Don’t you wish there was an easy way to send large email attachments that didn’t require registration, passwords or codes? if you have an icloud account, it’s already set up. mail drop is a feature that allows you to send large files, up to 5gb, through icloud. this is a useful feature for people who may be frustrated by the small attachment limitations of most email clients.
how mail delivery works
first, you must have an icloud account. you can use mail delivery from icloud.com or from the mail app on your ios or mac device.
When you try to send an attachment that is too large, you can choose to use mail. the mail app uploads the file to icloud and provides the recipient with a link to download it. this allows your large file to bypass the file size limitations of most email clients, since the file is never actually added as an attachment.
however, once you send a file to icloud via mail drop, there is no way to delete it. instead, they automatically expire after thirty days. the good news is that mail delivery does not count towards icloud storage. That said, it doesn’t have unlimited mail delivery storage. each user has a storage limit of 1tb. if you exceed this limit, you will not be able to use mailing until one of your files expires and that storage space is reclaimed.
using mail delivery with ios and macos mail applications
since mail drop uses icloud for storage, it is automatically enabled for apple mail applications. this means that you really don’t have to do anything to start using it. To get started, compose an email and hit the clip to add an attachment. when you try to send an email with an attachment larger than 20mb, a window will appear. this window informs you that the attachment is too large and asks if you want to use mail. You will still have the option to send the file as a normal attachment, but if it is larger than 20mb it will fail. so you’ll want to use mail delivery.
To enable mail delivery, simply tap or click the “use mail delivery” button. your file will be uploaded to your icloud account. from there, just send the email as usual. instead of seeing a standard attachment, the email recipient will see a download link for the file on icloud. your file will be available to download for thirty days. after that, the file will be deleted automatically and the icloud storage space will be recovered.
To download your file, the recipient of your email can use any email client on any operating system.
using mail drop with non-icloud email accounts
If you don’t use your icloud email account, don’t worry. you can still use icloud to host your large files for non-icloud email accounts. mail drop will work for any email account you have linked to your apple mail app. the only caveat is that the email account must support the imap protocol. this shouldn’t be a problem for most people, since services like gmail, outlook, and thunderbird all support imap.
To use Mail Delivery with an account, open the Mail app on your Mac or iOS device. open the mail app menu and select “preferences”. From here, click on “accounts”. in the left column you should see a list of your linked email accounts. highlight the email account you would like to send mail with by clicking on it. finally, click on the “advanced” tab and check the “send large attachments with mailing” box.
mail drop troubleshooting
sometimes mail delivery doesn’t want to work. this can be frustrating, but see if any of these common issues are to blame:
- the email, including attachments, is larger than 5 gb. mail drop is capped at 5gb so exceeding that limit will cause it to fail. try zipping your files or sending them in multiple messages.
- you are trying to send a folder of files. to do this, you must first compress the folder. To do this, control + click or tap the folder with two fingers and choose “compress” from the menu.
- You have reached the 1TB mail storage limit. unfortunately, you can’t delete old mailing files. this means you only have to wait until older items expire and storage space is freed.
- does not meet the minimum system requirements for sending mail.
mail drop is a convenient way to send large files via email. even if you only have to do it once in a while, it’s quicker and less painful than using an alternative method.
wait… can’t you do this for me?
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