WhatsApp, the world’s most widely used messaging application, has sometimes been slow to implement certain essential features. For instance, message editing was only recently introduced, lagging behind Telegram, which has offered this feature since 2016.
Another feature available on Telegram, but previously absent on WhatsApp, was the ability to send photos and videos in HD quality. WhatsApp began offering this option in August 2023, prior to which media shared on the platform was compressed to lower quality.
The initial motivation behind WhatsApp’s delayed adoption of these features was primarily to conserve resources. Sending high-quality media to billions of users daily requires managing enormous amounts of data, posing financial and operational challenges for Meta’s servers. Despite these constraints, recent improvements have significantly reduced media loss during transmission while maintaining better overall quality.
Now, media sent through WhatsApp experiences less loss and maintains higher quality. While videos in 4K still undergo compression, the extent is reduced compared to previous methods. Previously, despite WhatsApp supporting HD sending for almost a year, users had to manually select the HD option each time. In contrast, Telegram allows users to configure higher quality sending as the default setting.
You can finally set up sending in HD by default
Although WhatsApp now supports HD sending, users previously had to manually enable this option for each media send, unlike Telegram, where high-quality sending can be set as the default.
Here’s how to set up sending in HD by default
- Launch WhatsApp on your phone.
- Open setting by taping on Thee-dots at the top-right corner.
- Tap on Storage and Data from list.
- In Storage and data menu, tap on Media upload quality.
- After taping on Media upload quality, Chose the default media quality for photos and videos from menu.
- After choosing media quality tap on Save.
Meta has now aligned WhatsApp more closely with Telegram by introducing the option to set HD sending as the default choice. This feature is now available on both iOS and Android platforms, though its visibility may vary as updates roll out gradually across user bases.
