Need to shrink HEIC photos, batch hundreds at once, or work offline on your phone? Image Shrinker does the same job natively — and never uploads anything either.
What WhatsApp does to your photos
When you send a photo as a photo, WhatsApp re-encodes it and sends that copy — the original never leaves your phone in its original form. What arrives is smaller, softer, and out of your control. Sending the same file as a document keeps the original bytes intact, but then you are transferring however many megabytes the camera produced.
Compressing first is the middle path: you pick the size, so the photo reaches the other end looking the way you intended, and it goes out fast even on a weak connection.
Which size to pick
- 200 KB — chat, memes, quick shares. Fine on a phone screen.
- 500 KB — the default here. Sharp on any phone, still small enough to send instantly over mobile data.
- 1 MB — photos that will be forwarded, printed, or looked at on a laptop.
- Group chats — go smaller. One large photo lands on everyone's phone and their data plan.
Before you hit send
Re-encoding strips EXIF, which means GPS coordinates, capture time and camera details are not in the file you forward. Worth knowing when a photo is going to a group rather than one person.
If you need the original resolution preserved, send as a document — but compress it to your target size first, and the download still stays quick.
Questions
Are my photos uploaded anywhere?
No. There is no backend. The page contains all the code it needs, and your browser does the decoding and encoding locally. Disconnect from the internet after the page loads and it keeps working — that is the easiest way to verify it.
How do I get a photo under 100 KB for a form upload?
Select the 100 KB preset, drop the file in, and download the result. Most government, visa and job-portal forms accept a JPEG under 100 KB — if the form also caps dimensions, set max dimension to 800 px or 1280 px as well.
Why is the output JPEG when I uploaded a PNG?
PNG is lossless, so a photograph stays enormous unless you crop it. Choosing JPEG or WebP lets the tool actually hit your target size. Switch the output to PNG if you need lossless output and transparency — the tool will then reduce dimensions instead of quality, and may report that the target cannot be reached.
Does it work with HEIC photos from an iPhone?
Usually no — most browsers cannot decode HEIC. Export to JPEG first (iOS: Share → Save to Files → keep as JPEG, or change Camera → Formats → Most Compatible), or use the Image Shrinker app, which handles HEIC directly on-device.
Is there a limit on how many images I can compress?
No limit, and no daily cap. There is no server doing the work, so there is nothing to meter. The mobile app has a free daily batch limit plus a one-time Pro upgrade that removes ads.
What about really large images?
Images are capped at 4096 px on the long edge before processing so a 50-megapixel file does not exhaust browser memory. For a target size like 100 KB that ceiling makes no practical difference.