how to stop whatsapp using wifi

4 Ways to Save Mobile Data When Using WhatsApp

One of the limited and scarce commodities in mobile communication is mobile data. Unlike Wi-Fi and ADSL, a mobile data plan gives a limit not to go past, and there is a price for each megabyte you use. In some places and for some people, it ends up getting rather expensive at the end of the month. For each app running on your smartphone, you can tweak to save data as much of it is squandered on things you could do without. WhatsApp is no exception. Here are 4 things you can do to use your mobile data optimally with WhatsApp.

Set WhatsApp to Use Less Data During Calls
The app has an option to save data during chats and calls. It allows you to lower the amount of data it uses during voice calls. Although it is not clear how WhatsApp does this exactly in the background, the quality seems to be lower when the Low Data Usage option is activated. It could possibly be using a codec with higher compression, for example. You can test the option by activating it for some time and see how you like the lower-quality calls and make a trade-off.

To activate the data saving option, enter Settings, then Data Usage. In the options, check Low Data Usage.

Don't Download Heavy Media Automatically or how to stop whatsapp using wifi

Like many other instant messaging apps, WhatsApp allows the sharing of images and videos which can be quite bulky. Videos are nice to share and watch but can have dire consequences on data consumption and phone storage. By the way, if you see your smartphone's internal storage getting used up and lacking, having at the media folder of WhatsApp and doing some cleaning up can save you a lot of space.

You can set WhatsApp to download multimedia files automatically only when on Wi-Fi. You may already know that your phone automatically switches to WiFi whenever such connection is present, thereby saving your mobile data.

In the Settings > Data Usage menu, there is a section for Media auto-download. Selecting 'When using mobile data' gives you a menu to check whether to download images, audio, videos, and documents or none of these (by keeping all options unchecked). If you are on a serious mobile data diet, uncheck all. You can, of course, check all in the 'When connected on Wi-Fi' menu, which is the default setting.

Note that if you choose to not download multimedia items automatically, you will always be able to download them manually even on mobile data connection. In the WhatsApp chat area, there will be a placeholder for the item, which you can touch to download.

Restrict Your Chat Backup
WhatsApp allows you to make a backup of your chats and media to the cloud. This means that it stores a copy of all your text chats, images and videos (not your voice calls though) on your Google Drive account so that you can retrieve them later, such as after changing phone or re-installation. This feature helps a lot if you value your conversations and their contents.

Now your chat data does not need to be back up when you are on the go. You can wait till you reach a Wi-Fi hotspot to have it done. You can set that in Settings > Chats > Chat Backup. In the 'Back-up over' option select Wi-Fi instead of Wi-Fi or Cellular. You can also restrict the interval of your backup. By default, it is done monthly. You can change that on the 'Back up to Google Drive' option to never backup, to do it as often as daily or weekly, or whenever you want. There is a button in the main chat Backup menu that allows you to make the backup whenever you want manually.

You also want to exclude videos from your backups, which anyway can be downloaded anyway whenever you want. So, in the same Chat backup menu, make sure the 'Include videos' option remains unchecked.

For iPhone users, the settings are a little bit different. The backup is done on iCloud. There aren't as many options as with the Android version, but the feature is there. Enter the iCloud driver settings in Setting > iCloud > iCloud Drive and set the Use Cellular Data option to off. Excluding videos when backing up can be done in WhatsApp Settings > Chats and Calls > Chat Backup, where you can set the Include Videos option off.