WhatsApp Will Now Allow Users To Share 'HD' Photos

WhatsApp is turning on a feature that will allow users to exchange higher-quality “HD” photographs over the messaging app. “Sharing photos on WhatsApp just got an upgrade,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Instagram via his Meta broadcast channel. “Now you can send in HD.”

Over the next several weeks, users with the feature will be able to send higher-quality and higher-resolution photographs (likely still compressed from the original) from Android, iOS, or the web, and receivers on any device will see a little symbol indicating it as such. According to Meta, HD video support will be available shortly.

When users activate the new feature, they will notice a “HD” gear icon when adding a picture to a chat thread, as seen in beta versions posted in screenshots by a reliable source. According to the magazine, the functionality was originally available to beta testers on iOS version 23.11.0.76 and Android version 2.23.12.13.

According to the source, after pressing the HD symbol, the “photo quality” choice displays. It has two resolution options: regular (1600 x 1052) and HD (4096 x 2692). Meta hasn’t said how compressed the photographs would be overall or how they will seem when compared to transmitting images over Apple’s iMessage or any other rival platform. The higher-quality photos will also be subject to WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption settings.

On sluggish connections, receivers will have the option of keeping the basic quality version or upgrading to HD. Furthermore, senders will continue to use normal quality transmission, delaying the inevitable need to free space in your phone storage after receiving too many photographs in the group chat.