Saving Photos on Telegram on Android + Fixes

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Learn how to save photos to your Android's gallery from Telegram

Written by Darlene Antonelli, MA

Last Updated: December 1, 2023 Fact Checked

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Saving Individual Images

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Enabling "Save to Gallery"

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Fixes

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Video

This wikiHow teaches you how to save images from Telegram chats to your Android's gallery. You can save individual images in a chat, or you can enable automatic downloads of all images to your Gallery.

Things You Should Know

To download a specific image, tap the individual image you want to save. Hit ⁝ > Save to gallery .
To enable automatic image downloads, tap ☰ in the app. Then, choose Settings > Chat Settings . Tap the switch next to "Save to Gallery."
If you're not seeing the "Save to Gallery" option, check to make sure the app has permission to use photo storage or that you've enabled the feature in Settings.

Section 1 of 3:

Saving Individual Images

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Its icon is a white paper airplane on a blue background. Tap the Telegram icon on your Home screen or Apps menu to open Telegram.
This displays all messages in the chat.

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Tap the image you want to save. The image now appears at the center of the screen.
- Do not tap and hold the image. This will only give you the option to forward the image within Telegram. Tap the image quickly to display the menu icon in the upper-right corner.
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Tap ⁝ . It's at the top-right corner of the screen. This displays the menu.
- If you don't see the menu button and you see a green checkmark next to the image, you held the image for too long. Tap the "X" icon in the upper-left corner and tap the image again quickly.
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Tap Save to gallery . The photo is now saved to the gallery on your phone or tablet.
- If you don't see the "Save to Gallery" option in the three-dot menu, make sure Telegram has the appropriate photo-storage permissions. Go to the app's Permissions page in Settings ( Settings > Apps > Telegram > Permissions ) and enable "Files and media."
- If you already have automatic download enabled, you will not see the "Save to Gallery" option in the menu so you don't download duplicates.

Section 2 of 3:

Enabling "Save to Gallery"

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Its icon is a white paper airplane on a blue background. Tap the Telegram icon on your Home screen or Apps menu.
It's the icon with three horizontal lines in the upper-right corner. This displays the menu.
It's near the bottom of the menu. It's next to an icon that resembles a gear.
The icon looks like a pie chart.
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Tap to enable the "Save to Gallery" feature for everything. As long as you want to be able to save pictures from a private chat, a channel, or a group chat, make sure all of these are enabled. You can also only enable individual switches too.
- Tap the back arrow to navigate back to Settings.
It's next to an icon that resembles a speech bubble.
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Scroll down and tap the toggle switch next to "Save to Gallery." With this enabled, all images sent over Telegram will automatically be saved to the Gallery on your phone. Tap this option again if you want to stop Telegram from automatically saving every image to your gallery.
- See if you have "Enable auto-download media" on if you're frequently switching between Wi-Fi and data. Some images may not automatically download and make you wonder where they are! Open Telegram, tap the three-line menu icon and select Settings > Data and storage and check under "Automatic media download." Both "when using Wi-Fi" and "when using data" should be checked if you want every image downloaded automatically to your gallery.

Section 3 of 3:

Fixes

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Update the app. If your app is out of date, you may not see "Save to Gallery" in the three-dot menu.
- Even if your app is up-to-date, an update could be in the Google Play Store tomorrow, so check frequently. Not seeing "Save to Gallery" is a popular bug that many users are reporting, so there should be an update soon to fix it.
Even if you just updated the app, your phone could still be glitched or bugged and restarting it is a good option.
It's not uncommon that the servers could be experiencing an outage. You can do a simple search on Google to find statuses from sites like Downdetector that indicate the Telegram server statuses.
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Uninstall the app and reinstall it. In your Android's settings under Apps, you can uninstall Telegram. Then, open Google Play and reinstall it.
- If the cache is still full, try clearing it , then uninstalling and reinstalling the app to see if that helps.