How to prevent WhatsApp from saving photos from chats to your smartphone gallery

After you allow WhatsApp access to media files on your smartphone, the application will start saving all open photos and videos to the device by default. As a result, the Photos app accumulates gigabytes of junk files that have to be cleaned manually. Fortunately, this can be prevented with a couple of clicks.

How to prevent WhatsApp from saving photos and videos to your smartphone

To do this on iPhone:

1. Open WhatsApp and go to the "Settings" tab.
2. Click on the "Chats" section.
3. Move the switch next to "To Film" to the inactive position.

Done: now the received photos and videos will not be automatically downloaded to the smartphone's memory.

On Android, the process is similar - except that the transition to the settings is carried out through the icon in the form of three dots, and the desired item in the "Chats" menu is called "Media Visibility".

How to disable saving for individual chats

You can also leave this feature enabled for all chats, except those from which you regularly you get useless files (for example, memes that you can laugh at, but don’t keep on your device I want to).

To do this, on the iPhone, open the desired chat and click on the contact's name. In the menu that opens, select "To Camera Roll" and click "Never" in the list that appears.

On Android, the procedure is again similar, but the desired menu item is called “Media Visibility”.