WhatsApp duplicate photos on iPhone: why it happens, how to avoid it and solutions

Anyone who has updated their iPhone to version 17.4 of iOS has discovered a bug introduced with this new update: the duplication of WhasApp images, which causes them to occupy twice as much space in the phone’s memory. This makes the images we receive through the messaging application appear twice, so if we are one of those who are in several groups with people who are friends to constantly send memes, the memory will pay dearly.

Why is this happening and how to fix it?

This will happen to anyone who has the option to automatically download WhatsApp images enabled, which is by default unless we have changed it. Until this bug is fixed, we can opt for a temporary and really simple solution.

To do this, open the WhatsApp application and go to the settings. Then go to “Backup” and uncheck the “Save to photos” option. In this way, we will prevent the images we receive from WhatsApp from being saved in our photo gallery, so there will be no duplication.

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We can also go to “More items” in the photo gallery and delete duplicate files. This is thanks to an option introduced in iOS version 16. In the Duplicates folder, we will be able to see all the repeated images we have, and we can check them by looking at the size of both to verify that they are exactly the same. To delete them, press the “Merge” button that appears to the right of each duplicate pair of images.