How to send HD photos and videos in WhatsApp and why you would want to

WhatsApp – basically the standard messaging application for anyone living outside the US – is adding a pretty important upgrade to the photo and video experience for users. Replacing the average quality, highly-compressed images and video we’re used to with WhatsApp, you’ll now have the option to send media in “HD quality” moving forward.

Mark Zuckerberg announced this feature via Facebook and Instagram a few days back and since that time, most users have started to see it showing up as available to them when they know what to look for. At the time of the announcement, this only applied to photos, but in my testing this morning, I’m already seeing the addition of HD video as well. Your mileage may vary.

How to Send HD Quality Media on WhatsApp:

1. Choose a photos/video: Launch WhatsApp and open any chat thread. You can either click a new photo or video using the app’s camera or select existing media from your device.
2. Locate the toggle: After selecting your media and entering the editing view, you’ll notice a fresh HD icon at the top. Simply tap on it.
3. Choosing your quality: You’ll get an option to send your media either in Standard quality or High quality. The chosen setting will apply to all media files you’re sending. The interface also shows the resolution and, for videos, the file size.
4. Sending the Media: Click ‘Done’ followed by the send button. Media sent in HD will feature a small HD badge on its corner.

For a bit of context, standard quality photos in WhatsApp are usually reduced to less than a 3MP resolution. However, with this new HD option, you can elevate this up to 18MP. For most default camera settings, you’re likely capturing photos somewhere around 12MP, making the HD quality option able to send the full-blown version of your photo right in a WhatsApp chat. Video resolution gets a significant boost, too, though you won’t be sending any 4K or even 1080p clips anytime soon. For videos, the HD bump takes things from 480p to 720p.

It’s worth noting that this is a per-message setting and you will have to choose HD quality every time you send media for now. It is currently unclear if that will remain the case, but I think the nature of your photo or video will likely dictate whether you actually want a high-res piece of media being shared in a simple chat. I know for most things I send in WhatsApp, I don’t really need to cram all those pixels in. For other times, I do.

Why standard quality may be the better option at times

Sending and receiving media in HD sounds fantastic, but it comes with some drawbacks you may not be considering. Higher quality means larger file sizes, longer send times, and more of your cloud backup being used up. Remember, the images you send to others are getting backed up in most cases in the WhatsApp setup, that means precious cloud storage is being taken up on both the sender’s and receiver’s end. And I’d wager most people don’t want you sending huge photos just to illustrate a point in a chat.

The flip side to that is the fact that when sharing a photo in WhatsApp for a specific use case that needs more pixels (say I need to shoot a featured image to someone for the site), I can use the HD mode to know that it was sent in full resolution and not resized to fit the standard quality settings. There are plenty of times I’ve had to stop others from sending me photos via WhatsApp due to quality concerns, so that won’t be an issue moving forward.

I guess I say all that to remind you that higher quality can be wildly useful, but it isn’t always the best option. For that reason, I think WhatsApp should leave this feature behind a switch for each peice of media sent. For 80% of the stuff that gets sent, I’d wager the standard quality is fine, will share faster, and will take up less storage for all users involved. And when a bit more quality is called for, the process to crank up the resolution is pretty simple.