How To Stop WhatsApp Saving Photos (Android & iPhone)
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How To Stop WhatsApp Saving Photos, Videos & Other Media
WhatsApp allows you to stop media being automatically saved from ALL of your chats, or just specific chats. Let’s take a look at how you stop media being saved from all of your chats first.
On iOS/iPhone:
- Open WhatsApp.
- Tap Settings.
- Tap Chats.
- Toggle “Save to Camera Roll” to OFF.
On Android phones:
- Open WhatsApp.
- Tap the More Options button (the three dots)
- Tap Settings.
- Tap Chats.
- Turn off Media visibility
Pretty simple, right?
So how can you stop media being saved from just SPECIFIC chats? Simple do the following:
On iOS/iPhone:
- Open WhatsApp.
- Tap the chat you don’t want media saved from.
- In the chat window, tap the name of the person or group.
- On the Info screen that appears, tap “Save to Camera Roll, then tap on of the three options: Default (respects universal settings), Always (download all media from your chat to the camera roll), or Never (doesn’t allow any media to be automatically downloaded from this chat).
On Android phones:
- Open WhatsApp.
- Tap the chat you don’t want media saved from.
- Tap the More Options button (the three dots)
- Tap View Contact or Group info.
- Tap Media visibility and choose “No” or “OK.”
Why You Should Stop WhatsApp Saving Photos To Your Phone
WhatsApp is a pretty fantastic messaging app. It has become the preferred contact app of choice for millions, with literally over a billion people across the world using the app.
However, nothing is perfect, and WhatsApp is not without its quirks and foibles. One of the main ones which rub people the wrong way is that, by default, WhatsApp will download and store every picture, gif, audio recording, and video file sent and received within the application.
On the one hand, this is great, because it means if you want to re-send that meme from a while back, you can just dive into what the app has saved. On the other, it can be a damn nuisance because it can quickly take up a fair bit of storage space on your phone, on top of cluttering up your gallery and folders.
And if you’re using a phone with a small amount of storage, like a 16GB or less, you definitely DO NOT want WhatsApp saving hundreds of images to your phone. It will quickly eat up your storage and that will result in your phone not working optimally.
Are you using ALL of WhatsApp’s features? Check out our Guide To WhatsApp’s Best Hidden Features to see what you might be missing out on!
Interested in photo security? Be sure to check out Google Pixel’s Locked Folder feature!
