Adjusting WhatsApp behavior to save pictures

[Android Central Question]

Hi Everyone,

I am growing increasingly frustrated with WhatsApp and given it's such a popular app I have come to admit the problem must come from me and no the app itself.

Simply put, for any other messaging app (Messenger, Telegram, etc.), whenever someone sends me a message, the experience is pretty straightforward:
1) The image/video is already loaded and visible in the thread
2) I can click on the image/video to go full screen
3) I can click on the 3 dots or equivalent to save the image/video to my gallery

I fail to reproduce the same behavior with WhatsApp. It seems I either get to have all images/videos downloaded to my gallery, which is useless and insanely annoying. Or I get blurred thumbnails for images/videos in the thread and then need to download to see.

FYI, I have a Samsung S9+ with latest updates.

Thanks for your help!

 

[ashune]

You can set WhatsApp to hide all pictures sent to you from the Gallery app, while they'll still be downloaded and instantly accessible. Go to WhatsApp -> Settings -> Chats -> Media visibility. There are more methods mentioned here (e.g. creating a .nomedia file to hide all WhatsApp pictures from your gallery): https://faq.whatsapp.com/android/how-to-stop-saving-whatsapp-media-to-your-phones-gallery/

 

[Hadrien_Bessou]

Thanks @mr_master for the answer.
The thing is this option only partially solves the problem.

If I turn off Media Visibility, images don't get automatically downloaded to my Gallery, so I don't need the .nomedia trick.
But if there is a picture I like and want to save to my gallery, I still can't do that. If I click on an image to go full screen, and then press the 3 DOTS, I don't have the option to save locally. Same if I do a multi-selection.

So the question becomes, with Media Visibility on, how do I save select images to my Gallery app?

Thanks again!

 

[ashune]

There are two things that come to mind:

1. Open the picture in the WhatsApp chat, then tap the three dots and tap "Share". Then share it to any app you want. If your file manager app supports it, you can share it to the file manager and save it wherever you want. Alternatively, share it to Google Drive (or any other cloud storage app), then download it to your phone. Maybe you can even share it with your Gallery app.

2. If the picture quality doesn't matter that much, simply open the picture inside the WhatsApp chat and take a screenshot.