The popular Messaging System WhatsApp may be cluttering your phone with images. However, you can easily stop WhatsApp from saving Photos to your Phone using steps provided below.
Stop WhatsApp From Saving Photos to Your Phone
Apart from cluttering your phone with memory hogging pictures and videos, WhatsApp auto-download feature eats up your Cellular data and can potentially create an embarrassing situation for you, in case WhatsApp ends up saving improper photos on your iPhone or Android Phone.
Luckily, it is quite simple to stop WhatsApp from automatically downloading photos to your iPhone and Android Phone.
Completely Stop WhatsApp From Saving Photos to iPhone
Follow the steps below to disable WhatsApp from downloading Photos, Videos and Audio files to your iPhone.
1. From the home screen of your iPhone, tap on Settings
2. Scroll down and tap on WhatsApp.
3. On the next screen, toggle OFF WhatsApp from accessing your Photos.
This setting will completely disable WhatsApp from accessing your Photos. Whenever any of your WhatsApp contact sends you a message with a Photo, the media file will not be downloaded automatically to your iPhone.
You will still be able to view photos in your WhatsApp account, but the photos will never be downloaded or saved on the Photo Gallery of your iPhone.
Stop WhatsApp From Automatically Saving Photos to iPhone
Here is another way of stopping WhatsApp from automatically saving Photos to your iPhone. The difference with this method is that it allows you to download photos manually by tapping on the Photos attached to your WhatsApp Messages.
1. Tap on WhatsApp icon on your iPhone to launch WhatsApp messaging system.
2. Next, tap on the Settings icon from the bottom of your screen
3. Tap on Chats
4. On the next screen, toggle OFF the switch for Save Incoming Media.
As mentioned above, disabling Photos with this method stops Photos from automatically downloading to your device. However, the images will still be downloaded and saved to your iPhone when you manually tap on the photos received via a WhatsApp message.
Note: You should use the first method in case you just want to view WhatsApp Photos, but never allow them to be saved to your iPhone.
Stop WhatsApp From Saving Photos to Android Phone
Follow the steps below to stop WhatsApp from automatically downloading and saving photos to your Android phone.
1. Tap on WhatsApp icon to launch the popular messaging system on your Android phone
2. Make sure that you are on the main Chats screen (you can also do this from Calls screen).
3. Now, tap on the 3-dot menu icon located at the top right corner of your screen.
4. From the menu, tap on Settings.
5. On the next screen, tap on Data Usage
6. On the Data Usage Screen, you will see three options for Media Auto-download: “When using mobile data”, “When connected on Wi-Fi” and “When roaming”
7. Tap on each of these three options and deselect the type of media file (Photo, Video, Audio) that you want to stop from being downloaded and saved to your Android Phone.
8. Tap on OK to save this setting.
From now on, Photos and Video attached to a Whatsapp message will not be automatically downloaded to your Android phone.
You will see the images on WhatsApp messages appearing with a download arrow and they will be downloaded to your Android Phone only when you tap on the images.
Note: In case you want to keep the Media Auto-download feature Enabled, you need to be aware that keeping this option enabled for “When using Mobile Data” and “When Roaming” can lead to excessive charges as your Phone will be using your mobile data for downloading WhatsApp images.