Saving photos from WhatsApp directly to your camera roll has several benefits. It lets you quickly document what your family and friends have sent, you have copies in case an image is accidentally deleted from the messaging platform, and you can view media through the Photos app.
How do you save and transfer these files? You can do this either automatically or manually for individual images. Here’s how to do both.
How to automatically save pictures from WhatsApp
Time required: 1 minute
If you set WhatsApp to save images by default, you won’t have to download each individual image manually. You won’t even have to open the app to see the latest images. Follow these steps:
- Go to WhatsApp and then navigate to Settings bottom right of your user interface.
- Tap Chat.
- Activate Save to Photos.
Now any photo your contacts send you will automatically appear in your camera roll. Normally, you’ll need to leave WhatsApp open in the background or open it for this to happen, but you don’t need to open any chats.
However, if your internet is poor, the images may not download immediately. Also, keep in mind that the app compresses the images, so the sender must make sure to upload top quality photos.
How to save individual pictures from WhatsApp to your iPhone
Do you just want to save individual images on your smartphone? That’s also very easy.
- Simply tap the Image you want to save. This will make it appear full size on your iPhone.
- Tap the Share icon bottom left of your screen. This looks like an arrow pointing upwards from a square box.
- Now tap Save. The really great thing is that you can do this with GIFs too!
This step works even if you have autosave enabled. So let’s say you accidentally deleted a picture after saving it to your photos. Simply go back to the relevant chat, find the correct picture, and re-download it to your iPhone using the method above.
These methods are especially handy if you tend to delete chats to save space (although there are other ways to declutter WhatsApp), or if you think the sender is likely to delete a photo you want to keep. Just remember to ask permission before downloading personal or private photos.
