WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging apps, with over 2 billion users worldwide. As you send messages, photos, videos and more on WhatsApp, all that data takes up storage space on your phone. So does archiving WhatsApp chats free up space on your device? Let’s take a closer look.
Does Archiving Chats Delete Them?
When you archive a chat in WhatsApp, you are not deleting the messages or media from that conversation. Archiving simply removes the chat from your main Chats tab and archives it. This helps declutter your WhatsApp screen by hiding conversations you don’t need regular access to.
But archiving does not delete any messages, photos, videos or other files exchanged in that chat. The entire chat history remains saved on your phone, it is just hidden from view in your main chat list. So archiving chats does not directly free up space.
Does Archived Data Count Towards Storage Usage?
Even though archiving does not delete any data, it may seem like it should not count towards your total WhatsApp storage usage. But that is not the case. The archived messages, media files and documents still take up space on your phone’s storage.
WhatsApp does not separate or exclude the archived chat data from your overall storage usage. The app calculates total usage based on all chats, including archived ones. So while archiving removes chats from view, the data still counts towards the storage space WhatsApp takes up on your phone.
How Much Space Does Archived WhatsApp Data Use?
The amount of storage your archived WhatsApp chats use depends on the size and number of chats you have archived. A few small text conversations may only take up a few megabytes. But if you have large media files like photos and videos in archived chats, or have archived dozens of conversations, it can easily add up to gigabytes of data.
To see exactly how much space your archived chats are using, go to WhatsApp Settings > Data and Storage Usage. Here you can view a breakdown of storage usage for your archived messages and files.
Example of Archived WhatsApp Storage Usage
| Data Type | Storage Used |
|---|---|
| Archived Chats | 1.5 GB |
| Archived Media | 700 MB |
| Total Archived Data | 2.2 GB |
As you can see in this example, archived chats and media can quickly consume gigabytes of storage, even if they are out of sight.
How to Free up Space from Archived WhatsApp Data
Now that we know archiving does not free up space, what can you do to delete archived WhatsApp data and recover storage?
Delete Archived Chats
To remove specific archived conversations, go to Settings > Chats > Archived. Here you will find a list of all your archived chats. Tap and hold on a chat, then choose ‘Delete’ to permanently erase the conversation and free up the storage space it was using.
Clear WhatsApp Storage
You can free up a significant amount of storage in one go by using WhatsApp’s Clear Storage tool. Go to Settings – Data and Storage Usage – Clear Storage. This will delete all chats that are archived or haven’t been accessed in over one year. It also clears large videos, images and other files saved in WhatsApp.
Delete Media from Archived Chats
If you don’t want to erase entire archived conversations, you can selectively delete media within them. Open an archived chat, tap and hold on a photo, video or document, then choose ‘Delete’ to remove the file and recover the storage space.
Back Up Chats to Google Drive
Before deleting archived WhatsApp data, make sure to back up your chat history. You can easily do this by enabling Google Drive backups in WhatsApp Settings. This will let you free up space while retaining a copy of your chat archives in the cloud.
Does Deleting Archived Chats Affect Backups?
When you delete archived WhatsApp conversations, any future backups will no longer contain that chat history. However, previous backups containing the now-deleted chats remain unaffected.
For example, if you make a Google Drive backup on Monday, then delete archived chats on Thursday, the Monday backup will still have the old archived conversations. But the next backup after Thursday will not include the deleted chats.
So feel free to delete archived WhatsApp data to free up space, while knowing it does not retroactively affect your chat history in existing backups.
Conclusion
Archiving WhatsApp chats does not free up space on your phone. The archived messages and media continue taking up storage until you delete them. To recover space from archived data, delete specific chats, run the Clear Storage tool, remove media files or create a fresh backup. With gigabytes of storage potentially trapped in hidden archived conversations, it is well worth spring cleaning your archived WhatsApp chats.