Meta says it’s fixing ‘HD’ photo sharing in Facebook Messenger

Facebook rolled out the ability for Messenger users to share 4K photos back in 2017. Now, Meta has announced that users can share HD photos in the app. Confused? We were, too, so we asked about it. The short answer is that, here, HD means 4K, and now 4K photos are... more 4K?

Facebook Messenger comms team representative Liz Sweeney clarified in an email to The Verge that 4K (specifically, 4,096 x 4,096 pixels per inch) shared photos were more compressed before, and how they looked was “dependent on the network conditions of both the sender and receiver.” Now, Sweeney says they won’t be as heavily compressed, and users will have a new “HD” button that enables 4K sharing. And if you don’t tap the button, photos will share in 2K instead.

Tap the HD button to send 4K photos. Image: Meta

Messenger will also let users share files up to 100MB. That’s up from the 25MB limit before, which should make for an easier time sharing videos, as they won’t need to be split up into smaller chunks before sending. (For context, a minute of iPhone video that I just shot at 1080p and 60fps in SDR clocks in at about 170MB.)

Image: Meta

The company says that it’s also adding a new album-sharing feature that lets users create shared albums of photos and videos for group chats so people can collect images from, for example, group trips. These are the steps to create and name albums in group chats:

Select multiple photos from your chat composer

Tap Create album (you can also long press a photo in the chat and tap Create album)

(you can also long press a photo in the chat and tap Create album) To add to an existing album, tap Add to album

To rename the album:

Tap Album

Tap the three-dot menu

Tap Edit Name

Confirm new album name

Meta writes that anyone in the group can edit the album, including adding or deleting images. Group members can download items in the album, as well. The company says the feature is “rolling out over the coming weeks,” so if you don’t have it, you may be further down the queue.