With over 2 billion active users, WhatsApp is widely the most popular instant messaging application in the world.
That’s roughly $ 700 million more than another Facebook-owned app on Messenger, although WhatsApp has a key security advantage in the form of end-to-end encryption.
WhatsApp doesn’t seem like a big storage waste, as the iOS app is around 150MB in size. However, this can grow quickly when thousands of messages, voice memos, photos / videos, GIFs, etc. are exchanged with friends and family.
To save you from saving a lot of extra data that you don’t need, WhatsApp has recently revamped its built-in storage management tool.
Now, it’s much easier to quickly identify and delete files you no longer need. Here’s how to get the most out of it.
How to manage WhatsApp storage
- Make sure WhatsApp is updated to the latest version on iOS or Android and then open it.
- If you see a message that says “Storage almost full” at the top of the screen, tap it. Otherwise, tap the three dots in the top right corner and choose “Settings.”
- Tap “Storage and Data”.
- Tap “Manage Storage”.
- You should now see an overview of how much data you are using, as well as which chats are taking up the most space. Tap any chat to see the biggest files.
- From there, tap on each file you want to delete or choose the Select All button
Tap the trash can icon to delete them from your device.
If you use WhatsApp a lot, you may also see categories like “uploaded multiple times” or “more than 5MB”. There is currently no way to handle this from the desktop app, although it can be added later.
