Instagram is a widely-used social media platform that allows users to share their photos and videos with friends and the public. While Instagram offers many exciting features, there is one particular feature that some users, including myself, would prefer to disable: the automatic saving of photos and videos to your smartphone’s gallery. This feature often leads to unnecessary duplication and consumes valuable storage space.
I understand the intention behind this feature, as it allows users to easily save their edited photos. However, with the abundance of photo editing tools available on smartphones today, using Instagram to edit photos has become outdated. If you find yourself struggling with this issue, you’re in the right place. In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through the steps to stop Instagram from saving your uploaded pictures back to your smartphone gallery.
Table of Contents
Disabling Auto-Save for Edited Pictures/Videos
There are two ways to take and post photos on Instagram:
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You can use your smartphone’s camera app or a third-party camera app of your choice to capture a photo or record a video, and then post it on Instagram. In this case, the original photo will still be saved, but you can choose whether to keep the edited version or not.
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Alternatively, you can use Instagram’s camera feature to capture your photo or video and make edits within the app. The downside of this method is that the resulting quality may be lower. However, if quality is not a concern for you, you can choose to save or delete your edited photo or video.
Disabling Auto-Save for Android
If you take photos with your phone’s native camera app and share them on Instagram, the original photo will always be saved in your camera roll. To prevent duplication, follow these steps:
- Go to your Instagram profile and navigate to the settings area.
- Look for the option “Save Posted Photos” and “Save Posted Videos.”
- Turn off both options. By doing so, photos and videos you post on Instagram will no longer be saved to your Android device’s camera roll.
Disabling Auto-Save for iOS
For iOS users, the process is similar to Android:
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Navigate to your profile by clicking on your Avatar at the bottom right.
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Go to the settings area and look for “Save Original Photos.”
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Toggle off the “Save Original” feature.
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When you turn off this option, photos you capture using Instagram’s camera will no longer be saved to your iPhone’s camera roll.
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However, the version you post will still be saved. To further customize your settings:
- Head to your iPhone’s General Settings.
- Find and select Instagram, then choose Photos.
- From there, you can decide what you want to be saved on your device.
If you select “Never,” Instagram will no longer have permission to read and write from your camera roll. This means that the application will not save posted photos to your camera roll. This option is ideal if you don’t want to save any photos when using Instagram’s camera.
If you prefer to use your phone’s native camera app and post photos to Instagram from there, you can select “Read and Write” instead. However, be aware that both the original and posted photos will be saved on your camera roll.
Remember, by following these steps, you can regain control over the automatic saving feature and free up valuable storage space on your smartphone.
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That’s it! Now you can enjoy using Instagram without the hassle of automatic photo and video saving.
