How to send a large video by email

Guides · Updated 13 October 2026 · By Tiago Santos

Phone videos are big: a minute of 4K from an iPhone is around 300 MB, and even 1080p is about 100 MB a minute. Email was never built for that. Attach one and the message bounces, or your mail app swaps it for a cloud link the other person has to open.

How big an email attachment can be

• Gmail: 25 MB per email. Anything larger is sent as a Google Drive link.
• Outlook.com and Microsoft 365: about 20 MB by default (organisations can change this).
• Yahoo Mail and iCloud Mail: 25 MB. iCloud can send larger files with Mail Drop, as a link.

There’s a catch: attachments grow by about a third on the way, because of how email encodes files. So the video itself has to be well under the limit. Aim for about 18 MB for Gmail, Yahoo or iCloud, and about 14 MB for Outlook.

How long a video fits

At 18 MB, about a minute and a half still looks good at 720p, which is plenty for a phone or laptop screen. Longer videos have to come down to a lower resolution, or be shorter. A rough guide for 18 MB:

• Up to 90 seconds: 720p, clean.
• Up to 3 minutes: 480p, fine on a phone.
• Longer than that: trim it, or send a link instead (see below).

Make it fit, without uploading it anywhere

1. Open Compress video to 25 MB: it starts at 18 MB, the right size for Gmail, Yahoo or iCloud (type 14 for Outlook). The page shows the size and resolution you’ll get before you start.
2. If it says the video is too long for that size, cut it first with Trim video. “Fast” keeps the quality and takes a second.
3. Play the result on the page to check it, then attach the saved MP4.

Everything runs in your browser with your device’s own video encoder, so a family video or a recording of a meeting never sits on someone else’s server. On a computer it usually takes less time than the video lasts.

iPhone videos: one more step for some people

iPhones record in HEVC, which some older Windows PCs and work laptops can’t play. Compress video already saves an ordinary H.264 MP4 that plays everywhere. If the video is already small enough and you only need it to play, MOV to MP4 with “Play everywhere” does that without shrinking it further.

When email is the wrong tool

For long videos, or when quality matters (a wedding, a portfolio piece), shrinking it to fit an email throws away too much. Send a link instead: Google Drive, OneDrive, iCloud Mail Drop or Dropbox keep the full quality. They do upload the file to that company, so use one you already trust.