
The feature doesn’t seems to be available for iOS users, probably because the directory where WhatsApp saves media isn’t easily accessible, so this problem does not occur for them.ĭo you like this feature? Did you precisely discover how much the files can be old in order to redownload them again? Let us know on Twitter and read our next announcements on our Telegram Channel! Media files continue to be end-to-end encrypted also if WhatsApp doesn’t delete them from the server, so there’s anything to worry about. Only if the file has been deleted in sdcard/WhatsApp/ and you have the message in the chat, you can successfully download it again. In order to request to download the deleted media, it’s very important that we didn’t delete the message in WhatsApp, otherwise it won’t be possible. With very old media (for example with images sent on last August 2017) it doesn’t seem possible, because WhatsApp asks us to request to the sender to send the media again in order to get it back. In according to our recent tests, we have successfully downloaded images and videos received 2 months ago on the 2.18.113 version (presenting an error, but after that the image was correctly downloaded), and 3 months ago (we had to try multiple times in order to successfully redownload it). Recently, WhatsApp has modified this behavior: when a media is successfully downloaded, WhatsApp doesn’t delete it from the server, allowing the users to download it again if the file was accidentally deleted in the path where WhatsApp saves media ( sdcard/WhatsApp/). This feature was partially available before: undownloaded media were available for 30 days and, when the recipient downloaded the media, WhatsApp immediately deleted it from the server. This automatically translates in the fact that WhatsApp continues to store our media on their servers also after downloading them. Since a few days, WhatsApp allows to download deleted media from their servers again. WhatsApp has silently added a new feature in these last minor updates for Android, precisely between the 2.18.106 and 2.18.110 updates.Įvery time someone sent us an image, video, GIF, voice message and a document on WhatsApp, and we deleted the relative file in the WhatsApp folder, we weren’t be able to download it anymore, but.
