Anyone who communicates via WhatsApp – and apparently more people do that than use a toothbrush – chats and sends voice messages. But that’s not all. The communication takes place more and more often with photos and video. Why should you describe a certain thing or situation in a long text when you can simply take a photo that is with the chat partner just a few moments later? Understanding has never been easier. But this type of communication also has its downsides.
Friends trash your memory via WhatsApp – that’s an end!
With every picture and video that you send or receive via WhatsApp, the smartphone’s memory is trashed. And every photo is by no means worth keeping as a digital copy on your cell phone forever. Large files in particular mean that at some point you will be forced to clear out the memory, otherwise nothing will work. And then it’s time to sort by hand, locate unusable videos and GIFs and delete them.
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Apparently, WhatsApp itself recognized this problem, which is why the developers have integrated a new function. There is now an area in Messenger where you can manage your storage space. Here WhatsApp automatically identifies large files and suggests them to you for deletion. You can then easily delete them after your review.
Clean up WhatsApp quickly and easily: Here’s how
You can find the clean-up function in the settings under “Storage and data” and “Manage storage”. For example, files that are frequently forwarded are displayed here, sorted by size. Below that you will also find a list of files that are larger than 5 MB. Thanks to preview images, you can quickly see whether you can delete a video or whether it is still important.
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Below you have the option to search individual WhatsApp chats for large files. The size of each file is shown in megabytes in the preview image. If you tap on the thumbnail of a video, it will be played. So you can quickly find out whether you want to keep the video after all.
This function no longer exists
WhatsApp’s new clean-up function replaces the possibility of deleting files such as photos, videos or even chats. In the past, you could tap “Data and memory usage” in the app’s settings and then tap “Memory usage”. WhatsApp then sorted your contacts according to the size of the files ever sent and received. If you then selected a contact or a group, you could tap on “Free up space” at the bottom and delete photos, audio messages or videos. The disadvantage, however, was that you could only delete all the pictures, videos or messages that you exchanged with the contact and not just individual files. But that is now possible.
