Twitter is trialing full-size image previews on timelines. Instead of having to tap on an image thumbnail while scrolling through your feed, you may soon be able to view the entire image at first glance.
Twitter Is Getting More Photo-Friendly
A select number of Twitter users on iOS and Android might notice a change to the photos on their timelines. Images on Twitter will have larger and more accurate previews, eliminating the need to tap on an image preview to view the whole picture.
Currently, when you upload an image, Twitter automatically crops it to fit on your timeline—this means the main focus of your photo might get cut out.
If the crop isn't just right, your followers might not even feel tempted to look past the thumbnail. This system obviously isn't ideal for content creators, photographers, and artists.
Dantley Davis, the chief design officer at Twitter noted that "people in the test will see that most Tweets with a single image in standard aspect ratio will appear uncropped when posted," and also stated that "very wide or tall images will be center-cropped."
Twitter's auto-cropping algorithm became the source of controversy after users discovered a potential racial bias. Users found that Twitter's auto-crop feature seemed to prefer displaying people with white faces over black faces in image previews.
Twitter replied by saying that it would start working on a "what you see is what you get" approach to image previews, which it's clearly following through on now.
Twitter is also testing out a feature that would make it possible to upload and view images in 4K. Twitter has been allowing users to upload and view 4K images on desktop since 2018, and now the feature may be coming to mobile. The platform is currently testing this out on both iOS and Android.
If you happen to be part of the test, you can turn on 4K images by heading to your Data Usage settings. From there, you can enable high-quality image uploads, as well as turn on the feature that lets you load 4K images in your timeline. You can choose whether you want to enable the feature while using mobile data, Wi-Fi, or both.
It's About Time, Twitter
Twitter should've gotten rid of thumbnail-style image previews long ago. The fact that image previews are often poorly cropped and blurry makes Twitter a tough place for sharing photos, whether it's a meme or a professional photograph.