WhatsApp has currently more than 1 billion users, where people send messages, share photos, videos, location and other files with their contacts. As people receive lots of photos from their contacts, they look for the ways to stop WhatsApp from saving pictures to the gallery. As there could be private or other personal photos which you do not want others to see when you hand over your phone to someone. One way is to stop WhatsApp from Auto downloading photos and videos but still when a user views it on WhatsApp, it will appear in the Gallery. So to avoid that you can even hide WhatsApp images from Gallery or Camera Roll in Android and iPhone.
Prevent WhatsApp Media From Saving To Camera Roll In iPhone
1) Open WhatsApp and tap on Settings.
2) Now tap on Chats option and look for the Save to Camera Roll feature.
3) Now, tap on the toggle button to switch off the Setting.
This will stop all the images from showing on the Camera Roll of your iPhone.
Hide WhatsApp Media From Gallery On Android
After updating the app from Play Store follow the steps below.
1. Open WhatsApp – tap on 3 dots and select Settings.
2. In Settings, tap on Chats.
3. Here, you should find a new section – “Media Visibility”. Under that, uncheck the option for “Show media in gallery“.
From now, the received media from all the Chats will stay in WhatsApp only and won’t show in your phone’s Gallery. The photos & videos received earlier when the setting was enabled will still be there and will only be applied to newly downloaded media.
It is also possible to configure the setting on a chat-to-chat basis.
Set Media Visibility For Individual Chats
The option you set above becomes the default one for all the chats. But there are always exceptions. You might want to show media from certain contacts in your Gallery or vice versa. You can do that as well. Here’s how.
1. Open WhatsApp and select the conversation of the desired contact or group.
2. Tap on the name at the top to go to the Contact/Group Info screen.
3. Here, tap on Media Visibility.
4. Select the desired option and tap on OK to save changes.
Similarly, you can do so for other contacts as well.
We receive all sorts of photos and videos on WhatsApp that don’t deserve to be on our phone’s Gallery to be seen by everyone. To take care of this, you can go ahead and use the latest Media Visibility feature.
As mentioned earlier WhatsApp also allows you to prevent from saving the images/videos automatically. If you are not aware of this setting then here we have shared the steps to stop WhatsApp from auto downloading photos, videos and other file types on Android and iPhone.
Prevent WhatsApp From Saving Media Files Automatically On Android
1. Open WhatsApp and tap on the 3 dots at the top right corner and select Settings.
2. Next, tap on Data and storage Usage.
3. Now, you will find different options under Media auto-download section.
- When using mobile data
- When connected on Wi-Fi
- When roaming
You can set different options for each one of them separately. For now, let’s tap on When using mobile data.
4. Uncheck all the options – Photos, Audio, Videos and Documents by tapping on them if they are checked already. Tap on OK to save the changes.
Similarly, you can prevent auto-saving when connected to Wi-Fi as well.
Also Read: How to Take WhatsApp Backup Using Mobile Data Instead Of WiFi
Stop WhatsApp From Auto Downloading On iPhone
1. Launch WhatsApp and select the Settings tab at the bottom right.
2. Now, tap on Data and Storage Usage.
3. Under Media Auto-Download section you will be able to set the preferences for the different type of files.
- Photos
- Audio
- Videos
- Documents
For the sake of this tutorial let’s tap on Photos.
4. To stop the auto-download tap on Never.
You can do the same for other file types.
With this, the next time you receive a photo or video it won’t download until you tap on it to initialize the download.
If you happen to use WhatsApp calling a lot then you can lower data usage on that too. Follow the steps here.
Wrap
I hope the above methods helped Android and iPhone users to stop WhatsApp from saving pictures to Gallery or Camera Roll or disable auto-downloading of media. If you have faced any issues while following the above steps, do let us know via comments.