Why Does Instagram Save Photos to My Phone? 

As you might notice, with the progress of today’s smartphones, storage space has become something precious. Apps, photos, and songs take up too much space on our phones and sometimes it costs too much to buy a cloud storage. While I was thinking about it, I thought “Why does Instagram save photos to my phone?”  

In today’s article, we are going to talk about this issue and how it became a problem and how to take control of it, so let’s not waste any more time and get right into it, shall we? 

The Purpose Behind Instagram Saving Photos 

Instagram’s main purpose is to save you some time and give you options. When you make an edit on Instagram or use the best Instagram filters, it automatically saves the photo on your gallery, both the original and the edited version so that you can repost, edit, or share on other platforms without going back to the app and download it. This process saves time while taking up too much storage space on your phone. 

Luckily, this feature is an optional feature, which means you can change it and save yourself from the trouble. 

Why Instagram Does Save Photos to Your Phone Without You Realizing 

Instagram has multiple reasons to save your photos to your phone, you can learn more about them here: 

• Default Settings: First of all, when you install Instagram for the first time, you can realize that it’s the default settings. This means that every time you post something on Instagram, the app will automatically download the image. 

• Saving Both Edited and Original: When you post an image that is edited on Instagram, the app keeps both versions of the image. This creates a duplicate and takes up more storage space. The reason behind this is that you can find the original one and save you from the trouble of losing it. 

• Synchronization with the Gallery: By default, Instagram integrates closely with your gallery. It is syncing any photos you post so that you can save them locally and find them whenever you don’t have an internet connection. It might be a good idea if you are not a fan of cloud storage however, they take up too much space on your phone which can cause glitches, bugs, or freezes if you are low on storage space. 

These are the reasons that you might ask “Why does Instagram save photos to my phone?”. Now that you know the reasons let’s move on to how we can solve this problem and save you some storage space. 

How to Stop Instagram from Saving Photos 

After a short while using the app, I found out that Instagram saves any posts or Stories that I posted locally, on my gallery. At first, it was practical for me since I am an active social media user and post on different platforms. However, it took up too much storage space in time. So, I found how to turn this feature off and if you are struggling because of this feature, you can follow these steps and get rid of it without experiencing any trouble: 

For IOS Users 

• Click on Instagram on your iPhone. 

• Go to your profile page. 

• Find the three lines and open the menu. 

• Scroll down and click on settings. 

• Go to the account page and find original photos. 

• You can find the save original photos option, click on it to turn it off. 

These steps can guide you to turn off this feature. Once you are done, you’ll see that Instagram won’t save any photos to your phone unless you do it yourself. 

For Android Users 

• On your Android device, open your Instagram app. 

• Click on the profile icon at the bottom right corner of your screen. 

• On your profile, tap on the three lines and go to your settings. 

• Choose account and find original posts. 

• Here, you can toggle off the options for save original photos and save posted photos. 

As you can see, the process for turning off saving photos to your phone feature for Android devices is similar to IOS. By following these steps, you can easily turn off this feature and save significant amounts of storage space on your phone. 

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