These days, messaging apps are as important as ever. Being able to quickly and reliably contact anyone in your life is essential — it’s why Google continues to boost its RCS capabilities. WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging clients worldwide, but it has its fair share of limitations. Video files have always been compressed unless sent as a document, but a future update to the app might finally add quality options.

As spotted by WABetaInfo, WhatsApp beta 2.21.14.6 on Android hints at the ability to swap your default quality when sending videos. Currently, the “Storage and data” menu in WhatsApp doesn’t allow you to customize video preferences, but that could change soon. In this latest beta, you have three options to switch between for your upload compression: “Auto,” “Best quality,” and “Data saver.”

Left: Current WhatsApp settings. Right: New video quality settings.

“Auto” comes as the recommended choice, and presumably just continues sending videos as compressed files on slow data connections. “Data saver” is perfect for those looking to send videos without running up against a monthly data cap. “Best quality,” however, is something WhatsApp users have been hoping would appear for years. Currently, the only way to send high-res videos is by sending them as an attached document. With this option, users might finally be able to send a video through the app’s gallery without a significant drop in quality, even if it takes longer to send.

There’s no timetable for when this might finally come to the stable version of WhatsApp, but at least it’s in the works. Although it can’t be enabled while it’s under development, hopefully we won’t have to wait long for it to reach some level of public access.


Under development

An earlier version of this article stated that the feature was live in the current WhatsApp beta. Quality settings are still under development and aren’t accessible as of yet, even on the latest beta. We’ve updated the article to reflect this.

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