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All common fixes

Common fix

Gmail says the attachment is too big

A file that attaches to the email instead of turning into a Drive link.

By Updated How we write these

Gmail: 25 MB total

Attachments you send (all files combined). Checked 2026-09-16. Every limit we track.

Gmail quietly converts anything over its limit into a Google Drive link. That works, but the recipient then needs Drive access, the link can expire from their point of view, and plenty of corporate mail systems strip or distrust it.

There is also a catch that trips people up: attachments are encoded for transport, which adds roughly a third to their size on the wire. A file that is 24 MB on disk can still be refused. Aim under 20 MB and you will not meet that edge.

What to do

  1. Step 1

    Decide what is actually being sent

    For a video, compression is the answer. For a stack of photos, resizing them is usually enough on its own — a 48-megapixel original is meaningless in an email nobody will print.

  2. Step 2

    Shrink it to the limit

    Choose the Gmail preset and the tool targets the limit directly. Everything happens on your machine, which also means a confidential attachment does not get uploaded to a conversion site on its way to being emailed.

    Compress a video
  3. Step 3

    Or shrink the photos

    Name the total you have to hit and compress the batch to it. A dozen phone photos usually come down to a few megabytes with nothing visibly lost at screen size.

    Compress photos

Worth knowing

  • Zipping photos saves very little: JPG and HEIC are already compressed, so a zip of them is close to the same size. It does keep them tidy as one attachment.
  • If the file genuinely has to stay at full quality — a print master, a legal recording — a shared link is the right answer and compression is not.

Questions

What is Gmail’s attachment limit?

The rule and the date we last checked it are on the upload limits page, alongside every other service we track.

Why is my 24 MB file rejected by a 25 MB limit?

Attachments are encoded for email transport, which inflates them by around a third. Staying under about 20 MB on disk avoids it.

Does compressing a video for email ruin it?

Not if it is trimmed first and sent at a sensible resolution. Most email video is watched in a small window, where 720p is plenty.

The reasoning behind it