Twitter now tests better image previews for photos on iOS and Android

Twitter has announced it is running a test with select iOS and Android users to give people an accurate preview of how their images will appear when they Tweet a photo.

Currently, Twitter algorithms automatically crops images to make them display in a more condensed way in the timeline.

Going forward, people in the test will see that most Tweets with a single image in standard aspect ratio will appear uncropped when posted.

“People will see exactly what the image will look like in the composer tool before it’s posted. Very wide or tall images will be center-cropped,” Dantley Davis, Chief Design Officer at Twitter said late on Wednesday.

Twitter’s automatic image cropping has been a problem for photographers and artists.

“With this test, we hope to learn if this new approach is better and what changes we need to make to provide a ‘what you see is what you get’ experience for Tweets with images,” Davis said in a tweet.

Twitter’s algorithm decides which part of an image will get the focus and this has create problems in the past.

The algorithm once prioritised white faces over Black ones in its image preview. It once cropped out former US president Barack Obama in one person’s tests.