Deleting images on WhatsApp is easy. You can long-press on the image and select the Delete for Me option from the pop-up. If you are deleting within an hour, then you can also select the Delete for Everyone option which deletes that image from other people’s phones as well. Although, this option will not delete the image from their gallery if they have already downloaded it. Neither does it delete the images from your gallery.
However, what you might not be aware of is – when you sent an image on WhatsApp, it creates a duplicate file for that image. So even after you have deleted those photos in the gallery, you can still view them on Whatsapp. This duplicating process also applies to forwarding images on WhatsApp. Eventually, the list becomes big and takes up a lot of storage space that you can’t even view on the gallery. Here’s how you can delete the sent images on WhatsApp.
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Option 1. Deleting from the File Manager
You can open the native file manager app on your Android, if you don’t have a file manager, download Solid Explorer from the Google Play Store. When you open the File Manager, navigate to the duplicate files, and delete them to save up space. Here’s where you can find the WhatsApp sent duplicate files.
Open any File Manager > Internal Storage > Whatsapp > Media > Whatsapp Images > Sent and here you can find all the duplicate files. You can select all and delete them. This will delete the sent images on WhatsApp too.
To delete other files types like videos, audios, documents, gifs, etc. You can open that respective folder instead of the Whatsapp Images folder. The process is the same for the Whatsapp Bussiness app too. Just select the Whatsapp Business folder, instead of the WhatsApp folder in the file manager.
But the only caveat of this is it will delete sent images of every contact and every group. if you do not want to do that, then you can choose the alternative method.
Option 2. Delete Media for individual chat or group
Recently, WhatsApp introduced a new feature where you can delete the media from the Whatsapp Settings itself. This is different than deleting in the file manager since you have the option to delete media from a specific chat or group.
To delete using WhatsApp Settings, Open Whatsapp > three-dots menu > Settings > Storage and data > Manage Storage and select a contact or a group which you want to delete the media.
Here you can select the photos or videos that you want to delete or hit the Select all button to delete all the media in that chat.
Anyhow, this method not only deletes sent media, but also the media that you have received from the respected chat.
Save Only Necessary Images
If you want to delete all the sent media, use the file manager for that. However, the WhatsApp Setting option works when you want delete all media from a single chat.
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