WhatsApp changes how images are saved on your iPhone

WhatsApp is making a change to your iPhone that will no longer save images when ‘disappearing messages’ is enabled.

WhatsApp is changing the way the platform handles media. These are sent via chats with disappearing messages enabled, WABetaInfo reports. That’s quite logical. Because it is precisely the intention that those messages disappear. And therefore not be stored anywhere.

Save Photos iPhone by WhatsApp

The company has found out about this and is going to adjust it. In the future, WhatsApp will no longer automatically save images and other visual media to the Photos Library. This if they appear in a chat thread that has disappearing messages enabled. The “Save to Camera Roll” option is now automatically disabled for disappearing chats. Which means images, videos and GIFs will not be saved. Even if the global autosave setting is turned on.

Now the default is correct that disappearing images are posted in chats in Photos app. There is an obvious discrepancy here. This is given the privacy focus of disappearing messages.

Can still

Even so, WhatsApp users can still manually save media that appears in disappearing chats they have received. Realize this! Of course, users can also take a screenshot of the chat thread. So there are always options to store your sensitive content. This no longer happens automatically, which is a nice thought. But this does not completely solve the ‘problem’.

The change will be available to all users on iOS.