WhatsApp is themost popular instant messaging servicein many parts of the world, by a landslide margin. However, the app has its flaws, like aggressive compression for all shared media. The platform introducedsupport for sharing HD imagesand videos earlier this month, but the supported resolutions are still a far cry from the capabilities of thebest smartphone camera systems. Thankfully, we have learned that Meta is developing support for sharing images and videos on WhatsApp in their uncompressed, original resolution.
Although WhatsApp isn’t a media-first platform like Instagram, compression wreaks havoc with images and video, nullifying any advantages of investing in high-resolution smartphone cameras. Even with thenew HD video sharing optionenabled, it reduces 4K videos to 720p, which are noticeably blurry on even mid-range phone displays, and even more so on larger screens like tablets.
Now,WABetaInfogives us our first look at evidence of a system, so you can share images and videos without no compression on WhatsApp. In a screenshot taken on beta v2.23.18.12 of the Android app, we see a newChoose from galleryoption, seemingly underAttach(paperclip icon) →Documents. Although WhatsApp could have added anUncompressedoption to the fly-out for HD image sharing, placing this option in the document attachment menu is just justifiable too.
For one, WABetaInfo says the attached files will be shared as documents, and not conventional images. More importantly, you can attach image files as documents even today to dodge compression, but you’ll have to use the Android system file picker instead of WhatsApp’s image attachment interface. Official support for full-resolution sharing could change this, hopefully routing you to WhatsApp’s gallery-style image/video picker instead.
Note that support for uncompressed media sharing is still in development and unavailable to beta testers at the moment. So, a potential release date remains shrouded in mystery. However, we are happy to see Meta developers taking feature requests from users and developing these much-needed features. Until it rolls out, you can attach media files as documents, so they stay uncompressed, because WhatsApp now supportssharing files as large as 2GB. The only downside is the clunky Android file picker UI you must use.
