Use these settings to share photos at their best quality

You may not realize that the messaging app you choose may not be able to send photos at the best quality. It may resize or compress the images you share to make it easier to send. This is useful if you have limited or unstable connections, but sometimes shrinking down will make your image look small or even blurry when you arrive at your destination.

To send higher quality images on Android and iOS and make the most of your images, you need to understand what settings you need to adjust and where to find them. Once you have this in mind, you are free to adapt to every photo sharing situation.

Send high-quality photos in WhatsApp

When sharing images on WhatsApp, Meta owns instant messaging software will degrade the quality of your photo unless you instruct it not to do so. To open the media quality options for WhatsApp on iOS, click Set , Storage and Data and Media Upload Quality. On Android, click three dots (top right corner), and go to Settings , Storage and Data and Photo upload quality.

You have three options: Auto (recommended), Best Quality and Data Saver. WhatsApp does not publicly state the exact specifications for automatic mode use, or how it decides which settings to choose in any particular situation. But if you want to make sure that the photos always look best when sharing photos, choose Best Quality.

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You will see a message telling you that the best quality photos are larger and may be sent longer, so if you don't have an especially fast connection, you may also want to use the data saver sometimes. >.

Improve image quality on Signal

To adjust the image sharing quality settings in Signal, click

three points (top right corner), then click Settings , Data and Storage and Sent media quality.

Finally, select Standard or HD. Signal does not provide details about both options, but if you want to maximize the quality of your shared media, you should choose HD.

Change iMessage photo quality

If you rely on Apple's instant messaging service, you should know that there is a data saving mode that will reduce the quality of the images you share. Make sure this mode is not enabled in just a moment - From the main iOS Settings app, select Message and scroll down to Low Quality Image Mode toggle switch. If enabled, turn it off to maximize the quality of shared images.

Share photos from Apple without losing quality

There are no quality settings to know in the Photos app on your iPhone, but be aware that the platform automatically resizes the images in shared albums to a maximum width or height of 2048 pixels. To resolve this issue, select a different sharing method through the Apple Photos app, which does not involve sharing albums. For example, sending a direct iCloud link is a good alternative.

How to fix Twitter photo quality

Twitter also has settings for managing the quality of photos and videos you share. On the home screen of the mobile app, click on your profile picture (top left corner), then go to Settings and Support and then go to Settings and Privacy . There, go to Accessibility, Display and Language and Data Usage. Set the High Quality Image Upload and High Quality Video Upload options to work on Mobile and Wi-Fi to ensure you always share the best files Version.

Share Google Photo Files in Original Quality

Google Photos does not have image and video quality settings for sharing photos, but it has settings for uploading these files to the cloud. If you want to share images and clips in original quality, you can only do this with files uploaded at maximum resolution.

In the mobile app, click your profile picture (top right corner), and then click Photo Settings , Backup, Backup Quality and original quality.

How to upload high-quality photos on Instagram

Meta's photo sharing app introduces image quality settings relatively slowly, but it's available now. Instagram settings, especially make it easier for users to share images and videos through unstable connections.

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To set them, go to your Instagram profile on the mobile app, click the burger menu in the upper right corner of the screen, and then click Settings and Privacy . Under Your Applications and Media, select Data Usage and Media Quality. To make sure you share the best version of the image, switch to the switch next to upload at the highest quality . The platform warns that this option may increase upload time, especially if your connection is unstable.

Other apps without photo quality settings

For applications we didn't mention—including Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Google Chat, etc.—the images and videos you upload have no quality settings.

Not only that, there is little information about whether these platforms completely compress your photos. If you really want to avoid the application changing the quality of your pictures and videos, use an instant messaging app with these settings, or use a direct link to an app like Dropbox.

This story has been updated. It was originally released on January 18, 2022.