WhatsApp Will Now Let Users Send HD Photos on iOS and Android

The latest WhatsApp feature brings the option to send photos in HD instead of lower quality. This new option will preserve photo quality on large snaps that could benefit from limited compression.

Apps like WhatsApp found themselves preferred by many users in the age of SMS texting due to sending and receiving photos being almost compression-free. While that’s – mostly – no longer an issue, the app still emphasizes sending high-quality images.

Previously, when a user sent a photo to someone on WhatsApp, the app automatically compressed the photo and reduced its resolution so that the file became smaller, resulting in less data being consumed to send it, which resulted in poor-quality photos. With this update, users will be able to send the image in a better resolution.

The “HD” option appears when users prepare to send photos. While Standard quality reduces photos taken with an iPhone to 960×1280 pixels, HD quality keeps the image at its original resolution of 3024×4032 pixels.

“HD photos are clearer. Standard photos use less storage space and are faster to send,” a message in the app reads.

Of course, there’s still some compression even when sending a photo with the HD option turned on, but the result is much less aggressive than before. Anyone who receives a high-resolution photo via WhatsApp will see the “HD” label on it.

According to Meta, the HD photos feature should become available to all WhatsApp users in the coming weeks. The company also confirmed that it has been working on letting users send HD videos soon. In order to get access to these features, make sure you have the latest version of WhatsApp – available for free on the App Store.

WhatsApp’s new HD images will roll out to both Android and iOS users over the coming weeks and will allow them to fine-tune image sending based on a variety of factors, like internet speed and data consumption.

This new feature first appeared in a beta version of the app back in June, which gives some additional context beyond Mark’s recent announcement.