Uploading and sharing images on WhatsApp is the easiest task ever. The app’s interface is so simple that it only takes a few seconds to send someone a photo or make them your profile picture. But when it comes to the quality of these photos, almost every user has one common complaint: blurriness.
If you upload an image as your profile picture on WhatsApp, your photo may appear blurry and poor in quality. While this reduction in quality is not very pronounced in most cases, there are times when the picture becomes extremely blurry.
In this blog, we will talk about the blurry WhatsApp profile pictures. We’ll first discuss the factors that make a picture blurry, then move on to potential fixes that can help you improve the quality of your profile picture. So, let’s start the discussion.
Why is your WhatsApp profile picture blurry?
Blurry profile picture is a very common problem faced by WhatsApp users worldwide. Blurring can occur for various reasons, from WhatsApp’s built-in compression feature to other technical issues related to images. Let’s look at these reasons before getting into the fix.
Reason 1: WhatsApp compressed your image
WhatsApp has a simple rule for dealing with images and videos exchanged on the platform. It compresses uploaded files and reduces their quality and size. This is done to facilitate faster sharing and reduce data and space usage.
With profile pictures, however, there is an extra step. The WhatsApp profile photo should have an aspect ratio of 1:1, that is, it should be square in shape. So, apart from compressing the image and reducing its quality, WhatsApp also crops it to compatible dimensions before adding it to your profile. The combined effect of these processes naturally affects the resulting profile photo, making it blurry—sometimes too much so.
Reason 2: Your internet connection is weak
Thanks to WhatsApp’s efficient compression, profile photos require a negligible amount of data to load clearly on the screen. However, sometimes, your network connection may be so weak that even the profile picture may not load properly. As a result, you can see a super blurred version of your photo when you tap on it.
Reason 3: The image is not in the correct format
JPG (or JPEG), PNG and WEBP are the most commonly used image extensions. There are other formats as well, such as SVG, TIFF, ICO, EXR, WBMP and TGA. However, WhatsApp openly supports only two extensions: JPG and PNG. If you have created an image in another format as your profile photo, it may not be compatible with WhatsApp and gets blurred once uploaded.
Reason 4: The image is of low quality
This might be pretty obvious, but let’s mention it here. If your original image is poor in quality even before you set it as your profile photo, you can expect the quality to drop further on WhatsApp, given the reasons we mentioned earlier.
How to fix WhatsApp profile picture overview?
To be honest, WhatsApp is very efficient in compressing photos without compromising much on quality. So, your profile picture will rarely be so blurry that it becomes a problem. However, the reasons mentioned above can often aggravate the problem. When this happens, you need some improvements to improve the quality of your profile photo. Let’s go into some of them now.
Fix 1: Connect to a stable network
The most trivial reason behind a very blurry profile photo is a poor network connection. Fortunately, the solution to this problem is also the simplest of all fixes.
First, you can try enabling Airplane Mode for a while and then turn it off. If this doesn’t help, switch your connection from cellular data to Wi-Fi or vice versa. One of these methods usually works and can help you see a clearer version of your profile photo.
Fix 2: Use a high-quality image as your profile picture
As mentioned earlier, WhatsApp’s default compression and quality reduction measures can cause blurry profile photos. As a result, the easiest way to reduce blur is to use a high quality image as the source.
Note that high quality may not necessarily mean large size. You can get good quality pictures on a decent phone camera. As long as the picture is clear enough, it can effectively cope with the quality degradation caused by WhatsApp.
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