Who does not use WhatsApp today? With its 900 million active users, we can safely say that WhatsApp is one of the most popular instant messaging applications in the world, used to exchange messages, pictures, video, or even to make phone calls. So, without even realizing it, we accumulate a lot of space in the memory of our smartphone, creating some problems (often at the wrong time). So, what can we do? Let’s see together how to free up space on our Android and iPhone devices.
For those who use Android
Maybe you don’t know it, but on Android devices such as Samsung, Motorola, Sony and many more, WhatsApp creates a compressed copy of the photos and videos that you send and receive, and store them in a folder that does not appear in the Gallery of your smartphone. To clean your phone from media files sent and received you simply need a generic file manager that works on Android, for example ES File Manager, or MiXPlorer. If you use a Samsung device it’s even easier because it contains a built-in app called “My Files”. Thanks to this app you don’t have to look for any third party file manager.
So, in order to create space on your smartphone, open the file manager and look for the WhatsApp folder. Once you’ve found it, you will find another folder called “Media”. At this point you have two options. The first one is to remove the folder. The second one is to open it and copy (or move) the files that you want to keep to another folder on your smartphone that is not contained in the WhatsApp folder. When you’re done, delete the “Media” folder.
For those who use an iPhone
On iPhone devices data are saved in the chat as well as in the phone. To create more space in the memory of the chat, you need to open WhatsApp, open the conversation with whom you have exchanged more video, photos and audio, and then press the contact’s name. Now select “Delete chat”. Don’t worry, deleting the chat does not imply abandoning the group chat. To delete files from the memory of the phone you need to open WhatsApp and go to “Chat Settings”. Now you have to desable the “Save media received”. Obviously, before you perform any of these tasks, you must remember to make back-ups of photos and videos that you want to keep.