Just weeks after adding support for HD photos, Meta’s WhatsApp now lets users send videos in HD resolution.
Once you’ve updated to the latest version of the app, if you try to send a video to someone, you’ll see a new “HD” option on top. Tap on it, and you’ll be able to choose between sending a “standard quality” video, which is typically 480p resolution, and “HD quality,” meaning 720p resolution.
Sorry, sending 4K videos is not supported.
Credit: Stan Schroeder/WhatsApp
Unfortunately, you cannot send videos in quality higher than that; even if the source video is in full HD (1080p) or 4K (2160p) quality, the best WhatsApp will offer is still 720p resolution.
While choosing the video quality, WhatsApp will warn you that standard quality videos use “less storage space” and are “faster to send.” You’ll also see the difference in file size for both options.
As is the case with sending HD photos, you cannot set HD quality to be on by default; you have to choose it manually every time you want to send a higher quality video.
Still, given that most phones these days take HD quality videos by default, it’s nice to be able to preserve at least some of that quality while sending them over WhatsApp.
While I personally have both the HD photo and HD video sending options on iOS (with WhatsApp version 23.17.0), the company says that the features will be rolling out “over the coming weeks,” so it may take some time until all users see them in their apps.
