WhatsApp is the main cause of exhaustion of space on the phone, because it stores all the files received in the various chats in the internal memory: all the photos, videos, audio messages sent and received on our phone in groups and in individual conversations remain in the memory smartphone, unless we manually delete them. Many of the photos and videos received in WhatsApp do not appear in the phone's photo and video gallery and remain visible only in conversations and chats, it is very easy to forget to perform this cleaning operation. The phone's memory fills up silently, without getting noticed, until it wears out over time.
To overcome this problem and free up space on WhatsApp, especially on Android phones (but iPhones are not immune to the problem), up to now external applications could be used to delete images from groups and chats, while now it is possible to use a new option application to clean WhatsApp and erase everything .
We see in this guide how to free up space in WhatsApp and clean the archive use to recover a lot of internal memory.
Free up space in WhatsApp from Android
In order to free up the space occupied by WhatsApp files, we open the app on our smartphone, press the menu with the three dots at the top right, then on Settings and finally press on Data use and storage .
In the new screen we press on Storage use to see the list of chats open in WhatsApp, both groups and individuals, ordered by the size occupied in the internal memory (the most voluminous chats will be at the top of the list).
By touching one of the conversations it is possible to see in detail what it is composed of and, therefore, the number of text messages that count, the number of shared contact cards, the position shares. You can then view the overall size of the photos exchanged, the GIFs, the videos, the voice messages and the documents. To carry out a complete cleaning, all we have to do is scroll until we see the item Free space, which we must press: in this way all the files that take up space in the internal memory of the device will be immediately deleted.
In the Data usage and storage options it is also possible to disable the automatic download of photos, audio and video, so as to download this data only if they are touched; this is useful on phones with limited storage space (less than 64 GB), so you can avoid ending up with full memory earlier than expected.
Also on Android smartphones we can increase the space available using an additional microSD, as seen in our guides Move files to the SD (Android) by freeing up internal memory and Choose the best MicroSD for Android smartphones .
Free up space in WhatsApp from iPhone
If we use an iPhone smartphone as the main phone for WhatsApp, we can free up space by opening the app, pressing at the bottom right on the Settings menu and taking us to the same path seen for Android, i.e. Data usage and storage > Storage usage .
The chats are also listed here by overall size of the stored files and it is possible to delete all the photos, all the videos and all the files of each conversation by pressing down on Manage space and deleting all the superfluous or heavy elements.
Unfortunately on the iPhone it is not possible to insert a microSD to expand the internal memory, but we can get more space to use for WhatsApp (or for other apps) by reading our guide iPhone Space Management: emptying memory and full archive .
Other methods to free up space
While the methods seen so far are excellent for seeing which chats take up the most memory space in the phone, if you want to check what to delete and therefore not delete all messages with images and videos (maybe even photos and videos that you absolutely want to keep), it is possible, on Android, open the various conversations in which you receive multiple messages, tap the button at the top right with three dots and then press on Media (if it is a single chat) or Media of the group to see all the shared photos and videos and stored by that chat.On iPhone the same list can be found by opening a conversation, then tapping on the chat title and then pressing on Media, Links and documents . In this way we can selectively clean WhatsApp, delete only the photos and videos that we do not care about and free up space occupied by the files received.
Another method to quickly recover occupied space involves the use of apps for cleaning unnecessary and large files ; Android and iOS stores are full of these programs, but if we want to try a truly effective app for Android immediately, we recommend installing SD Maid.
Using this app we will be able to immediately view all the files, databases and folders that take up the most space on our phone, so as to proceed with a complete and effective cleaning, which can also make us recover several GigaBytes (especially on devices that we did not clean from a few months).
On the iPhone, however, we can use the Clean Doctor app, available for free.
This powerful app will allow you to analyze the space occupied by all the files and folders on the iPhone and to eliminate the most voluminous photo collections and the largest video files (we will almost certainly find much of the material right in the WhatsApp folders).
By doing so, we will be able to free up space in WhatsApp in a few taps on the screen and lighten the archive generated by the app itself, without having to give up precious files or some apps.
Conclusions
The problem of space can also arise on new phones and with 256 GB of memory, just do not realize the amount of video files, GIFs and images shared or uploaded and, when we least expect it, we will find ourselves with a WhatsApp unusable or that does not allow you to send or download new multimedia content.Just to avoid this bad scenario we regularly clean WhatsApp as indicated in the previous chapters, so as not to run the risk of filling all the memory of our portable device.
If we fear that cleaning WhatsApp may delete important photos or videos, we invite you to save the contents with an online backup, as seen in our Automatic Photo Backup guide to keep them safe online .
If we have accidentally deleted a chat or a group on which there were also very important photos or messages, we advise you not to waste time and read our article on how to recover deleted WhatsApp messages and history .
