On practically every smartphone the main app, the heaviest one, the one that downloads the most battery and the one that distracts us the most, is definitely Whatsapp.While for other apps like Facebook we have seen several alternatives, Whatsapp is indispensable, you can’t really do without it and you can’t even keep it disabled from remaining in the background, otherwise, you would no longer receive messages.
The only thing that can be done to limit the impact on phone resources, especially on the battery and on the internal memory space, is to disable the automatic saving of images, photos, and videos that are received in chats.
Avoid automatic downloading of files received via Whatsapp, both on Android and on iPhone, also allows you to save data traffic for those with subscriptions with the consumption limit and make sure that all the various photos and videos received do not appear on the roll or in the phone gallery, which is also good for privacy reasons.To disable automatic file downloads on Android phones, Samsung, Huawei, and all others, you can open Whatsapp and access Settings, going to the section Data usage.
From here you can change the options of the Automatic Download video, audio, photo and document files.
For each of these categories of files that can be received, you can choose whether to activate the automatic download when connected to the data network, when connected in Wifi, when connected in roaming (from abroad).
By deactivating the automatic download for almost everything, only the voice messages are automatically downloaded, while for everything else you will need to touch the received photo or video to be able to view it on the phone.
On Android, However, every photo and video downloaded from Whatsapp is also listed in the Gallery app in a special dedicated folder.
To prevent these files from being visible in the gallery with all the pictures taken by us, there’s a trick.
You need to use the ES Manager File app, which allows you to browse Android files as you would on Windows with folders.
From ES File Explorer, tap on the internal memory button and then open the following folder path: WhatsApp> Media> WhatsApp Images.
From here, press the button with three dots at the top right, then tap on New> file giving it as a name .nomedia (don’t forget to put the point).
Repeat this time for the folder WhatsApp> Media> WhatsApp video and for WhatsApp> Media> WhatsApp Animated Gif .
Try opening any app to view photos on your phone, like Google Photos or another, and it will be impossible to find photos, videos, and gifs received and saved by Whatsapp.
To restore Whatsapp folders in the Gallery apps, delete the created .nomedia files.
To turn off an automatic download of photos and videos on iPhone the procedure is similar to that of Android phones, although the menu is a little different.
Then go in Settings of Whatsapp, then go up Data usage and select when the automatic saving should take place for photos, videos, audio files, and documents.
You can therefore always choose, only in Wifi, or the option Never, to disable the automatic download of everything.
On the iPhone no need for makeup to prevent photos and videos from appearing in the gallery or in the camera roll.
Just go in Settings of Whatsapp, then up Chat and disable the option Save media received.
This option applies to all chats, but if you wanted to disable only for some conversations, for example, those in which some friends send us only stupid memes and funny videos, then you can leave the option active and make the automatic saving is not active only for that specific chat.
Open the conversation, press on the contact’s name or group name at the top to open the tab and change the option Save media received putting Never instead of the default.