This Hidden Setting Could Be Making Your Instagram Photos Look Worse
A hidden setting on Instagram may be making many users’ photos and Reels look significantly worse.
According to a report by The Verge on Wednesday, users will likely have a setting disabled on Instagram that stops them from uploading their photos and videos in the highest quality.
The secret setting — which is a toggle that reads “Always upload at highest quality” — is buried deep in Instagram’s app settings menu. And the toggle is inexplicably switched to “off” by default.
According to Instagram’s settings menu, when the toggle is enabled, it ensures that a user “always upload[s] the highest quality photos and videos, even if uploading takes longer.”
However, when the toggle is switched off, as is default on the photo app’s settings, Instagram will “automatically adjust upload quality to fit network conditions.” Therefore, if the phone connection is poor, Instagram will compress a photo exactly as it sees fit.
And it is very likely that if a user has never personally toggled on this “always upload at highest quality” setting, or if they have switched devices and downloaded Instagram from scratch for example, this setting is automatically disabled and turned off for them on the app.
So even though a user’s photos and videos may originally be high quality on their iPhone or Android, the images may not be uploaded at this level by the time they are posted on Instagram. Users have to manually opt-in to upload photos and Reels at the highest quality.
How to Upload The Highest Quality Photos on Instagram
In order to check whether this setting is disabled on and switch it on, users need to open the Instagram, go to profile, and tap the three lines icon in the top right corner of the app.
Users will then need to go ahead and select “Settings and Privacy.” They will then need to scroll down on the “Settings and Privacy” menu options and tap “Data usage and media quality.”
The user will then be directed to a menu that gives them the option to “upload at highest quality” and they will need to toggle this setting to the right to turn it on.
Image credits: Header photo licensed via Depositphotos.
