How to Compress a Video for WhatsApp, Email or Discord

"File too large to send." A single minute of 4K phone footage can top 400 MB, while WhatsApp caps video at 64 MB, email at around 25 MB, and Discord at 25 MB on the free tier. The clip that means something to you won't leave your phone — and the messaging app's own auto-compression, when it bothers, turns it to mush.

Compress it yourself, in the browser

FileLark's video compressor re-encodes video with the efficient H.264 codec at a quality level you choose, typically shrinking phone videos by 60–90% while keeping them perfectly watchable. It runs entirely on your device using WebAssembly — no upload, no account, and no server that sees private family clips. Drop the video, pick a preset, and download the smaller file.

Which preset for which limit

Balanced is the right choice for almost everyone: near-identical quality on a phone screen at a fraction of the size — usually enough to clear WhatsApp's 64 MB and email's 25 MB in one pass. If it's still too big, step up to Strong, which prioritises the smallest file (visibly softer only on large screens). Light is for when you just want modest savings with no perceptible change.

The trick most people miss: trim first

Compression fights file size by lowering quality. Trimming fights it by removing seconds — with zero quality loss. If your 90-second clip has 40 seconds of dead air at the start and end, trim it to the 50 seconds that matter first (lossless and instant), then compress only if you still need to. Often the trim alone gets you under the limit, and the part that's left stays crisp.

A realistic expectation

Re-encoding is real work happening on your device, so it runs at roughly real-time speed — a two-minute clip takes about two minutes. That's the honest cost of doing it privately instead of handing your video to a server. It's ideal for the clips people actually send; for hour-long recordings, trim to the section you need first. And once the file fits, remember WhatsApp and email will transmit exactly what you give them — so the quality you see after compressing is the quality that arrives.