Google Photos will not back up WhatsApp and Instagram images anymore

The company revealed (via Android Police) that Google Photos would no longer back up photos from WhatsApp, Twitter, Instagram, and other messaging and social networking services.

Google is doing it to save resources, as “people are sharing more photos and videos” during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a community message. The change tends to be temporary, and you can re-enable backups manually for any service you want.

Most people may not even be aware that this is being done by Google and, of course, photos are usually kept before you remove them from your messaging app. Google Photos may have been consuming a decent amount of your bandwidth behind the scenes, with many people still in lockdown sharing photographs and videos.

Other services like YouTube and Netflix made moves to reduce the Pandemic bandwidth burden many months ago.