WhatsApp will make it convenient to share uncompressed media

By a wide margin, WhatsApp is the most widely used instant messaging app in many regions of the world. The app does, however, have some drawbacks, such as harsh compression for all shared media. Earlier this month, the platform made it possible to share HD photos and videos, although the permitted resolutions are still well below the capabilities of the top smartphone camera systems. Thankfully, we now know that Meta is working to facilitate the sharing of photos and movies on WhatsApp in their original, uncompressed resolution.

Even though WhatsApp isn’t a site that prioritizes material as Instagram does, compression ruins photographs and videos, negating any benefits of purchasing high-resolution smartphone cameras. Even with the new HD video sharing feature turned on, it downscales 4K films to 720p, which are distinctly fuzzy on even mid-range phone displays and significantly more so on bigger screens like tablets.

WABetaInfo gives us our first look at proof of a technology that would allow you to send photos and movies on WhatsApp without any compression. A snapshot of the Android app’s beta version, v2.23.18.12, reveals a new Choose from Gallery option under Attach (paperclip symbol) Documents. Even though WhatsApp might have introduced an Uncompressed option to the fly-out for HD image sharing, adding this choice to the document attachment menu is equally acceptable.

For starters, according to WABetaInfo, the associated files would be exchanged as documents rather than typical photos. The Android system file picker must be used in place of WhatsApp’s image attachment interface; however, you can still attach picture files as documents to avoid compression. This may change if full-resolution sharing is officially supported, in which case you will hopefully be directed to WhatsApp’s gallery-style image or video choice.

Please take note that uncompressed media sharing support is still under development and is not currently available to beta testers. However, we are pleased to see that Meta developers are responding to user feature requests and creating these crucial additions. Because WhatsApp now supports sharing files as large as 2GB, you can attach media files as documents to keep them uncompressed until it launches. The awkward Android file selection UI you must utilize is the only drawback.