chapter of this tutorial .
Delete Android WhatsApp backup
If before disabling automatic WhatsApp backups you had already created some backup copies of your chats on Google Drive, you can get rid of them quite easily.
First, start the Google Drive application on your smartphone or tablet by recalling it from the home screen or from the drawer (if you can’t find it, download it for free from the Play Store ), press the ☰ button located at the top left and select the Backup item .
On the next screen, locate the items relating to WhatsApp backups (eg WhatsApp Backup [numbers] ), press the ⋮ key corresponding to the latter, select the Delete backup item from the menu that opens and confirm by pressing the Delete button that appears on the screen.
As already mentioned in the previous chapter of this tutorial , WhatsApp for Android also makes local backups, which are saved on the memory of the smartphone or tablet in use. If you want to delete those too, you need to use a file manager capable of giving you free access to the folders of your device. Personally, I recommend Google Files , which you can download by following the normal app download procedure on Android .
Once installation is complete, allow the app to access the memory of your device and / or the SD card and select the drive where the WhatsApp data is located: internal memory if you do not use the SD card as main memory or SD card name if you have expanded the memory of your smartphone or tablet by setting an SD card as the main storage unit.
At this point, go to the WhatsApp> Databases path and delete all the files you find inside it: msgstore.db.crypt14 is the most recent backup generated by the application, while the files named msgstore- [data ] refer to older backups.
Once you have identified the backup to be deleted, make a long tap on it, select the trash can icon and confirm, responding in the affirmative to the warning that appears on the screen.
How to disable WhatsApp backup on iPhone
Disabling WhatsApp backup on iPhone is an extremely simple operation. In the next paragraphs you will find the steps to follow explained in detail.
Disable WhatsApp iCloud backup
If you use an iPhone , you can turn off WhatsApp backup very quickly. All you have to do is start the official WhatsApp application on your “iPhone by”, select the Settings tab located at the bottom right and go to Chat> Chat Backup .
At this point, tap on the item Automatic backup , put the check mark next to the item No and that’s it: from this moment on, WhatsApp will no longer save a safety copy of your conversations, neither on the cloud nor on the memory internal device.
Once the WhatsApp backup is disabled, I also recommend that you block the application from accessing iCloud Drive. To do this, go to the iOS Settings menu (the gear icon located on the Home screen), select your name from the screen that opens, go to iCloud , press on Show all and move to OFF the lever related to WhatsApp .
Disable local WhatsApp backup
As I mentioned earlier, WhatsApp in its version for iOS does not make local backups, which are therefore saved in the iPhone memory.
What you can do at most is to make a complete backup of your phone via iTunes (on Windows) or Finder (on macOS), which also contains information relating to WhatsApp (therefore single chats, group chats and so on).
In this case, therefore, there is nothing that you need to deactivate and, at most, you can proceed by deleting the backups made via iTunes / Finder as you find explained in the next paragraph .
Delete iPhone WhatsApp backup
Now let’s see how to delete WhatsApp backups already present on iCloud , Apple’s cloud storage service. The procedure to follow is extremely simple and can be completed directly from the iPhone. How? I’ll explain it to you right away.
First, launch the iOS Settings app (the gear icon located on the Home screen) and select your name from the screen that opens. Next, go to iCloud> Manage space and wait for the list of all the applications that save their data to iCloud Drive to be shown. At this point, select WhatsApp Messenger , tap on Delete data and confirm, by responding Delete to the warning that appears on the screen.
Do you prefer to act as a computer? In this case, you can use the iCloud client for Windows (which I told you about in depth in my tutorial on how iCloud works ) or, if you have a Mac , the iCloud management panel , which you can find in System Preferences (l gear icon found in the Dock bar).
Regardless of the operating system used, once you open the iCloud management panel, you have to click on the Manage button which is next to the graph with the space currently occupied on the service.
Wait, therefore, for the list of all applications that save data on iCloud Drive to be loaded, select WhatsApp Messenger from the left sidebar and click first on the item Delete documents and data / Delete all files and then on Delete , to give confirmation.
As for the full backups made via iTunes or Finder, which therefore also save a copy of WhatsApp locally on the PC, you can proceed to delete them by connecting iPhone to the PC, starting iTunes / Finder and identifying the section relating to backups in the Application Summary / General tab . At this point you just need to press on the item Backup restore / Manage backup and locate the backup (s) to delete. Then click with the right mouse button and proceed with the elimination using the appropriate option.
How to disable WhatsApp backup on PC
As you surely know – and as I also explained to you in my tutorial on how to use WhatsApp on PC – it is possible to access WhatsApp from a computer using the WhatsApp Web online service or the official WhatsApp client for Windows or macOS , however these are simple “Repetitions” of the WhatsApp app installed on the smartphone (or tablet).
In a nutshell, this means that there is no specific backup of the WhatsApp application for the computer : the chats are always backed up on Android or iOS. Even if you use WhatsApp mainly on your computer, therefore, you must disable the backup function on your smartphone (or tablet) by following the instructions I gave you in the previous chapters of this guide.