Here’s how to activate this feature on WhatsApp.
How to Change the Photo Quality Setting
WhatsApp presents three options when selecting media upload quality. They are:
An Auto option: This is WhatsApp’s default quality. But it still compresses the uploaded photo. Best Quality: This allows you to send a photo with the highest possible resolution. Data Saver option: Uses a higher compression to reduce data usage.
To use a different upload quality, open WhatsApp on your smartphone and, from the main screen, follow these steps:
On Android, tap the three dots at the top-right and select Settings. On iPhone, tap Settings at the lower-right. Go to Storage and Data. At the bottom, tap Photo upload quality. The default selection is Auto. Select Best quality to always use the best media quality. Or choose Data saver if you don’t mind low picture quality and want to save space.
What Difference Does the Best Quality Make?
You might expect to preserve picture resolution when you set WhatsApp to send the best quality. But even this setting still has resolution and size limits.
Setting the best quality doesn’t mean sending the original full picture resolution. Instead, you’ll only be able to send the best quality that WhatsApp supports.
Surprisingly, there isn’t much difference between resolution and size regardless of the setting.
This new WhatsApp feature does allow you to send higher-quality pictures. But the best way to preserve quality while sending pictures on WhatsApp is to post them as documents.
Can’t Find That Feature on Your WhatsApp?
You might not see the option to set media quality on your WhatsApp if it’s out of date. The best way to resolve this issue is to check if WhatsApp is out of date and then update it.
To see if WhatsApp is up to date, open the Play Store on Android or App Store on iPhone. Search for WhatsApp. You’ll get a prompt to update it if it’s not up to date.
Tweak Picture Quality on WhatsApp
There was some anticipation when users first spotted this WhatsApp feature in July 2021. But WhatsApp didn’t announce details of each setting until the feature landed.
As you’ve seen, even the best quality setting is still subject to compression. Nonetheless, what’s cool about this feature is that you’re in control of the quality setting. If you want to save data, you can, but you can send higher quality images if necessary too.
