WhatsApp is building its own cloud for backups, and iPhone users are next - Tech-ish

This story has significance for readers across Kenya and beyond.

WhatsApp is testing a way to store your chat backups on its own servers instead of Apple’s or Google’s. The latest sign came this week from WABetaInfo, the site that digs through unreleased WhatsApp code, which found the feature under development in the WhatsApp beta for iOS build 26.28.10.16 distributed through TestFlight. Backups saved to WhatsApp’s own cloud would be end-to-end encrypted by default, with no option to turn that off.

The same feature was spotted on Android back in April. What is new is that WhatsApp is now building it for the iPhone too, which suggests Meta wants both platforms ready before it ships anything publicly.

Nothing here is live yet. The feature is not even in beta testing, and WhatsApp has not announced a timeline.

How WhatsApp backups work today

If you use WhatsApp on an iPhone, your chat backup is stored in iCloud. If you use Android, it goes to Google Drive. You have never had a third option.

That matters because those lockers are shared. Apple gives every Apple Account 5GB of iCloud storage for free, and that 5GB has to cover your photos, your device backup, your documents and your WhatsApp history. Google gives you 15GB, shared across Drive, Gmail and Google Photos. WhatsApp backups on Android also stopped being free in 2024, when Google began counting them against your account quota as they always had on iPhone.

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So a heavy WhatsApp user, meaning most Kenyans, ends up in a familiar squeeze. Years of voice notes, family group photos, work PDFs and forwarded videos fill up the free tier, backups quietly stop, and you either delete things or start paying Apple or Google every month.

What WhatsApp wants to change

Under the new system, chat backup settings would let you pick your backup provider. iCloud stays the default on iPhone, so anyone who does nothing keeps the current setup. Choose WhatsApp instead, and your chat history sits on WhatsApp’s servers rather than in your iCloud locker. You can switch back at any time.

WhatsApp would give 2GB free to start. Beyond that, WABetaInfo says two paid tiers are being explored: 50GB for roughly $0.99 a month (about KES 128), and a 1TB plan for people with very large histories. Those prices and sizes are preliminary and can change before launch. The 50GB figure is a direct shot at Apple, because $0.99 is exactly what Apple charges for its entry-level iCloud+ upgrade. In Kenya, Apple bills iCloud+ in US dollars, so a 50GB plan is $0.99 and 200GB is $3.49, per Apple’s own pricing page.

There is also an unconfirmed possibility that matters more than the storage maths. If WhatsApp controls the backup infrastructure on both platforms, restoring an iPhone backup onto an Android phone becomes technically possible for the first time. WABetaInfo flags this as a maybe, not a promise. Treat it that way until Meta says otherwise.

The encryption part is the real shift

WhatsApp messages in transit have been end-to-end encrypted since 2016. Backups were not. In 2021 WhatsApp added end-to-end encrypted backups, but as an opt-in feature you had to find in settings and secure with a password or a 64-digit key. Most people never turned it on. Last October, WhatsApp made it easier by adding passkey-encrypted backups, so a fingerprint, face scan or screen lock can unlock the backup instead of a long key.

On WhatsApp’s own cloud, encryption would not be a toggle. It would be mandatory. Passkeys are the recommended method, with a password or the 64-digit key as alternatives. Nobody, including WhatsApp and Meta, would be able to read the contents.

That cuts both ways. Your backup becomes unreadable to anyone who compromises your Apple or Google account. It also becomes unreadable to you if you lose the passkey and the recovery options. There is no support desk that can restore a backup nobody can decrypt.

It is also worth saying plainly where this sits in Meta’s recent record. In May, Meta removed the option to send end-to-end encrypted DMs on Instagram entirely, telling users to use WhatsApp if they want encryption. Making encryption compulsory on WhatsApp backups is consistent with that split: WhatsApp is where Meta puts the privacy, and it is also where Meta is now building a business.

Why this lands differently in Kenya

Kenya is one of WhatsApp’s deepest markets anywhere, and the app is where a lot of the country’s commerce, chamas and coordination actually happens. It is also overwhelmingly an Android country. StatCounter put iOS at 6.6% of Kenyan mobile web traffic in May 2026, with Android at 92.58%. The iOS build is the headline, but the version that will affect most Kenyans is the Android one.

The other thing worth watching is the money. WhatsApp is no longer a free-standing free app. Meta launched WhatsApp Plus at $2.99 a month, about KES 387, in May, and it rolled out ads inside Status and Channels in Kenya in April. Paid cloud storage would be a third revenue line. WABetaInfo has not confirmed whether the 2GB free tier will be open to everyone or bundled with WhatsApp Plus, and that single detail decides whether this is a genuine free alternative to iCloud or a paywall in a new shirt.

Signal has already walked this path. It launched its own encrypted backups in September 2025 with a free tier and a $1.99 a month plan for 100GB, roughly KES 257, and said plainly that storage costs money and somebody has to pay for it. WhatsApp, with more than three billion users, faces the same arithmetic at a much larger scale.

What to do now

Nothing, because there is nothing to switch on. But two things are worth doing regardless of what Meta ships.

Check whether your WhatsApp backup is actually running, and whether end-to-end encryption is enabled, under Settings > Chats > Chat Backup. And if you use encryption, make sure you can still recover the passkey, password or key. As we saw with the Pixel bootloop failures last month, a backup you cannot restore is not a backup.

We will update this story when WhatsApp moves the feature into beta or confirms pricing.

Reporting originally appeared via Tech-ish Kenya. Read the full source for additional context.