How to compress photos on your iPhone and iPad

We all love photos. Pictures of our kids, family, friends, pets, and favorite spots are everywhere on our devices. But one thing not so great about a photo is its size. A photo’s file size varies based on the format, resolution, dimensions, and other factors.

While you may have plenty of storage space for your pictures, that doesn’t help when it’s time to send or share one. Sending large photos in emails and text messages can be a burden on the app as well as the recipient receiving them. And there are many sites and social networks that put limits on the size of a photo you can upload.

Here, we’ll show you how to compress photos on your iPhone and iPad. This image compression reduces the file size as compared to its actual size, making it easier to send, share on social media platforms, or use in a specific application.

Tap to Compress Photos on iPhone

There’s an app for that

Like with most apps, you’ll find plenty of those for compressing photos on the App Store. But if you want a free app with an intuitive interface, check out Compress Photos & Pictures for iPhone and iPad. The app is developed by iDB.

You can grab Compress Photos & Pictures for free on the App Store. One of the best things about this app is that it compresses your images locally on your iPhone without using the internet. You can also take a gander at the Pro version, which removes the ads and lets you compress more than three photos at once.

Compress your photos on iPhone and iPad

Open the Compress Photos & Pictures app, grant permission for it to access your photos, and follow these steps:

  1. Tap Select Photos to Compress on the main screen.
  2. Select your pictures and tap Next.
  3. Adjust the compression settings for quality and dimensions (length and width in pixels) as per your preference.
  4. Tap Compress or tap to go back, make adjustments, and hit the button there.
  5. When the process completes, you’ll see the size details for your photo before and after compression, along with the savings.

You can then decide if you’d like to delete or keep the original photo. The compressed picture is automatically saved to your photo library in the Recents section and a new album titled Compressed Photos. If you pick Delete Original, you’ll be asked to confirm by tapping Delete.

Compress Photos and Pictures on iPhone

Then, head back to the Photos app on your device for the compressed picture, ready to send or share. Once you reduce the file size of several pictures, it can create enough storage space for other things on your iPhone, like new apps, media, etc.

How to take iPhone pictures of smaller file size

Apps like Compress Photos & Pictures are so easy to use that it’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time for photos that need a smaller file size. However, you can also have your iPhone automatically shoot pictures of considerably smaller sizes.

If your iPhone is running iOS 11 or later (which it most certainly is), its camera can take pictures in HEIF (High-Efficiency Image Format) instead of JPEG. You can learn more about the benefits of HEIF/HEIC here. In summary, HEIC image file size is smaller than JPEG without compromising the quality. And starting with iOS 11, iPhone automatically uses HEIC instead of JPEG. But if you turned it off, here is how to re-enable this:

  1. Open the Settings app and tap Camera.
  2. Tap Formats.
  3. Choose High Efficiency.
High Efficiency Camera Format iPhone

In the screenshots below, you can see that I took the same image in the High Efficiency (HEIF) and Most Compatible (JPEG) settings. HEIF is 1.4 MB, while JPEG is 2.3 MB!

HEIC vs JPEG File Size

While this is great, HEIC isn’t as universally compatible as JPG, and thus, at times, you might have to convert it, which is easy.

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