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Ive got an iPhone 64gb running iOS 14

The storage is almost full and i noticed that Whatsapp is taking up almost 15gb. Most of this is photos / video from group chats etc.

I dont want to loose the photos and videos, but at the same time i dont want to store them locally on my phone, is there a way i can store them in iCloud ? Ideally i dont want to store the photos / videos to my camera roll, but would like to just unload some of the whatsapp data to the cloud.

I also need to backup the chats themselves for future reference as some of the chats are for business purposes.

I think there is a feature in whatsapp where you can export a chat / group inc the messages and media, but my phone is so full with whatsapp i cant even export this data as there is no space free to export it too !

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  • I don't know of a way to do that, but telegram allows you to do so, if you can switch. :)
    – anki
    Oct 14, 2020 at 12:14
  • Storing them in iCloud will sync them with any device signed-in with the same Apple ID. If you use the same Apple ID for the iPhone and this iCloud, they'll sync back to your iPhone and use that space.
    – fsb
    Oct 14, 2020 at 12:41

2 Answers 2

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What i think the best solution is: Go to Whatsapp -> Settings -> Chats. Enable Save to camera roll. From now, all your incoming photos and videos will be saved automatically into your Photo app. The name of the album with the saved photos and videos is called WhatsApp. But the incoming photos and videos are also saved locally in the WhatsaApp app.

So now you should enable iCloud Photos in Settings -> Your Name -> iCloud -> Photos. All your photo albums will be backupped in the iCloud. It is not possible to backup one specific album.

After the iCloud backup, the photos and videos are still saved locally on your phone in your WhatsApp app. To delete this, go to WhatsApp -> Settings -> Data and storage usage -> Storage usage and choose a chat. From here you are able to delete the media which is stored locally in the WhatsApp app.

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    Thanks, I have 1000s of photos from whats app currently, if i Go to Whatsapp -> Settings -> Chats. Enable Save to camera roll. will this work for photos already received as well as photos i receive in the future or just photos i receive in the future ?
    – sam
    Oct 16, 2020 at 14:29
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Unfortunately there is no way to do this. You can only import all your media to camera roll, and then group them manually into albums which you can name like the group the photos came from, and then delete them from WhatsApp. By this you free the storage as the photos will be stored in iCloud, and you can still associate them to the group. When the porblem occurs again, you just have to put the new photos in the albums, that should be less work than the first time.

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  • Instead of having them dumped to the camera roll, is it possible to move them to a seperate photo album inside of icloud ? I dont mind if all the Whatsapp photos from various groups and chats etc go into one album.
    – sam
    Oct 15, 2020 at 7:42
  • All photos from Whatsapp are automatically put into an album called "WhatsApp", when they are saved to your camera roll. But they of cause still show up in your general album, as far as I know there is no way to change that.
    – DarkDiamond
    Nov 19, 2020 at 7:59

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