If you’re using an iPhone updated to iOS 17.4, you’ll likely encounter an error: Photos sent to you via WhatsApp copies are saved to the gallery. Any photo file that comes to you during a conversation will appear twice.

This only happens if we enable automatic downloading of photos from the gallery, the focus of the problem and its solution. We explain what it is and how the problem can be easily solved.

How to fix duplicate photo issue in iOS 17

When updating to iOS 17.4, many users encounter a serious problem: all the photos they receive via WhatsApp are saved as copies. This is a problem both when organizing the gallery and when it comes to our internal storage: everything will weigh twice as much.

Fortunately, there is a workaround to this problem: a WhatsApp option you may not know about that can help you save lots of space on your internal storage.

• Open WhatsApp app
• Go to ‘Settings’
• Click ‘Backup’
• Disable ‘Save to Photos’

As the name suggests, if you activate this option, all photos sent to you via WhatsApp will be saved in the iPhone gallery (Photos application). Due to a bug in iOS 17.4, these are saved in duplicate, as we were able to verify by several colleagues at Xataka.

Another solution is from the Photos app, remove duplicate files. You’ll find this menu under “More” under albums in the Photos app.

The bug doesn’t just affect last generation iPhones, we also had this bug repeated on the iPhone 11 and iPhone 12, so the bug appears to be widespread. It is currently unknown whether the error is caused only by iOS 17.4 or if there is a bug in the WhatsApp application.

Image | Xataka

in Xataka | iOS 17: A guide with 61 functions and tips to get the most out of Apple’s mobile operating system