How to disable auto-upload of media in Telegram

Telegram for Windows

Open the Telegram sidebar and go to Settings → Advanced Settings. Find the section "Media Startup". There are three items here: "In private chats", "In groups" and "In channels". By opening any of them, you can choose which files should be downloaded automatically and which should not. You can also set a size limit right there. First of all, you should disable the download of heavy files: video, audio and GIF-animations.

It is also useful to look into the section "Data and memory" → "Manage device memory". Here you can configure the limit for the cache of saved media files and set how often to clear it.

Telegram for macOS

Click on the gear icon below the Telegram contact list. In the opened settings, select "Data and memory". Here we are interested in two sections: "Memory Usage" and "Media Startup".

In "Startup" select which content to download in which chats or not. It would be useful to set a limit on the size of downloaded files. Or you can turn off autoload altogether.

In the Memory Usage section, you can configure how long your media files are kept. If there is a lack of resources, select the option for "1 month" or even "1 week". This will make life easier for those with a 128GB MacBook.

Telegram for Android

Open the Telegram sidebar and select Settings → Data & Storage. As in the desktop versions of the messenger, here you will find two interesting items: "Media startup" and "Memory usage".

Choose which file types to automatically upload and set size limits for them. Then turn on automatic cache cleaning so that the saved pictures do not gather dust in the smartphone's memory for a long time.

Telegram for iOS

Go to Settings → Data and Memory → Auto Upload Media. You can either disable autoloading completely, or restrict it only for certain file types. At the same time, it does not hurt to enable automatic cache clearing in the "Memory Usage" section.

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