How to disable WhatsApp auto-save for specific chats
What's the story
WhatsApp, the leading messaging platform, offers a feature to keep users from automatically downloading media files — images, videos, and documents directly into their phone's gallery. The feature helps users avoid unnecessary clutter and keep their galleries organized. By default, all downloaded media files from WhatsApp are automatically saved in a folder on the user's phone gallery. However, you can prevent them from auto-saving with a few basic steps.
Feature control
Disabling media downloads for all chats
Open WhatsApp on your smartphone and tap the three vertical dots in the upper-right corner. Now, you can select 'Settings' from the dropdown and head over to 'Chats.' Here, toggle off the 'Media Visibility' option. It will only affect media files from new chats and not already saved in the gallery.
Personalized settings
Customizing it for specific conversations
Along with disabling media visibility for all chats, users can also customize this feature for individual chats/groups. To do this, they open the chat/group where they want to stop saving media and tap on the three vertical dots in the upper-right corner. After selecting 'View contact' or 'Group info,' they tap on 'Media visibility,' select 'No' and then tap 'OK.' This ensures media files from that specific chat/group aren't saved to their gallery.