When a photograph, or any media file, is received inside WhatsApp, it is automatically saved to the phone’s physical memory. The media is downloaded without you having to open the corresponding message (we are dealing with Android here, the iPhone version of WhatsApp may work differently).

Now that we know that the incoming image file is on the phone’s SD card, all we need is way to automatically transfer the file to our computer. That’s where Dropbox or Google Drive can help.

Download WhatsApp Photos to Computer

We can watch the Media folder of WhatsApp and as soon as a new file is added to that folder, it is automatically synced with Dropbox. MetaCtrl has Android apps for Dropbox, Google Drive and Box that can help here.

1. Open your Dropbox and create a folder, say WhatsApp.
   
2. Launch the DropSync app and authorize it to access your Dropbox account.
   
3. Set the Local (watch) folder as /storage/emulated/0/WhatsApp/Media/WhatsApp Images and set the Dropbox folder as the one that you created in Step #1.
   
4. Set the sync method as “Upload only” so that it is not a 2-way sync and only WhatsApp images are sent to Dropbox but not the other way.
   
5. Go to the app settings and change the Autosync Interval to 5 minutes (the default is an hour).
   That’s it. Within minutes of you getting an image on WhatsApp, it will be sent to your Dropbox account in the cloud and since you have Dropbox running on your desktop too, the image will be downloaded on the computer as well.

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