If you spend a lot of time chatting on your phone, chances are that a good chunk of its storage is taken up by images and videos sent by friends and family over the years. Now WhatsApp is making it easier to clear up storage right from the app.
WhatsApp already had basic functionality for clearing stored media, but now you get full-fledged data management. If you head to WhatsApp > Settings > Storage and Data > Manage Storage, you’ll be greeted with a new interface that categorizes items by size, and allows you to preview files before deleting them. You can then select multiple items to delete, while maintaining the files you want to keep.
The new feature will also divide media into two categories: files larger than 5MB, and files that have been “forwarded many times.” Furthermore, WhatsApp will also now display a warning when your phone is running low on storage, prompting you to delete some media files.
I, for one, appreciate the feature. Though I’m fairly diligent about clearing storage on my phone in the first place, I’ve had to help my parents do so lord knows how many times because of all the WhatsApp messages they send; it’s nice to have the feature built right into the app.
The new functionality is rolling out to WhatsApp users globally this week.
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Published November 4, 2020 — 01:59 UTC