Running out of storage space on your iPhone is a big inconvenience. Whether you want it back or just clean it, we’ll let you know below how to clean WhatsApp on your iPhone and thus free up space. This happy app is one of the biggest gigabytes on a smartphone, so it’s a good idea to keep it at bay.
We will tell you how to clean WhatsApp in iOS 17 with several settings and following a few steps. If you get used to checking it well and carrying out this maintenance routine from time to time, you will no longer have storage problems with WhatsApp as long as its model does not change.
Check how much space WhatsApp takes up on your iPhone
Over the years, Apple has significantly expanded basic storage space on iPhones. From the 4 GB of the original model to the TB of an iPhone 15 Pro, the difference is abysmal. Of course, it never hurts to keep those memory-hungry apps at bay.
Whether it’s WhatsApp or any other, there is a quick way to know Which of them is hogging up space on your iPhone?. Just go to Settings > General > iPhone Storage and see which apps weigh the most. If you haven’t been here in a while, you’ll be surprised to find apps you haven’t used in a while:
WhatsApp should be among the first applications due to the storage space it takes up. By clicking on it we will see how much the application itself occupies, as well as all the chats, videos and photos that we have in it. Here we have two options to clean WhatsApp on iPhone. Uninstalling the app will only remove the app, retaining all data, while deleting the app will do it completely.
Why WhatsApp takes up a lot of space
Unlike other messaging apps and services, WhatsApp does not rely on the cloud to store content. Instead of deploying an infrastructure in which to store our content in iCloud, Facebook relies on our iPhones. This is one of the reasons why for a long time we could only use WhatsApp on the iPhone, and the reason why our iPhone fills up quickly.
While other services store content in the cloud and they only download what is necessary on our devices, WhatsApp needs our storage to manage all the information. Therefore, always depending on the type of content we send or receive, we will notice that WhatsApp takes up a lot of space.
Disable autosave on reel
There is a setting in WhatsApp that can be the person responsible for filling your iPhone with trash. If you suddenly find tons of photos and videos from your WhatsApp conversations in your camera roll, auto backup is enabled. To disable it or check if it is turned off, follow these steps:
- Go to WhatsApp Settings
- Click on “Discussions”
- Turn off “Save to Photos”:
How to clean WhatsApp on iPhone from app settings
In addition to the nuclear method of the first section, There are other ways to clean WhatsApp on your iPhone. And from time to time, WhatsApp adds improvements such as keeping your chats private from third parties. Coming back to how to free up space on your iPhone, we have two methods, created a long time ago by the company. In the first, you have to drag to the left the cat which we know takes up a lot of space. We will click on the ellipsis and then on “Empty chat”. By confirming the action, we will delete all messages, as well as the photos, videos, links and documents they contain.
There is another section that allows us have a little more control and filtering of what we erase. To do this we go to Settings > Storage & data > Manage storage. Here we will find many options to clean WhatsApp.
First, we are shown a graph with the space that WhatsApp occupies on the iPhone, followed by the total occupied space and finally the free space we have available (if we have it). Next, there is a section dedicated to files larger than 5MB, which will usually be occupied by videos. And just below that, another one for files uploaded multiple times (typical viral items sent to many groups).
In both sections we see how many files there are and how much they occupy. We can also sort files, select and delete them one by one, in groups or completely. Finally, we have already known tool to see which files are in each WhatsApp chat. Here, as in the previous one, we can sort, select and delete anything we want.
How to clean WhatsApp chats on iPhone
In every WhatsApp chat We can clean it to give the iPhone more free space. To do this, you must follow these steps:
- Open a chat in which you want to delete content, whether it’s a group or an individual conversation.
- Click at the top where the name appears.
- Go to Files, Links & Documents.
- There you can select links, files and documents to delete.
And There you go. With these methods, you will be able to clean up the storage space occupied by WhatsApp on your iPhone. Of course, before you do anything, make sure you have backed up everything you need.
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