Depending on how you set things up, WhatsApp can either back up your data daily, weekly, monthly, never or when you tap “Backup.” When you do back up your chats, they are backed up to Google Drive, but what if you don’t trust Google Drive? Here’s a quick hack to easily back up your WhatsApp content to your Dropbox account.
How to Back Up Your WhatsApp Data to Dropbox
Other than WhatsApp, we will also need another app called FolderSync Lite. Once you install the app, you’ll need to give the app access to your photos, media, and files. At the Apps main page, tap on the hamburger icon at the top left and choose Accounts. Tap on the green button and select the Dropbox option.
The app will encourage you to give your account a unique name. Once you’ve done that, tap on “Authentication Account,” and sign into your Dropbox account. After the login has been successful, don’t forget to tap on “Save” at the bottom right.
Tap on the hamburger menu again and choose Folderpairs. Select the green button one more time and add another unique name. Select the Remote folder and choose the Dropbox folder you want to save your WhatsApp data that will be transferred to. Don’t forget to tap on the green button at the bottom. The folder you choose should now appear right below the Remote folder option.
Select the “Local folder” option and scroll down until you see the WhatsApp folder. Tap on it and decide if you want to back up all the folders or only a particular one.
For example, let’s say you want to back up all the folders that were in the WhatsApp folder. Once you’ve accessed it, don’t go into any of the ones you see, just tap on the green button on the bottom right. One very important thing to keep in mind is to make sure that the Sync type is set to Remote Folder. That way the files are sent to your Dropbox account. If you don’t set this up, the files won’t be transferred.
Useful Sync Options
After you’ve set up the Local and Remote folder, you can give the sync process your own personal touch. Scroll down to Scheduling so you can decide when you want the sync intervals to take place. You can also choose if you want the sync process to be done over WiFi, to use 4G/3G/2G, show notifications on Sync success and failure, and more. Once you’ve chosen the options you want, tap on the “Save” option at the bottom right, and then tap on the Sync option. You should start seeing your WhatsApp files in the Dropbox folder you chose.
Conclusion
It’s not fair that Google Drive is the only place WhatsApp lets you back up your data to. You should be able to choose between various cloud services and not just one. What other option do you think users should have when it comes to backing up their data? Drop a comment below.
