WhatsApp beta for Android gives you more control on storage

WhatsApp will soon let you micro manage the storage consumption of the app on your Android phone.

After iOS, WhatsApp is now working on the ability to provide Android users granular control to clean up the storage of their smartphones. The new feature is currently available in the beta version of the Android app, suggesting a mass roll out will be out soon.

The feature is tucked under the Storage Usage menu in the Settings panel on WhatsApp. With the granular control, you can essentially see exactly which chat conversation is taking up the most storage. For example, group conversations – where a lot of media is exchanged – are bound to consume more storage, especially if you have auto download enabled for photos and videos. Through the granular controls, you will be able to delete these files which consume more space on your device, Android Police reports.

If you want to test out the feature for yourself, you can install the latest beta of WhatsApp for Android v2.17.340. You must note that since it is a beta version, it could be buggy and hence, you must take a backup of your existing data in case something goes wrong. You can also join the official beta on the Play Store. Once you install the beta version, head to the Settings > Storage Usage. Here a list will be populated with all the conversations in decreasing order based on the storage consumed. Tap on a specific chat you want to clear storage from and then select Manage. From here you can choose to clear any or all of the elements of the chat including text, documents, voice messages, videos, photos, locations, and more.

The important thing here is that it allows you to select the elements you want to clear, while keeping the rest. So for example, you may want to clear all the GIFs shared in a particular conversation, but retain the messages. This way, you don’t have to worry about losing out on the whole conversation.