Sharing photos from the Photos app results in reduced quality photo vs sharing from within the Signal app

[JoelLisenby]

Bug description

Sharing photos from the Photos app results in reduced quality photo vs sharing from within the Signal app.

Steps to reproduce

• Go to Photos app
• Select a photo, click the share button and choose Signal
• Send message with photo attached

If you select the photo from within the Signal app instead of from the Photos app, it is a much higher resolution and quality image.

Actual result: The photo is converted to a reduced resolution, and the quality is very bad (artifacts present). 1200x1600 (1.1MB) [is shared as this]

Expected result: The photo should be higher resolution (ideally native) and crisp, not blurry with reduced quality. 2304x3072 (3.7MB) [should be this]

Device info

Device: iPhone 14 Pro

iOS version: 16.3.1

Signal version: 6.11.0.11

[JoelLisenby]

I'd like to add, this happens to multiple apps (I tested and confirmed it occurs both in Signal and Facebook apps.) It may be a bug in the Photos app or iOS itself, but apple support appears to be blaming the "service provider", they define as app developers. https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254671115

[EvanHahn-Signal]

Unfortunately, this is working as expected. Apple limits the amount of memory that we can use in the share extension, which means that we have to compress images more when they go through that path...and why Apple's apps can sidestep this problem.

I'm going to close this issue because I don't think there's anything we can do.

[JoelLisenby]

Thanks Evan, can you point me to the lines of code where this occurs by chance? It would be helpful if I can relay the exact functions to Apple