Compress a video for WhatsApp

The send limit, and the way around it

Videos sent through WhatsApp's normal media picker are capped at around 16 MB in most regions. The compressor above is preset to 15 MB, which leaves margin.

The route around the cap is to send the video as a document rather than as a video. Documents are allowed to be far larger — up to 2 GB — and, crucially, they are not re-encoded. The trade-off is what the recipient sees: a file to download and open rather than an inline thumbnail they can tap and watch. For a clip meant to be glanced at, use the media picker; for footage someone actually needs to look at properly, send it as a document.

The double encode, and what it costs you

Anything sent through the media picker is re-compressed by WhatsApp before it is delivered. Your file is decoded and encoded again, and generational loss is not additive in a forgiving way — the second encoder sees your compression artefacts as image detail and faithfully preserves them while adding its own on top.

This inverts the usual advice. Normally you compress as far as you can get away with; here you should compress as little as you can get away with. Aim for the top of the 15 MB budget rather than the bottom, keep the resolution as high as the budget will genuinely carry, and do not strip quality you do not have to. Whatever you hand over is the ceiling on what the recipient can possibly receive, and WhatsApp will lower it further regardless.

The HEVC problem, which is really an iPhone problem

Recent iPhones record HEVC — H.265 — by default. It is a better codec than H.264 and it saves the phone a lot of storage. It is also not universally decodable: plenty of Android devices, older phones and desktop applications will show a black frame, play audio only, or refuse the file outright.

If someone has told you your video "will not open" on their phone, this is very often why. Compressing to MP4 here re-encodes the picture to H.264, which every phone in current use can decode, so the compatibility problem is fixed as a side effect of the size problem. The MOV page goes into what iPhones actually record and why the files are so large.

Data, not just megabytes

WhatsApp's video limit exists in a context that a lot of size-limit advice ignores: in many of the countries where WhatsApp is the default messaging app, the recipient is paying for mobile data by the megabyte and may be on a connection where a 15 MB download is a genuine wait.

That is an argument for restraint rather than for maximising quality. A two-minute clip at 6 MB that downloads immediately is often more useful to the person receiving it than a 15 MB one that is marginally sharper. If you know the recipient is on mobile data, aim lower than the limit allows.

Settings for a WhatsApp video

Output format MP4. Target 15 MB, or lower if the recipient's connection matters. Resolution 720p for anything over about a minute — the video is going to be watched on a phone screen held at arm's length, and 1080p is not reaching anyone's eyes at that size.

If the arithmetic does not work — the 16 MB page has the full table — trim the clip. WhatsApp video is a conversational medium, and the two-minute version is almost never better than the twenty-second one.

Questions about WhatsApp

Elsewhere on the site

WhatsApp is one of 7 destinations with a page here, and the other 6 differ from the WhatsApp page only in the ceiling the compressor opens at and in what that particular platform does to your file after you send it. The full list is here, or jump straight to one:

• Discord
• email
• X (Twitter)
• Reddit
• Telegram
• Slack

Or go straight to a size ceiling:

• 5 MB
• 8 MB
• 10 MB
• 16 MB
• 20 MB
• 25 MB
• 50 MB
• 100 MB
• 200 MB
• 500 MB