San Francisco, Dec 4 (IANS): Meta-owned WhatsApp is rolling out a new feature that will let users share photos and videos as a document on iOS to maintain their original quality.

According to the official changelog accompanying WhatsApp's 23.24.73 update on iOS, users can now "easily send original quality media as a file", as an alternative to the compressed approaches the app defaults to.

The new feature was first spotted by WABetaInfo.

This feature was tested by a select group of users in November.

The changelog stated that this feature will be available "in the coming weeks," so it may take some time to show on users' smartphones. When it does, they can access it by clicking the "+" in chat, selecting "Document," and then "Choose Photo or Video."

The maximum file size that can be transferred using this feature is 2GB.

Meanwhile, WhatsApp has launched a secret code feature for millions of users, an additional way to protect sensitive chats on its platform.

With a secret code, the users will be able to set a unique password different from what they use to unlock their phones to give their locked chats an extra layer of privacy.

“Rolling out secret code to Chat Lock on WhatsApp so you can protect your chats with a unique password. Now you can set your locked chats to only appear when you type the secret code in the search bar, so no one can unintentionally discover your most private conversations,” Meta Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said on his WhatsApp Channel.