How to Use Mail Drop on an iPhone

Has your attempt to send large files through your email turned out fruitless? Email platforms limit the size of emails one can send at a given time. For instance, with Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, you can only send emails not exceeding 25MB, while Hotmail and Outlook limit is as low as 10MB. However, Apple is here to bypass these limits. Through their Mail Drop feature, you can now send files as large as 5GB through your email. This article explains what mail drop is, how you can use it on an iPhone and how you can maximize it. Keep reading to learn more.

What Is Mail Drop?

Mail Drop is a feature that comes in handy when you want to send files that surpass the email size limit set by your email service provider. Apple developed this feature to make it possible to share large videos, PDF files, presentations, and images. This solution is free to use on iPod touch, iPhone, or iPad running iOS 9.2 or advanced version, Mac with OS X Yosemite or later, and a PC using an updated browser. However, one can receive emails sent using Mail Drop from any platform. This feature detects the file attachment automatically and uploads it to the iCloud. It then delivers it to the recipient as a link, which allows them to download the file.

How to use Mail Drop on Your iPhone?

Mail Drop is not one of those built-in features that you can access by tapping on a specific tab. However, it’s an easy, if not the simplest, feature to use on your iPhone. All you need is to attach a large file that exceeds the email size limit supported by your mail app, and your iPhone will prompt you to use the Mail Drop feature to send the attachment. Let’s take you step-by-step on how you can use Mail Drop on your iPhone to send large attachments.

Step 1: Launch the mail app on your iPhone

Once it’s open, tap the square-pen icon appearing at the bottom of your screen on the right corner and compose your new email. Enter the recipient’s email address.

Step 2: Upload the file

If it’s a photo attachment, tap it.

Step 3: Tap on the send icon

By tapping the up arrow in the top-right, a popup message will appear on the screen, prompting you to use Mail Drop as the attachment is too large such that it can’t be sent as a usual email. Choose to send the file using Mail Drop on your iPhone. The file attachment will be mailed using iCloud. The recipient will have 30 days to access the email before it expires.

What If the Email Bounces Back Even After Using Mail Drop?

Like email service providers, mail drop has its limitations as well. Irrespective of the number of recipients or emails you want to deliver, the feature can only allow you to send attachments of up to 5GB per file and 1TB overall. Meaning you won’t be able to use Mail Drop on your iPhone if the email attachment is larger than the maximum size limit (5GB) or you’ve hit the 1TB file transfers limit. Remember, mails send using this feature are available for the recipient for 30 days. After which, they are removed from the server. With that said, if you’ve hit the overall limit, wait for iCloud to recover its space, i.e., by removing the expired files. Then, you can continue sending more files using this Apple’s easy-to-use feature. But if the file size exceeds the 5GB limit, compress your attachment before you can send them using Mail Drop.

How to Compress Large Files

Take advantage of apps that can compress almost all file formats like PDF, JPG, videos, TXT, audios, DOC, PPT, RTF, Excel, and Pages files. That way, sending large files will be less tedious. These apps are easy to use. In this example, we use one of the most recommended apps, the iZip, to show you how you can compress your large files faster.

• Launch the app and choose your preferred file format
• Open your file folder
• Select the files to compress
• Tap zip (a new window with your zipped folder will appear on your screen)
• Tap the circle next to the file name and choose share by mail
• Key in the recipient’s email address and the necessary information, then tap send

Remember, the steps on how to compress files are straightforward regardless of the app you’re using.

What You Need to Know to Maximize Mail Drop

Relying on a third-party app to send a large file can be tedious. But with an iCloud account, you’ll automatically be turned on to use Mail Drop. Nevertheless, you can still use Mail Drop on a non-iCloud email account, only that the feature will not launch automatically; you’ll have to enable it. Go to mail > tap on preferences > tap accounts > select your non-iCloud email account. This feature works on any email platform, provided it supports IMAP. Meaning you can send large attachments using Mail Drop on Thunderbird, Outlook, Gmail, among other providers that support the IMAP protocol. Keep in mind, this feature uploads large files to the iCloud bypassing the file size limits by most email services. Also, remember that once sent to iCloud, the files can’t be deleted but will automatically expire after 30 days, reclaiming more space. If your file seems to take longer to upload, be patient. The time it takes to complete large files uploads and downloads depends on the size of the attachments and internet speed. It will take longer to attach a larger file using slow-speed internet. There are times when the recipient may be unable to access a large file sent to their email, and that’s when the link delivered has too many downloads, or there is high traffic. Improve your experience when using Mail Drop:

• Make sure the file you’re trying to send is not too big; compress it if necessary.
• Ensure you speed up your internet.
• Avoid sending emails with excessive downloads.
• Fix your internet traffic.

Summing Up

Ready to send a large file via email but worried it might bounce back? You know what to do to bypass the limits of your email service provider. Mail Drop is one of Apple’s helpful features. It guarantees delivery of your large attachments.

How to Compress Large Files

Take advantage of apps that can compress almost all file formats like PDF, JPG, videos, TXT, audios, DOC, PPT, RTF, Excel, and Pages files. That way, sending large files will be less tedious. These apps are easy to use. In this example, we use one of the most recommended apps, the iZip, to show you how you can compress your large files faster.

• Launch the app and choose your preferred file format
• Open your file folder
• Select the files to compress
• Tap zip (a new window with your zipped folder will appear on your screen)
• Tap the circle next to the file name and choose share by mail
• Key in the recipient’s email address and the necessary information, then tap send
• Remember, the steps on how to compress files are straightforward regardless of the app you’re using.

What You Need to Know to Maximize Mail Drop

Relying on a third-party app to send a large file can be tedious. But with an iCloud account, you’ll automatically be turned on to use Mail Drop. Nevertheless, you can still use Mail Drop on a non-iCloud email account, only that the feature will not launch automatically; you’ll have to enable it. Go to mail > tap on preferences > tap accounts > select your non-iCloud email account. This feature works on any email platform, provided it supports IMAP. Meaning you can send large attachments using Mail Drop on Thunderbird, Outlook, Gmail, among other providers that support the IMAP protocol. Keep in mind, this feature uploads large files to the iCloud bypassing the file size limits by most email services. Also, remember that once sent to iCloud, the files can’t be deleted but will automatically expire after 30 days, reclaiming more space. If your file seems to take longer to upload, be patient. The time it takes to complete large files uploads and downloads depends on the size of the attachments and internet speed. It will take longer to attach a larger file using slow-speed internet. There are times when the recipient may be unable to access a large file sent to their email, and that’s when the link delivered has too many downloads, or there is high traffic. Improve your experience when using Mail Drop;

• Make sure the file you’re trying to send is not too big; compress it if necessary.
• Ensure you speed up your internet.
• Avoid sending emails with excessive downloads.
• Fix your internet traffic.

Summing Up

Ready to send a large file via email but worried it might bounce back? You know what to do to bypass the limits of your email service provider. Mail Drop is one of Apple’s helpful features. It guarantees delivery of your large attachments.