Telecommunications are very important these days, one of the most used are messaging applications such as WhatsApp. This application allows you to send and receive messages, voice notes and multimedia files to improve communication between people in a chat or public group.
This application clearly lets you do many other actions such as audio and video calls. But in it you will also be able to protect your privacy. One of the ways in which you can do this is by hiding media files such as photos and videos. Here you will learn how to do this setting.
What you should know before preventing WhatsApp photos from being saved in your gallery?
You may be just starting to use the WhatsApp app on your phone or maybe you’ve been using it for a while now. In any of the cases that you are presenting, you might want to come to a conclusion and this is how to make the files that you receive on your WhatsApp app not to show up in your gallery.
This is a very useful feature in case you have a chat where you receive things that you should keep confidential and should not be visible to anyone. This is mostly used by people who use their phone shared with another person. In this way, they can keep these files relatively protected.
The feature only affects new WhatsApp files.
If you have been using WhatsApp for a while and want to activate this feature on your phone, you should know that the files that will no longer be displayed in the gallery are the ones you receive after activating this feature. The photos that you received previously will not stop being displayed in the gallery.
What is the way to make WhatsApp photos not get saved in the gallery of your mobile?
After knowing what this feature is for, you will most likely want to activate it on your phone. It is very easy to do and you will be able to activate it on any phone, either iOS or Android. You will also be able to activate this feature for specific chats or for all chats, it all depends on the needs you have.
From an Android device
In case you have an Android phone you will be able to disable the visibility of media files in this way:
- You will open the WhatsApp application and press the three dots at the top, then you will tap on ‘Settings’.
- When you are in this section, go to ‘Chats’.
- Finally, in that menu you will slide looking for the option ‘Visibility of multimedia files’ and you will uncheck the switch that is in this statement so that the files you receive are not displayed in your gallery.
- If the case is that you want to hide only the files you receive from a specific chat, you will have to make this adjustment:
- Go into the chat with this contact, then you are going to tap the three dots at the top of the screen and press on ‘Contact Info’.
- Here you will have to scroll down until you see the ‘Media file visibility’ section. In this way you will be able to hide all the photos and videos you receive from this contact.
If you have an iPhone
On iPhone phones you can also make this edition. In your WhatsApp application you will have to do the same process that you do in the case of Android devices. In the iOS system most of the settings are almost identical to those of Android, so you’re not going to have any inconvenience when making this change on your iPhone with the steps for Android.
In that case, if you want to undo the changes you have made to WhatsApp and want your photos and videos back to show in your gallery, you’re going to have to do the same process that we explained. This will remove these changes.
Where can you see WhatsApp files if they are not saved in the gallery?
After we make this configuration on our phone it is normal that we wonder how you will be able to see these files that you have removed the authority to appear in your gallery. But this will be very easy to solve, since you will have two ways in which you can see them.
The first is to enter the chat in which you received the files. To view the photos and videos, you will tap on the name of this contact. This will open the contact’s information, where you will see the recently received files. If you want to see the oldest ones, you can slide the file bar to the left. Then you will be able to open the file you want to view.
Another way you can view these files is from the WhatsApp folder in your phone’s file manager. This is also very easy to do, for this you must follow these instructions:
- Take your phone and go to the applications menu and then go to the ‘My files’ application.
- When you are already there, you are going to open the folder called ‘All files’ and then you will slide to the end and you will enter the ‘WhatsApp’ folder.
- After entering this folder, you are going to open the one that says ‘Media’. Then there will be a series of folders and you will enter the one that says ‘WhatsApp Images’.
- Finally, you have to open the folder named ‘Private’. In it will be stored all the photos that you receive on WhatsApp and that are not displayed in your gallery.