How to prevent WhatsApp from filling your mobile gallery with irrelevant images and videos

Storage space has always been a problem in mobile phones, despite the increase in capacity over the years. One of the reasons why it sells out easily is the most used messaging app in the world, WhatsApp. The application of Goal has been facilitating communication between users for 15 years, among other ways, allowing share messages, photos, videos and other multimedia files, currently with a maximum size limit of 2 GB. However, a drawback that many encounter is How WhatsApp integrates this function with the mobile operating system.

Every time you receive an image, video or document through WhatsApp, This is automatically downloaded and displayed in the corresponding folder in the gallery of your device. This usually results in an accumulation of unwanted, duplicate or irrelevant filesmaking it difficult to find important files among the clutter.

The idiosyncrasies of the app itself do not help. The sending of memes and other files With no greater purpose than communicating something at a given moment, it is an everyday occurrence and contributes to WhatsApp becoming a problem for mobile storage space.

To avoid this, a user can disable automatic file upload, something we explain how to do here. In this way, for one to be downloaded to your device you must press it first. This alleviates, but does not solve the problem that any file that we have browsed automatically goes to the gallery.

WhatsApp has a solution for this problem, but that It is only available on Android, not so in the iOS version. The application allows you to disable this operation and so that the files do not end up in the gallery. This does not mean that they are not stored, but they will be available only on WhatsAppin the chats they are part of, and the mobile gallery It will not have content that, because you have seen it once, you have to save there.

To prevent files received by WhatsApp from appearing in your gallery, follow these steps:

  • Opens WhatsApp and tap on the icon 3 vertical points.
  • Choose Settings and then Chats.
  • Disable the option Media file visibility.

Please note that changing this setting only affects new media files that are downloaded after you turn the feature on or off, and does not apply to older files. If you prefer, you can also disable this option in specific chats and not for the entire application:

  • Open a chat individual or group.
  • Tap the icon 3 vertical points.
  • Choose View contact either Group info. An alternative route is to tap the contact name or group subject.
  • Click on Media file visibilityafter in No and in okay.