Pictures, videos and documents exchanged on WhatsApp take up your smartphone's memory, slowing down your device. Here's how to delete them
WhatsApp is one of the apps that takes up the most space on your smartphone's memory. The messaging application is used not only to exchange messages (which take up very little space), but also to send images, videos and documents. If you are within a couple of groups, it is very easy to run out of memory on your smartphone.
In order for the messaging app not to become a problem, you need to be very careful and free up space on WhatsApp. By changing some settings in the app and paying attention to how much conversations take up, you can use WhatsApp without affecting your smartphone's performance in any way. Here are some tricks to free up space on your smartphone's memory by deleting unnecessary documents on WhatsApp
Prevent automatic file downloads
By default, WhatsApp automatically downloads any document, image or video that is sent to us. If we're not very careful, we'll soon find ourselves with our smartphone memory completely occupied. To prevent this problem you can use a simple WhatsApp trick: change the file download settings. To do this, just log into the application, go into Settings and then to "Data usage and storage". A new tab will open and in the Automatic Download section we should select "No media" for the options "When using the mobile network", "When connected via Wi-Fi" and "When roaming". In this way, in addition to not unnecessarily occupy the memory of the smartphone, we will not even go to waste the Giga of the phone subscription.
Deleting conversations
If despite all precautions the memory of the smartphone is full, we have only one solution: delete the heaviest chats. It's a decision you can't take lightly, but it's the only solution in extreme cases (especially if your phone has a storage space of only 8GB or 16GB). WhatsApp lets you find out which conversations occupy the device's memory the most. You have to go into the application's Settings, press on "Data and archive usage" and then on "Archive usage". At this point you'll open a new screen with the "ranking" of all the chats that take up space. You'll have to make a note of the names, return to the application's home page and enter the conversations you want to delete. To do this, just press the icon with three vertical dots, then More and finally Delete chat. This will delete all the images, videos and messages exchanged within the conversation.
If we are particularly attached to the conversations, WhatsApp offers us the possibility to save the chat before deleting it. To do so, we have to press on the three dots in the upper right corner, then on "More" and finally on "Send chat via email". At this point we'll have to decide whether the email message also contains all the documents exchanged via WhatsApp.
Delete only useless documents
To free up space on WhatsApp you can also use another simple trick: delete only useless documents from the heaviest chats. The instant messaging application allows you to see one by one all the images, videos and documents exchanged within groups and chats. To free up space from your smartphone's memory, just enter a chat, press on the icon with three vertical dots and then on "Media". It will open a new page where all the files are present and we can delete those we don't consider useful.