And when your storage is full from videos and gifs that friends exchange in WhatsApp or whatever, or Instagram keeping everything you post, and you want to clean up, there's no easy way to do it.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Oh boy. Do I have a bone to pick with whatsapp. Their message data management is a complete clusterfuck.

Though if you just want to delete media, that's easy. ~~Whatsapp has it's own folder in root that contains a folder for each file type~~. Edit: Not anymore, it's in /Android/media/whatsapp/WhatsApp/Media now. You can safely delete them all, though media files will no longer be accessible in your message history, as WhatsApp has literally no way to keep that stuff around without monolithically saving all of it on your device, locally, forever.

Instagram saves content to a couple folders, all in easy to find places like root, Movies, DCIM and Pictures.

As for Instagram app data, you can clear that from app settings.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Most can be cleaned by going into Settings, Apps, Whatsapp, Storage and clicking delete cache. permanently saved ones may be more problematic

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

No. It's not deleted with the cache. It's like everything is saved in a separate folder.

[–] BCsven@lemmy.ca 1 points 9 months ago

Yeah for that it is launch files app, choose device, android, data, app/com/org folder, then there will be a files subfolder. which is often split into pictures, audio, movies, etc.

it's a deep dive for sure