Facebook Messenger 4K update lets you share much better-looking photos

It’s an easy tweak to miss, but you should notice the difference as soon as you use the app to transfer images

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg speaks about Messenger at the F8 conference in 2015 (Josh Edelson/AFP/Getty Images)

Facebook has made a subtle but significant change to Messenger.

The messaging app now lets you send pictures to your friends in much higher quality than before.

It’s an easy update to miss, but you should notice the difference as soon as you use Messenger to transfer images.

Facebook says you can now send and receive photos at 4K resolution, or 4,096 x 4,096 pixels per image.

The company says this is the highest quality “many” smartphones support. Messenger’s previous limit was 2K.

“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,” said Messenger product managers Sean Kelly and Hagen Green.

“Your photos will also be sent just as quickly before, even at this new, higher resolution.”

The update has started rolling out to Android and iPhone users in the UK, US, Canada, France, Australia, Singapore and South Korea, and Facebook says it will come to more countries in the coming weeks.

The new 4K resolution will, however, not come to Messenger Lite.

Messenger Lite is a streamlined version of the app, which cuts out most of Messenger’s unnecessary additional features, such as Stories and GIFs, and uses less data.