WhatsApp is updating its Android app to provide users more control to clean up data consuming their phone’s storage space. Currently available on the beta version, this ‘Storage Usage’ feature will tell users exactly how much data a group or single chat is consuming. Moreover, users will be able to delete the data from the same interface, which will help them save storage space on their phone.
WhatsApp has already been offering storage usage control over its chats on iOS since January. Now, the feature can be found on Android, but for now it is on the beta version and soon to be released for all. Earlier, users could either manually delete an entire conversation and its corresponding media or select multiple messages to delete them and their media.
How WhatsApp Storage Usage controls work
To use this feature on Android, users need to be on the latest WhatsApp beta version 2.17.340. After that, head over to Settings and there they will see a new data and storage usage option. Clicking on it, they will be redirected to Storage usage.
After waiting for a few seconds, all of their conversations with their data calculated will be listed. Once it is done, users will be able to see a list of their chats sorted by how much space they have taken on their device in descending order.
WhatsApp will let users choose message types, such as videos, text, images, GIFs, voice messages, etc. from specific chats which they exactly want to delete and keep the rest. For this, they have to select the chat they want to delete.
There will be a ‘Manage messages’ option at the bottom of the screen. Once they click on it, it will let them select the content they want to delete. They can choose specific file types such as all GIFs or videos from a specific chat to free up space.
Users should note, this feature is still in beta and hasn’t arrived on the stable version yet. They can sign up for the Android Beta Program or install it from APK Mirror to use the feature right away.
