Simple trick makes your WhatsApp photos look much better in seconds

A CLEVER WhatsApp trick can improve the quality of your photos and videos.

It means when you send media to people, they’ll get a much better version of it.

WhatsApp has a trick to send uncompressed photos and videosWhatsApp

Right now, WhatsApp does something called compression to your files.

That means the file size of your photos and videos is made smaller.

This makes it faster to send files, and makes them take up less space on the recipient’s phone.

But it also means some of the detail of your media is lost as a result.

For instance, a video may look pixellated – even if you’ve shot it in 4K at 60 frames per second on your fancy new iPhone 13.

Thankfully there’s a trick to make sure the files you send are being received in a higher-quality format.

The first thing you need to know is WhatsApp is already working on fixing this.

WhatsApp is currently testing a system that will give you different quality options for sending media.

You’ll be able to choose Data Saver for compressed files, Best Quality for the highest possible quality, and Auto which will decide on a case-by-case basis.

But that feature is still in testing, and could be weeks or months away.

In the meantime, there’s a trick to get around the compression.

How to avoid WhatsApp media compression

WhatsApp compresses media, but it leaves your transferred documents intact.

So what you need to do is tell WhatsApp you’re trying to send a document – and not a video or photo.

On iPhone, you need to find the media in Photos, and then go to your Share options and choose Save To Files.

The Save To Files option is near the bottom of the image settings, in the same menu you’d use to share a photo, set it as a wallpaper or transfer via AirDrop.

You can then go back into WhatsApp, open a chat and send a file, choose Document and pick the image you want to send.

On Android, rename your photo as a .pdf file.

This means your WhatsApp will see the image as a file – even though it’s actually just a photo disguised as a .pdf document.

Then you can send it as a document over WhatsApp, and the recipient can simply rename the image as .jpg to unlock the original image.

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