WhatsApp rolling out update with ‘HD photos’ for iOS and Android

August 18, 2023

2 min read

WhatsApp on Thursday began releasing an update for iPhone and Android users with “HD photos.” As the name suggests, this feature allows users to send images in high resolution with low compression, which was widely requested by WhatsApp users.

WhatsApp now lets users send HD photos

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

As announced by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg (via TechCrunch), the latest version of WhatsApp introduces an “HD” button that appears when users prepare to send images. 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 an image 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.

HD videos coming soon

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.

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