It’s easy to send someone a freshly-captured photograph via the iPhone’s Messages app all thanks to a dedicated button located just to the left of the text input field. Upon capturing a photograph this way and sending it, iOS automatically saves a copy of that photograph to the Camera Roll so that the user can reference it later on.
Apple had good intentions here no doubt, but in many cases, we find ourselves navigating to the Photos app after capturing and sending a photograph in the Messages app to delete it from our Camera Roll afterward. I can personally relate to this particular dilemma, and that’s one reason why I’m excited to share the likes of a newly released and free jailbreak tweak dubbed Don’tSaveMessagePhotos by iOS developer lint.
Just as the tweak’s name implies, Don’tSaveMessagePhotos prevents iOS from auto-saving a copy of photographs taken in the Messages app to the Camera Roll after sending. In a nutshell, its sole intention is to prevent users from needing to conduct image cleanup afterward.
If you appreciate iOS’ native photograph-saving functionality out of the box, then you obviously wouldn’t need to install Don’tSaveMessagePhotos. On the other hand, those who share the same view I do about finding it both cumbersome and irritating having to delete unwanted images saved to the Camera Roll after snapping a one-off photograph to send to somebody afterward will find salvation in installing Don’tSaveMessagePhotos.
If you don’t particularly side with one camp or the other, and would prefer to save certain photographs to the Camera Roll on a case-by-case basis, then that’s fine too. Upon installing the tweak, you would merely save the image to your Camera Roll manually from the Messages app conversation in question.
Don’tSaveMessagePhotos doesn’t come with any options to configure, but if we could recommend any improvements for the tweak, we’d say a prompt asking the user whether they’d like to save the photograph to their Camera Roll or not would be useful, as it would make the aforementioned case-by-case basis situation more easily manageable without automatically cluttering up the Photos app.
Those interested in trying Don’tSaveMessagePhotos can download it for free from the lint repository via their favorite package manager. The tweak supports jailbroken iOS 12, 13, and 14 devices.
If you aren’t already using the lint repository, then you can add it your package manager of choice using the following URL:
https://lint.github.io/repo/
Where do you stand on the save vs. not save debate? Let us know in the comments section below.
