Tired of your phone’s memory getting full because of the unnecessary photos and videos that WhatsApp brings to you through overenthusiastic bearers of “Good Morning” and “How to get immune to coronavirus” forwards? You should consider turning off the auto-download option on WhatsApp. Disabling the auto-download option gives you complete control over the photos and videos you want to download on WhatsApp.
So, the next time that annoying person sends another video on WhatsApp, you can simply prevent it from getting downloaded automatically on the phone and thus save on that precious storage:
WhatsApp, in its FAQ, has noted that it is “joining other services in reducing potential mobile network congestion during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic”. To help improve these mobile network bandwidth issues, WhatsApp has disabled auto-download for documents, videos, and audio messages in select regions. If users still find photos and videos getting automatically downloaded they can follow these steps to stop it.
Here is how you can disable the auto-download from WhatsApp:
For Android users:
— Open WhatsApp > Go to Settings from three dots on right-hand side > Select Data and storage usage
— Under the Media auto-download section, there will be three options namely when using mobile data, when connected on WiFi and when on roaming.
— Uncheck all boxes for Photos, Audio, Videos and Documents.
— Click on OK
For iPhones:
iPhone users also have the option to keep their phone clutter-free from unnecessary audios, videos and GIFs. They should follow these steps:ADVERTISEMENT
Open WhatsApp > Go to Settings > Go to Data and storage usage.
Users can select the Never box for photos, videos, audio and documents and manually tap each file to download it.
Users can also set auto-download for only WiFi or Wifi and cellular internet, as per their choice.
WhatsApp also gives the option to reduce the data used in a call by following the given steps:
— Go to Settings > Data and Storage usage.
–Under the Call Settings section > Enable Low Data Usage option.
WhatsApp users can also keep track of how much storage chats are taking up. WhatsApp has an option where you can view your contacts and how much space they are taking by following these steps:
— Go to WhatsApp > Storage and data usage >Storage usage.
Users can also save on mobile data if they allow chat backup but only on WiFi:
— Open WhatsApp > Go to Settings > Go to Chats > Chat Backup > Back up over > Select WiFi only
