WhatsApp is using your phone’s memory? Here’s how to fix it

WhatsApp is the the world’s most popular end-to-end encrypted messaging app. But if other people can’t spy on what you say, it doesn’t mean that other WhatsApp data is not being processed.

By far the most important data hogging element of WhatsApp is the pile of photos, videos, and gifs that can quickly clog your phone’s storage. Besides filling your phone memory, photos saved to your camera roll can be a privacy nightmare. If you’re scrolling through photos with friends or family, no one wants it punctuated by something inappropriate that happened through WhatsApp.

WhatsApp automatically downloads new photos and videos sent to you. These are stored on your phone, but can also be saved to your Camera Roll. An updated version of WhatsApp now gives you more control over the media stored on your phone.

Erase everything

First of all, you want to start with a cleanup. Some of your oldest and most active WhatsApp chats are probably taking up a significant portion of your device’s storage. WhatsApp has introduced new storage management tools to help you take back control. Managing storage might not be the most glamorous task out there, but it could help boost your phone’s performance pretty quickly.

In WhatsApp, go to Settings (found in the menu represented by three dots at the top right of WhatsApp), then Storage and data, and finally Manage storage space. This page displays a list of your conversations and the amount of storage used by each. Tap on a person or group and you will see how many messages, contacts, photos, locations, gifs, videos, documents and audio messages are stored. You can “free up space” by selecting the option on the screen and deciding which categories of data to remove from the chat.

While this method can help crush some of the biggest storage culprits, it’s a pretty blunt tool. Deleting all of a cat’s photos may lose some of the images you want to keep. WhatsApp’s latest storage tool, which rolls out to everyone at the start of November, is designed to give people more granular control.

It has redesigned the Manage Storage page to show how much your phone is being consumed by data stored in WhatsApp. it also highlights photos and videos that have been transmitted to you multiple times and the largest files on your device. The two new sections –Transferred several times and More than 5 MB: Accessible in a gallery view where you can delete files in batches. Tap on all the files you want to get rid of and tap on the delete icon. There is also the option to select everything and instantly move them to the trash.

Stop saving WhatsApp photos to your phone

By default, on Android and iOS, WhatsApp will automatically download and save the images to your phone. The platform does this so that it can provide “quick access to your latest photos”. But it can be overwhelming, especially when you don’t want memes or other internet content clogging your phone’s camera roll.

These settings can be changed. Head toward Settings, then Cats. On Android devices, deactivation Media visibility will prevent recently downloaded photos and videos from appearing in your phone gallery. On iOS via the same chat menu, by selecting the Save to film The option will allow you to turn it off.

Stop automatic downloads

Now that the images and videos aren’t showing up in your Camera Roll, there’s another way to limit what happens to the media you receive. You can control whether they are automatically downloaded to your phone or whether you want to manually download the files when you are ready to open them.