WhatsApp is using 18 GB on your Mac

15 September 2026

The WhatsApp app for Mac stores a local copy of every photo, video and voice note you've viewed, in every chat. A group that passes one video a day for three years adds up to gigabytes. It all sits in a folder Finder hides, so Storage settings shows it as "System Data".

Where it lives

~/Library/Group Containers/group.net.whatsapp.WhatsApp.shared/Message/Media/

One folder per chat, named by WhatsApp's internal ID for the chat, not the person. That's why sorting by size doesn't tell you much on its own:

du -sh ~/Library/Group\ Containers/group.net.whatsapp.WhatsApp.shared/Message/Media/* | sort -h | tail

Is it safe to delete?

The Mac copy is a copy. The messages and their media stay in the chat, and the originals are on your phone (and in your phone's backup). Open an old photo again and WhatsApp fetches it again from your phone. One caveat: media that is very old and gone from your phone as well can't be fetched again, so treat deleting as "gone from this Mac" and keep anything you'd miss.

Don't touch anything outside Message/Media in that folder. The databases next to it are your message history on this Mac.

In ddeploy

WhatsApp shows as its own row, expandable chat by chat with real names (ddeploy reads them from WhatsApp's own database on your Mac; nothing leaves it). It's marked REVIEW and never preselected: tick the group with the good-morning videos, leave the family chat. Deleted media goes to the Trash.

More on Mac storage: Old iOS simulator runtimes · Project build folders · Docker Desktop disk space · Time Machine local snapshots