That WhatsApp devours my mobile memory is a thing of the past. These are the three habits I follow to avoid it

Running out of memory on our mobile is quite common and many times The culprit has a name: WhatsApp. With more than 3 billion usersis the undisputed queen of messaging apps. Everyone uses it, which means receiving hundreds of messages, photos, videos and audios through WhatsApp, making The size of the app increases exponentially over time. It’s happened to me too, but for years I’ve been able to keep it at bay by following these habits.

Automatic download disabled

If you haven’t done it already, it’s the first thing I recommend and you will only have to do it once (unless you change your mobile phone). The option is within WhatsApp in Settings – Storage and data – Automatic file download.

By default, WhatsApp downloads all the photos they send us. For the rest of the files such as audio or videos, it only downloads them when we are connected to a WiFi network to save mobile data. The only ones that always download, whether you like it or not, are voice messages.

If you want to control storage space, my advice is to change all options to ‘never’. This does not mean that you cannot see the photos they send you, you can do so but first you will have to download them. It’s adding one more step, but like this you can choose which ones you want to see and which ones you don’t. It is useful, for example, if you are in groups that send a lot of files, but you are not always interested in seeing them.

Delete multimedia content from time to time

Even though automatic download is limited, I still download many of the photos and videos that my contacts send me, so the storage is increasing. Every so often I manually delete multimedia content that I have been receiving. WhatsApp has a very useful section to do this in Settings – Storage and data – Storage manager.

I do two things here. The first is to access the section where the files that are larger than 5MBgenerally videos, and I delete those that I don’t want to keep. Here you will also see videos that you have sent yourself and that sometimes appear duplicates (this is because you have sent them to several different chats). When you have selected them, click on the trash icon (bottom right).

The second thing is to go to the section ‘Storage details’, where you’ll see a list of all your chats ordered from the one that occupies the most size to the one that occupies the least. Entering one by one are all the files, also ordered from largest to smallest size, and I delete those that I am not interested in keeping.

The storage you free up It will depend on how many files you are willing to delete. In my case, except for specific things, I don’t have much attachment to the content I share on WhatsApp and sometimes I delete everything at once.

Review channels and groups that I no longer use

Let them put us in WhatsApp groups for everything It is quite common. Personally, if I’m not interested or the group no longer makes sense (for example, if it was created for a specific event and has already expired), I leave and delete the entire chat.

To leave a group you can do so from the chat list by holding down on it or, if you are in it, by clicking on the group name and choosing the ‘Leave Group’ option. You will see that two options appear, the one that interests us is ‘Exit and delete for me.’ Only then will the files and content that have been shared be deleted.

With channels and communities I follow the same procedure. When it has stopped being useful to me for whatever reason, I quit. You can do this by entering the community you want to leave and clicking on the three dots icon in the upper right corner.

Cover image | Gemini

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