WhatsApp might be the most popular chat app in the world, but it hasn’t always been the best for sending photos and videos. The app traditionally had a 16MB limit on any media you sent, and, even still, compressed it to save space. That compression resulted in lower quality images and videos, which is frustrating in a time when smartphones have incredible cameras.
Luckily for those of us on WhatsApp, things are about to get a lot less blurry. Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday, Aug. 11 that WhatsApp now supports high quality photo-sharing—although you might have missed the option if you weren’t looking for it. The update didn’t include support for HD videos, however, until the company quietly updated the app a week later.
How to send high-quality photos and videos on WhatsApp
Now, when you attempt to share a photo or video in WhatsApp, you might see a new “HD” button, located next to the crop tool, that allows you to choose whether to send it in “standard quality” or “HD quality.” The former applies the same compression WhatsApp has used on images for years, and which noticeably reduces the quality when you’re sharing larger photos. The new “HD quality” option allows you to share your photos and videos with more detail, closer to what you’d expect sharing a photo in an app like Apple’s Messages.
However, “HD” videos isn’t exactly what you might think it is. It maxes out at 720p, even if your original video was recorded in 1080p or 4K, which means WhatsApp is still compressing the video quite a lot. Still, it’s better than standard quality, which drops the resolution to around 480p, so videos have never looked better on WhatsApp than they do after this update.
Likewise, WhatsApp still applies some compression to photos sent via the HD Quality setting, so even now, you won’t be able to send HD photos in their native resolution. But they’ll also look much better than they did before, perhaps better than their “HD” video counterparts.
In addition, the option only appears for media large enough to justify HD quality in the first place. If WhatsApp doesn’t think the photo or video is high-quality enough, you’ll only be able to send it in SD.
This feature isn’t exactly new to those of us keeping tabs on the app’s in-the-works features. WhatsApp has been testing the ability to send high-quality images in chats since as far back as June: The company dropped the feature in beta version 23.11.0.76 on iOS, and 2.23.12.13 on Android.
How to send higher-quality videos in WhatsApp
While WhatsApp’s new high quality option may still compress videos more than you like, there is a way to send high quality videos—as well as high quality files of any kind—in WhatsApp chats. Rather than send your videos as videos, you can send them as documents. WhatsApp has a 100MB limit on documents, and apparently anything can be a “document.”
To send a video file via this method, open a WhatsApp conversation, tap the attachment icon (Android) or the (+) (iOS), choose “Document,” then choose the files you want to share. WhatsApp will send the files without compression, so you can share your content in its full quality (as long as it’s under 100MB). Since videos these days tend to add up the megabytes (or gigabytes) fast, you might need to limit this method to shorter videos. To preserve the quality of longer videos and larger files, you’ll need to use another sharing method, like Dropbox or Google Drive.