Compress video for WhatsApp
Free, no watermark, no signup, and your file never leaves your device.
Under WhatsApp's 16 MB video limit
When you send a video the normal way on WhatsApp, from the gallery, with inline playback, the phone app caps it at 16 MB and re-compresses anything near that ceiling. That's where the smeared, blocky look on received videos comes from. A clip that's already comfortably under 16 MB passes through with far less damage.
This tool compresses your video right on your own device. Nothing is uploaded, which matters for personal videos, and it also means compression starts instantly instead of waiting on an upload bar.
The default preset aims just under 16 MB so WhatsApp accepts it without a second squeeze. If quality matters more than inline playback, you can instead send the untouched file as a document (up to 2 GB), the FAQ explains when to pick which.
Questions people ask
- Why do my WhatsApp videos look blurry to the receiver?
- WhatsApp re-encodes videos to save bandwidth, and its encoder prioritizes small size over quality. A video that's already compact gets re-encoded gently or not at all, so pre-compressing paradoxically makes the received video look better.
- What's the difference between sending as video and as document?
- Sent as a video (inline, from the gallery), the file is capped at 16 MB and re-compressed by WhatsApp. Sent as a document (attach → Document), WhatsApp transfers the original file untouched up to 2 GB, but the receiver has to tap to download it before watching.
- Does this work on my phone?
- Yes. It runs right in your phone's browser, so it is fast and easy on your battery. Very large files are easier to handle on a laptop, though.