Facebook Messenger Now Supports 4K Photos

Sending photos of your Thanksgiving spread to faraway loved ones who can't make it home for the holidays? Facebook wants to make sure that the high resolution images you send via Messenger come through in all their sharp, crisp glory.

The social network on Tuesday announced that its Messenger app now supports photos at 4K resolution, or up to 4,096-by-4,096 pixels per image. That's the "highest quality many smartphones support," Messenger Product Managers Sean Kelly and Hagen Green pointed out in a blog post. Previously, Messenger sent photos in lowly 2K by default.

"We heard that people want to send and receive high resolution photos in Messenger — and considering people send more than 17 billion photos through Messenger every month — we're making your conversations richer, sharper, and better than ever," Kelly and Green wrote.

And this bump in resolution won't have you twiddling your thumbs waiting for your images to go through. Facebook promised that photos will be sent just as quickly as before, even at this higher resolution.

To send photos at 4K resolution, just be sure to update your Messenger app to the latest version. Then, just send a photo like normal, and the person you're messaging will receive the highest resolution.

Facebook started rolling out this feature today to both iPhone and Android for users in the US, Canada, France, Australia, the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea. The company plans to expand 4K photo support to additional countries in the "coming weeks."

:story: PC Magazine