How to Stop Telegram From Auto-Saving Photos and Videos

Stop Telegram From Auto-Saving on Android

Telegram lets you share high-quality photos and videos. You can also send data up to 2GB in size. With Telegram Premium, that bumps up to 4GB. But you might not have enough storage in your Android phone after extended usage. So, here’s how to stop the app from auto-saving files.

Step 1: Open Telegram > go to Settings > Data and Storage > Automatic media download.

Step 2: Here, you have two options. First, you can define rules for auto-media download for the mobile data and Wi-Fi connection. Secondly, for a tight mobile data plan, you can disable automatic media download by disabling When using mobile data.

You can also customize which type of media files you want to keep on auto-download using mobile data. Those using Telegram on an unlimited Wi-Fi plan can keep the automatic media download toggle on.

Stop Telegram From Auto-Saving Photos on Android

The above options only talk about automatic media download on mobile data and Wi-Fi. What about stopping those downloaded photos and videos in the phone gallery? For that, follow the steps below.

Step 1: Open Telegram on your Android phone and go to Settings.

Step 2: Go to Chat Settings and scroll to the bottom to tap on Save to Gallery for disabling it.

That’s it. From now on, you won’t see downloaded media files saving themselves in the gallery app automatically.

Stop Telegram From Auto-Saving on iPhone

Telegram’s iPhone app is also feature-rich. Some of the options are placed in different menus than the Android counterpart. Let’s disable auto-download on Cellular and Wi-Fi connections in the Telegram app.

Step 1: Open the Telegram app on the iPhone and go to Settings.

Step 2: Open Data and Storage and make necessary changes in the Auto-Download Media menu.

Tip: Telegram allows you to send up to 2GB of video or file in the chat. Just because someone has sent you 2GB of a file, you shouldn’t download the whole file/video automatically in the background. From the Auto-Download Media menu, you can limit the maximum video and file size to be automatically downloaded in the background.

Stop Telegram From Auto-saving Photos on iPhone

You can stop saving incoming photos from certain chats, groups, and channels on the Telegram iPhone app. Here’s how.

Step 1: Open the Telegram iPhone app and go to Settings.

Step 2: Navigate to Data and Storage > Other > Save Incoming Photos.

Step 3: Disable Save Incoming Photos from Contacts, Other Private Chats, Group Chats, and Channels.

The background downloading in the Telegram iPhone app works slightly differently from Android. When the app isn’t in use, it won’t continue to download large video files in the background. To overcome the limit, toggle on Background Download from the Settings menu.

Open Telegram Settings and go to Data and Storage > Other > Background Download and keep it on. The app will continue downloading media files for a limited time.