'Happy Holi' forwarded images on WhatsApp taking up space? Here's how to stop auto-download

Whatever media comes to your chat, it automatically gets downloaded to your smartphone and indeed takes space. But there is a way to switch it off.

Representational image. (Unsplash)

Since it is the festival of Holi and millions of us are wishing each other today over Facebook's WhatsApp, at some point it naturally gets annoying. And while you can shut the notifications temporarily, what you can't ignore are the plethora of ‘Happy Holi' images that pour-in. What's worse is that many of us have ‘auto-download' feature enabled in WhatsApp. This means that whatever media comes to your chat, it automatically gets downloaded to your smartphone and indeed takes space without you knowing. But there is a way to disable it.

On iPhone:

Step 1: Open WhatsApp and tap on Settings gear icon at bottom corner.

Step 2: Tap on ‘Storage and Data' option.

Step 3: In the ‘Media Auto-Download' tab, disable all the options for Photos, Audio, Video and Documents.

On Android:

Step 1: Open WhatsApp and tap on the three-dot button on top right corner.

Step 2: Tap on ‘Settings' option.

Step 3: Tap on ‘Storage and data'.

Step 4: Under ‘Media auto-download' section, you can tap on each one of them, Mobile data, Wifi and Roaming and select ‘No Media' for all.

And that's it, no more unnecessary downloads of images and videos. You can also delete the existing media that comes through WhatsApp, using the same section.