There’s nothing more frustrating than when your phone runs out of storage seemingly out of nowhere. Too often the culprits are the photos, videos and GIFs you share with friends and family on messaging services.
Thankfully, WhatsApp is rolling out a new space-saving tool that can delete all of those pesky data-eating files all at once.
The storage management tool groups large files and media that have been forwarded multiple times and sorts those files by size in descending order, so you can identify exactly what has been using all of your storage.
The tool allows you to quickly get rid of multiple files at once and you can even preview the media from the tool to make sure you don’t lose anything important before you hit delete.
Related: Best phone
WhatsApp announced the new storage management tool on Monday. You can watch the video below to see a preview of the tool in action.
The feature will alert you when you’re running short on storage and prompt you to begin freeing up space on your phone.
From there, you can hit ‘Settings’, ‘Storage and data’ and then ‘Manage storage’ to discover which files are taking up space and begin deleting them in bulk.
Related: Best Android phones
The video shows categories for files ‘Forwarded many times’, ‘Larger than 5 MB’ and your most storage-heavy conversations. The tool also tells you how much storage each category uses, how much each individual piece of media needs and how much space WhatsApp files are occupying overall.
You can select the files individually or there’s a ‘Select all’ option if you want the satisfaction of watching your storage bar fall in one tap – of course, you might want to preview the images and check you’re not losing anything of importance first.
The new storage management tools will be rolling out to users worldwide this week.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
