Want to delete pics, videos etc from a WhatsApp chat and keep only texts? Here’s how

WhatsApp saves all the photos, videos and GIFs from every chat when it backs up your chats. It’s unnecessary clutter and you really don’t need all that there, you can delete them from the chat itself and keep just the texts.

There is also the option of turning down auto-downloads of media on your account so nothing, not even stickers, will be downloaded on your device unless you manually do it. (Pixabay)

Since WhatsApp is literally the most popular messaging app out there, pretty much everyone is on it. While it's great for convenience, this also means that you will be bombarded with forwarded photos and videos you really do not want. 

Fortunately, for annoying chats like these, both individual and group chats, WhatsApp has introduced a forever mute option so as you are not annoyed by the alerts and can choose to check the messages if and when you want to.

There is also the option of turning down auto-downloads of media on your account so nothing, not even stickers, will be downloaded on your device unless you manually do it.

In all this, there also might be some texts that you actually need and might want to keep so deleting entire texts is not an option. On WhatsApp you can choose to delete the media (photos, videos, GIFs etc) while keeping the messages only.

On both Android and iOS,

- Go to Settings, click on Data and Storage Usage, then click on Storage Usage.

- Select the contact or the group whose media you want to delete.

- Click on Manage and then tick all the boxes you want deleted - like photos or videos or GIFs, or all of them. Leave out the text messages box.

- Click on Clear and then confirm.

Alternately, you can see that you have the option to just keep the media and delete the texts. Pick what you need.

Going forward, you can adjust settings for particular group chats/contacts to prevent media from getting downloaded automatically.

On iOS, go to Chat, select the contact or the group chat you want to stop these auto-downloads for. Click on the contact or subject on top of the display, then go to Save to Camera Roll and change Default/Always to Never.

For Android, go to the contact or group chat, click on the top bar, select media visibility, change the settings here from default to a no or a yes, as you want. Click on okay to confirm your selection.

Across iOS, you can stop media from being saved to your camera roll by going to Settings, clicking on Chats and toggling off ‘Save to Camera Roll' from Default/Always to Never.

On Android you can do it by going to Settings, then Chats, then toggling off Show Media in Gallery or Media Visibility.

Special tip

There's another tried and tested way around this where you can take a look at what has been sent and then decide if you want to save that photo or video or not. This works only if you use WhatsApp Web chat.

On WhatsApp web, you can check out the media sent on the web first and then decide if you want to download it and save it on your smartphone. Downloading media on the web does not automatically save it on your smartphone.