How to Reduce WhatsApp Storage Size on an iPhone

WhatsApp is taking up all the space on your phone? Find out here how to reduce WhatsApp storage size on an iPhone and free up disk space without losing any of your precious chats, images and videos.

First, Lightly Press Your Stomach

and see if you can do what St. Augustine described still early in the 5th century:

[Some] bring up an incredible quantity and variety of things they have swallowed, and produce whatever they please, quite whole, as if out of a bag.

St. Augustine

Now, if your WhatsApp and iPhone seem like they have swallowed quite too much and are bloated beyond their seams, you can bring some of that up, quite whole let us hope, and reclaim disk space:

How to Reduce WhatsApp Storage Size on an iPhone

To reduce the size of storage WhatsApp uses on your iPhone or Android phone:

1. Find out whether saving space in WhatsApp is worth your while

1. Open your iPhone’s iPhone Storage screen.
2. See if WhatsApp consumes an amount of space worth saving.

2. Find the chats that waste the most space in WhatsApp

1. Open WhatsApp on your iPhone.
2. Select Settings at the bottom.
3. Now open Storage and Data.
4. Go to Manage Storage.

3. Export WhatsApp conversations and media you want to keep

1. Make sure you are on the Chats tab in WhatsApp.
2. Export the data from any conversation you want to keep.

4. Delete WhatsApp data from the iPhone to recover space

1. Open WhatsApp.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Tap Storage and data.
4. Open Manage storage.

Now, for each conversation you want to clean up to save disc space:

1. Tap the conversation.
2. Tap Select.
3. Make sure all the items you want to delete are checked.
   What to delete: It typically is most useful to delete Videos, GIFs and Voice Messages as well as Documents and Photos first. These are the biggest space hogs while Text, Contacts and Locations do not take up much space at all.
4. Tap the trash icon at the bottom.
5. Tap Delete Items again to confirm.
   Delete means deletion: That will delete the videos, photos, documents, text etc. from WhatsApp on your iPhone and WhatsApp on the web. While you may be able to recover data from a backup, do consider what you clear with this tap gone. See above for exporting and saving content before deletion.
6. Now tap < Back at the top to return to the list of conversations.

How to Reduce WhatsApp Storage on an iPhone: FAQ

Is there a way to automate the process?

No.

Unfortunately, there is currently no way to automate exporting and clearing chats in WhatsApp or having it delete old messages automatically.

As an alternative, you can set up WhatsApp to remove messages and data automatically after a certain time from conversations. To apply this to your existing chats so old data will automatically be deleted:

1. Go to Settings in WhatsApp.
2. Select Storage and Data.
3. Open Manage Storage.
4. Now choose Turn On Disappearing Messages under TOOLS TO SAVE SPACE.
5. Go to Apply Timer to Chats.
6. Choose the timespan after which you want messages purged under Disappearing Message Timer.
7. Check all chats in which you want messages to expire automatically.
8. Tap Apply.
   For new conversations: You can make auto-deletion the default using Default Message Timer on the Disappearing Messages screen.

(How to reduce WhatsApp storage on an iPhone tested with WhatsApp 2.23; first published June 2018, last updated September 2024)