Every time someone tells me that his mobile is slow, I know where to look: the “paper” of WhatsApp

WhatsApp’s storage is something problematic for a long time. So much that, over time, those responsible have had to develop different forms of release conversations spacevideos, photos and audios on our smartphones.

Today they are enormous help, because I have proven that unless we install giant games or we love to carry a good videos library in 4K, the greatest enemy of our mobile is the WhatsApp download folder. Every time someone tells me that his mobile is slower, the first thing I do is look at how much free space he has. And bingo: WhatsApp is usually The biggest glutton in iOS and Android.

WhatsApp vs Storage, a not solved historical conflict. WhatsApp problems with the space occupied by their files come from the time when the iPhone had 8 GB and it was normal for Android to use internal storage and microSD cards. “That is the solution, more storage,” we thought. But no, unlike Companies like Samsung and its ‘hacks’WhatsApp never allowed their files to move to secondary memory, so releasing memory was generally deleting files or moving them. In the latter case, however, they stopped appearing linked to our conversations.

A full mobile, a slow mobile. As the storage is filled, the performance of a low device. It is so in telephony, in tablets, in classical computer science or on televisions. An operating system and its applications need a minimum space to execute reading and writing operations.

When the storage is almost full, modern systems try to release space by erasing caches and other temporal files, but where there is not, it cannot be taken out. In computers it was also important to have free space for the use of virtual memory, but with the Virtual RAM extension which include many manufacturers, the problem is also aggravated in mobiles. The recommendation: Disable this function That neither Google itself advises to use, because it wears the memory.

In 2025 there are good solutions. Unlike what happened in its beginnings, today WhatsApp does have Good solutions to free space. Before looking at a capture like the superior, it meant frustrating and deleting video by video, photo by photo. Today, after detecting that a mobile is so full, the first thing I do and advise is, inside WhatsApp, go to ‘Settings – Storage and Data – Storage Administration’.

There we will find ourselves A complete menu where the application informs us how much space is occupying and how it distributes it. First, it shows, without ordering, files of more than 5 GB. Entering is a great filter to find some large attachment that will quickly help free space.

It is also very useful the ‘forwarded of many times’ section, as it is very common for us to get the same video forwarded from different groups, and WhatsApp duplicates them. If we scroll, we will reach the space occupied by the conversations of our individual groups, chats or channels. By selecting each of them, we will see which files occupy more by order, and we can make a quick selection and delete, from the paper icon to which the red arrow of the upper image points.

Get to reach this point. Deciding what to delete can be exhausting, no matter how easy the WhatsApp assistant is given to us. So it is best to avoid a situation in which WhatsApp ‘eats’ 32 GB, as in catches. How to achieve it? WhatsApp itself gives us the advice: ‘Activates temporary messages’. If we do it in our groups or chats, the messages will be deleted after 24 hours, 7 or 90 days, according to us.

The occupied space will also be released after that time. If we want everything to still not be deleted automatically, but we want to better manage space, in ‘storage and data’ we can also Disable file automatic downloadchoosing according to file type if we want nothing to be downloaded automatically (which would be the ideal option for WhatsApps full of photos of groups that we do not consult), or only in Wi -Fi or Wi -Fi and mobile data.

On the iPhone, personally, too unleash the option ‘Save in photos’ that we find in ‘adjustments – chats’. I do it because that function makes all WhatsApp photos also go to the reel of iOS, which doubles them without any use for me. Other people, yes, choose to activate it for backup apps such as Icloud or Google Photos keep everything in the cloud.

More radical solutions. That WhatsApp storage can become a problem is not something invented. Personally, I have come to deal with mobiles that had 70 GB occupied by WhatsApp. When he has come to occupy so much, and we do not mean goodbye to everything, there is a magnificent more radical option such as ‘Export Chat’, which generates, if we want, a file compressed with all our conversation (in flat text) and all our files.

It works very fast, so in seconds we can have the file in our memory, ready to be sent to a PC where we can have all the text, audios, videos and other files in the group.

The background problem. WhatsApp is eaten a lot of storage, it’s true. But the real problem is us. We don’t like to get rid of memories, so it becomes so difficult to choose what to release. We take WhatsApp as a classic photo album, like those we had of the family, and we like to go to our memories forever. In the Calo of Telegram it is painless, because everything is stored in the cloud without occupying space in the device, but by how WhatsApp works, there is no easy solution.

Without that attachment, freeing space in the app would be as easy as uninstalling it and re -installing it, but there is an unavoidable human factor. Finally, a personal advice. It has usually been said that basic users need little storage space, so they are bought the terminal with less capacity. However, this generates future problems, because they are the least resources and knowledge to know what to erase and what not.

Image | Antonio Sabán with Ia

In Xataka | How to release space on any phone, thorough guidance: everything you can do on your Android or iPhone