How to prevent group photos from being saved on your cell phone in WhatsApp

One of the reasons why cell phone memory fills up quickly is that WhatsApp stores copies of the files they send us. This is a problem when we are in several groups and they constantly share photos and videos that reach our gallery, but we never see them again.

Fortunately, there are several easy ways to prevent WhatsApp images from accessing your gallery, interrupting the experience and taking up unnecessary storage space.

• WhatsApp media file visibility settings:

The first way to prevent WhatsApp group photos from being automatically saved to your gallery is: By configuring the visibility of media files within the app. This method is simple and does not require additional applications:

1. Open WhatsApp on your phone.
2. In the Chats tab, select an individual or group chat.
3. Tap the contact or group name to open the chat information.
4. In the Media file visibility section, select No and then confirm by clicking OK.

This setting will prevent photos and videos from that specific chat from being saved to your gallery. If you want to apply these settings to all your chats and groups:

1. Go to the Settings tab in the WhatsApp app.
2. Select chats.
3. Click on View media file and turn off the option.

• Create a .nomedia file:

Another effective way to hide WhatsApp images from gallery is to create a .nomedia file in your WhatsApp media folder. This file tells gallery apps not to scan or display any media files in this specific folder.

To create this file, follow these steps:

1. Download a file explorer from Google Play Store. There are many options available there like ES File Explorer or Solid Explorer.
2. Open file explorer and navigate to the Images/WhatsApp Images/ folder.
3. Inside this folder, create a new file and name it .nomedia (including the dot at the beginning). This file does not need to have visible content, its presence simply tells the gallery to ignore this folder.

If at any time you want to see the photos in the gallery again, Just delete the .nomedia file and the images will appear again.

• Use of third party applications:

In addition to the methods built into WhatsApp and creating .nomedia files, There are apps available on the Google Play Store that can help you hide specific photos from the gallery without moving them from the original location.

These apps provide advanced options to hide content safely and securely. Some of them are:

• Hide Photos & Videos – Hide It Pro– This app lets you hide photos and videos behind a fake interface. You can protect your media files with a PIN or password, ensuring that only you can access them.
• Basement– Used to hide photos and videos, as well as provide backup options for your hidden files.

These apps not only hide WhatsApp images, But they can also protect any other type of media files that you want to keep private.

In addition to the pictures, Meta also creates backup copies of other content you send to us.for example, audio recordings, documents, and audio files.

These contents can be easily found and deleted so that they do not take up unnecessary storage space. To do this, you should follow these steps:

1. Open file manager
2. Go to my phone then internal storage
3. Find the Android folder, enter it, and then enter the Media folder.
4. There you have to find the folder called com.whatsapp, where all the multimedia content that has been sent to us is located.
5. Once inside we must go to the media and enter each folder and delete the content that no longer serves us.