How to use Mail Drop to send large attachments up to 5GB in size with OS X Yosemite

BY Jason

Published 19 Oct 2014

The OS X Yosemite Mail app has a new feature called Mail Drop that lets you attach files as large as 5GB in size. Here’s how to use it.

With Mail Drop, you don’t have to be concerned with the email provider on the opposite end as Mail Drop works with all mail providers. Mac users will see files attached with Mail Drop as any other attachment, whereas other mail apps will show the Mail Drop attachment as a link in the mail, that they can click and start the download. Rather than attaching the file to the email message, Mail Drop uploads the file on iCloud.

To use Mail Drop just ensure you’re signed into iCloud. Here’s how you do that:

  • Click on the Apple menu in the menu bar, and open System Preferences. You could alternatively use Spotlight or Launchpad to open it.
  • Click on the iCloud icon, and sign in if you haven’t already.

You can now attach files up to 5GB without doing anything out of the way. Just drag and drop files into the Mail compose window, and the app handles everything for you. Large video files, PDFs, presentations, zip files, or any other type of file can be sent with Mail Drop.

mail drop

I can see myself saving a lot of time not having to upload large files to Dropbox and paste links to them in mails with Mail Drop. What do you think about this feature? Let us in the comments below.