'What is Mail Drop on an iPhone?': How to use Mail Drop to email large files from your iPhone
- Mail Drop is a program on your iPhone, Mac, and iPad that allows you to send large email attachments over iCloud, thus bypassing email size limits.
- An individual message and its attachments can't exceed 5 GB in order to be sent via your iPhone's Mail Drop.
- Mail Drop links remain functional for 30 days once they are sent, after which files must be re-sent.
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Most email platforms have size limits that are, to put it simply, limiting. Gmail, AOL, and Yahoo won't let you send emails greater than 25 MB. With Outlook and Hotmail, you're limited to 10 MB.
The good news is that if you're using a relatively recent iPhone, running iOS 9.2 or later, to send that extra large email, Apple's Mail Drop service has you covered.
Mail Drop, which transfers emails and attachments via iCloud, has a huge 5 GB capacity, so there are few files that won't make it through Mail Drop. And once you send a file, the recipient will have 30 days to open it before it expires.
However, there is a 1 TB storage limit - so if you manage to send enough files to hit that limit, you'll need to wait 30 days for files to expire before you can send more.
Here's how to use it on your iPhone.
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How to use Mail Drop on your iPhone
To use Mail Drop, all you have to do is try to send an email that's too big through the default Mail app.
A window will pop up that reads: "These attachments may be too large to send in email. Do you want to use Mail Drop to deliver these attachments using iCloud? They will be available for the next 30 days."
Tap "Use Mail Drop," and off the message goes to its intended recipient(s) thanks to the wonders of the cloud.
The message will arrive like normal, massive size notwithstanding.
The recipient will just have to click the Mail Drop link in the email they've received, and they'll have to be checking their email on "a Mac using OS X Yosemite or later, an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 9.2 [or later], [or] a Mac or PC with an updated browser," which are the supported systems for Mail Drop, according to Apple.
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