Occasionally you’ll find strange images in your gallery that, for the life of you, you don’t remember downloading. Then you get an inkling to check your WhatsApp chats, and it hits you—WhatsApp automatically downloaded them from your chats and groups.

Fortunately, there’s a way to stop it from happening. Continue reading if you’re one of the many WhatsApp users who want to learn how to stop WhatsApp from saving photos to your gallery or automatically downloading images.

How to Stop WhatsApp From Saving Your Photos to Your Gallery

When your friends send you images in your chats, WhatsApp goes beyond saving them in the chats and saves them to your camera roll. What’s more, WhatsApp saves those images even if you didn’t open the chats.

That’s why you often find images you don’t recognize in your phone or computer’s gallery—not to mention how annoying it is when these images are WhatsApp spam.

The only way to stop WhatsApp photos from saving to your gallery is by changing your default chat settings. It’s a quick and easy process. Follow the guide below to get started.

If you don’t mind the automatic downloads, but don’t want images and videos to show up on your phone’s main gallery, you can disable a setting in WhatsApp.

On iPhone, follow these steps:

1. Tap the Settings tab and select Chats.
2. Toggle Save to Camera Roll off.

On Android, use these steps:

1. Tap the three-dot menu and go to Settings > Chats.
2. Disable Media visibility. This prevents WhatsApp from showing newly downloaded media in your gallery. But you can do this for specific chats too. Once in a chat, tap the contact or group name > Media visibility > No > OK.

How to Stop WhatsApp Downloading Photos Completely

Stopping WhatsApp from saving photos in your main gallery is the first step. But you can stop images from downloading at all, especially since they take up precious phone storage.

Here’s how to stop media downloads on iPhone:

1. Go to Settings > Storage and data.
2. In the Media auto-download section, tap Photos, and select the Never option.
3. Go down the list of media types and repeat the process.

Follow the steps below on an Android phone:

1. Tap the three-dot menu > Settings > Data usage.
2. Tap each option in the Media auto-download section, uncheck all the boxes, and tap OK.

How to Stop WhatsApp Photos Downloading on Desktop

You can also stop automatic media downloads in the WhatsApp Web and WhatsApp Desktop apps.

To do this, follow these steps:

1. Open the WhatsApp desktop app or WhatsApp Web on your computer.
2. Click the downward-facing arrow above your chats on the left of the screen and select Settings.
3. Click on Media auto-download and deselect all the options. If you don’t mind WhatsApp saving documents you can leave that box checked.

If you’re finding WhatsApp overwhelming in general, consider taking a break from WhatsApp and other social media apps periodically. There are more measures you can take to improve your WhatsApp experience and avoid resenting the app. For instance, you can use WhatsApp tools to organize chats, schedule messages, and tailor your overall experience.

Stop WhatsApp From Saving Images for Your Peace of Mind

After a busy day, you might prefer to ghost your friends on WhatsApp, at least until you’ve settled down for the evening. The last thing you’d want is to be met with images from the chats you’ve avoided. If you want to have peace of mind, stop WhatsApp from saving images on your phone and computer.