How to empty the hidden WhatsApp trash which frees up several gigabytes of storage?
If you own a smartphone, chances are you have WhatsApp installed on it. Meta's instant messaging app is one of the most widely used apps in the world, especially in France. According to research by Awitec, WhatsApp is used by over 32 million people in the country, representing just over half of the population.
Yet, WhatsApp isn't immune to criticism. The app has a knack for automatically downloading photos and videos, as well as a lot of data, that can take up a lot of storage space on our phones. This same storage is often a pain for many smartphone owners who only have 64 or 128 GB of maximum space. Fortunately, WhatsApp has a trash can that you can (and should) empty from time to time to make room.
Spring cleaning is in order! And fortunately, there are several ways to manage the space WhatsApp is taking up on your phone. One of these ways is to reduce the quality of the media you store on your device. But be warned: even if you have a lot of media, it will still take up some space, whether it's in excellent quality or not.
To remedy this, you should indeed empty your WhatsApp trash. The method is simple: open your app and then click on the three small dots in the top right corner of your screen to select the "settings" option. On iPhone, the "settings" tab is more accessible. Once you arrive at your app settings screen, select the "storage and data" option. You'll find several options to automatically store media or manage its quality.
To find WhatsApp's trash, click on the "Manage storage" option. This will show you how much space WhatsApp (and saved media) is taking up on your device. In our case, the space in question is quite minimal (200 MB). But if you regularly download files within the app, you could very easily end up with several gigabytes of space occupied. Then click on "Review and delete items" to find all media larger than 5 MB currently stored on your device.
You can then select one or more media in question. We recommend selecting the largest media in GB or MB. Make sure you don't hold on to these either, as they will be deleted from your device! Once you've selected the media you want, click the trash can icon to delete them.
If you accidentally deleted a piece of media you wanted, don't panic: you can always go back to the discussion where it was located to redownload it by clicking on it.
L'Internaute
