Facebook is a great platform for sharing photos and videos. You can easily upload them to the site using your phone. Here are some tips on how to do this:

  1. First, open Facebook on your phone and sign in.
  2. Type in the name of the person or organization you want to share a photo or video with. For example, if you want to share a photo of your family, you would type in “family.”
  3. Click on the “Upload” button at the top of the page.
  4. Enter your information into the fields below and click on the “Upload” button. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250

If you’ve noticed a big difference between the quality of the photos and videos on your phone and the versions you upload to Facebook, you’re not imagining things: by default, the Facebook mobile clients upload photos and videos using lower quality settings. Let’s fix that.

RELATED: Forget the Facebook App: Use the Mobile Site for a Less Annoying Experience

When you upload media from your phone to Facebook from the iOS or Android mobile application, the application is configured with cellular-data-friendly settings that significantly reduce the quality of your uploads. It’s noticeable with photos if you have an eye for detail (and you’re looking at them on a big computer screen after the fact), but it’s beyond obvious with video. Mobile video uploaded with the default settings looks like it was shot with a 2005-era flip phone. (Just look at the above comparison if you don’t believe me—that’s the exact same video, the Facebook-uploaded version on the left.)

Clearly, the low-resolution setting might be great for saving data, but absolutely awful for quality. Fortunately, it’s really easy to switch from the low-resolution default to the high-resolution “HD” setting. The only downside, as you might have already surmised, is that you’ll increase your cellular data usage by uploading the larger files.

One big caveat before we continue: for some inexplicable reason the Facebook for Android mobile app doesn’t support HD video uploads (but the Facebook mobile website does). Given that Facebook’s Android app has always lagged behind in features, you might just want to give up on it and use the mobile website.

How to Enable HD Uploads

With just a short jaunt into the settings menu, you can increase the quality of your uploads in mere moments. While we’re using Facebook for iOS here, you can apply the same changes to Facebook for Android too. Launch the app and select the menu icon in the lower corner.

Within the menu, select “Settings”.

Within the resulting pop-up menu, select “Account Settings”.

Scroll down to “Videos and Photos”, then select it.

Within the “Videos and Photos” menu you’ll see the default state, which is “Upload HD” off for both Video and Photo Settings.

Toggle one or both of the settings on, per your needs.

Now when you upload new content from your mobile device, the resolution of your photos and videos will be higher and your videos won’t look like you shot them a 1990s-era webcam.