How do I send a video clip in an email?

If a picture's worth a thousand words, a video's worth a million – but since videos tend to have large file sizes, it can be tricky to get them from one place to another. You can make video files easier to handle by compressing them, which reduces their file size and makes them compact enough to send via email.

Table of Contents Show

Zip It on Windows
Compress It on a Mac
Convert Video on an Android Device
Slimming Video on an iPhone
Using the Cloud
How to Send Large Video Files through Email Using Google Drive
How to Send Large Video Files through Email Using Dropbox
How to Send Large Video Files through Email Using Video Sharing Services
Final Thoughts
How do I send a video clip via email?
How can I email a long video clip?

Zip It on Windows

With your Windows computer, you can compress a video file by zipping it. It's like stuffing your file into a smaller, more movable container, and it shouldn't mess with the video's quality in the long run.

After composing your email, click Attach File.
Find the video you want to attach.
Right-click the video file and click Send to > Compressed (zipped) folder.
After Windows zips the video, attach it to the email and send it on its way.

Compress It on a Mac

Mac computers work a little differently, but you can still use one to compress a video file. If you need to select a portion of your video or edit it, you do that first in iMovie. Your Mac came with iMovie already installed.

Open iMovie and click on the downward-facing arrow in the menu bar to import video from a camera or a file on your computer.
Locate your video file in the window that opens and click it to open it in iMovie.
Drag on the video strip to select the portion of the video you want to use.
To export your video, click File > Share > Email and choose Small to make the file size smaller.
Click Share to open the small version of the video in a blank email screen.
Address the email and include a message. Send it as usual.

If you don't need to shorten or edit the video, control-click on the video icon and select Compress from the contextual menu that opens to create a smaller version of the video.

Convert Video on an Android Device

Your best bet for reducing a video's file size on your Android phone is to download an app to do it for you. The Video Converter Android app is one option.

If you opt for the free Lite version of the app, you can compress a video manually:

Download and launch the Video Converter Android app and import the video you want to compress.
Tap Convert at the bottom of the screen.
Select Manual profile. Select the video settings as follows: Codec, MPEG-4; FPS, 23.98; Res, 176 x 144; Bitrate, Keep Original.
The app will shrink the video size considerably and make it easier to send via email.

Slimming Video on an iPhone

You're probably best off using a video compression app on your iPhone or another iOS device to shrink the size of a video file. One such app is called Video Slimmer.

Launch the Video Slimmer app on your iOS device.
Go to More to choose the dimensions and resolutions for the smaller video.
Tap the + button to load the video you want to shrink with the app.
Select Slim Now!

The app reduces your video to your specified dimensions and resolution, and it's ready for email attachment.

Using the Cloud

Attaching a video to an email might be your best option for sending video files to friends and family members who aren't familiar with cloud technology like Dropbox and Google Drive. Those platforms are probably the smoothest way to transport video files without altering their quality.

On Dropbox, all you have to do is upload the video to a shared Dropbox folder, which gives everyone who has access to the folder access to the video as well. You can do this on a laptop, desktop, tablet, or smartphone.

With Google Drive, you upload a video file to your drive and share the file with anyone you want.

Both Dropbox and Google Drive allow you to generate file-sharing links, so you can copy and paste the link to the video file in an email to give your friends, family or co-workers to access to the video.

Sending large files through email can be quite challenging. This is because each email client has a size limit for file sharing.

Gmail and Yahoo limit file size to 25MB, while outlook and iCloud limit files to 20MB.

So, if you decide to send, for example, a video file larger than 25MB, you might get an error that the message was rejected by the server because it’s too large.

Some email clients won’t show an error, but instead, suggest how you should send the large video file.

For example, Gmail will suggest that you upload the video to Google Drive:

And Outlook will suggest that you upload the video to Microsoft OneDrive:

How then do you send a large video file through email? That’s what I’m going to show you in this article.

How to Send Large Video Files through Email Using Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud-based storage service provided by Google for sharing files.

As already shown in this article, Gmail prompts you to upload a video file larger than 25MB to Google Drive and then convert the video to an accessible link.

If you are using another email client like Outlook, or Yahoo, you can still send the large video using Google Drive.

Upload the video to your Google Drive and click the “Get link” button:

Change the access from restricted to “Anyone with the link”:

Click “Copy link”, and then “Done”:

Click “Compose” and paste the link to your email editor. Provide every other necessary detail and click the “Send” button:

How to Send Large Video Files through Email Using Dropbox

Dropbox is another cloud-based storage service that lets you back up and sync files on multiple devices. You can upload up to 50GB file size to your Dropbox account if you have one.

To send large video files through email by using Dropbox, upload the video to your Dropbox account and copy the link:

Compose your email and paste the link in to send the large video file:

You can send large video files through email by using video-sharing services like YouTube and Vimeo.

And yes, you can upload videos to YouTube without having a YouTube channel. As long as you have a Gmail account, you have access to Google services, including YouTube. So if you have a Google account, technically you can have a YouTube channel.

To upload videos to YouTube, click the Create button on the top-right corner and select “Upload video”:

Click on “SELECT FILES” to choose the file on your device:

Give the video a name and description, copy the link, and click “Next”:

Follow other prompts and choose whether you want to make the video public or private, then click “Save”:

Head over to your email client composer and paste in the link so you can send the large video file:

Final Thoughts

You can’t send a large video file directly through email clients, but you can take advantage of the methods discussed in this article to send large video files.

Another way you can send a large video file through email is to compress the video through your native compressor or third-party file compressors. As long as the file is less than 20-25MB, you can send it through email.

But if you compress the video and it is still not less than 20-25MB, then you should use any of the methods pointed out in this article.

Learn to code for free. freeCodeCamp's open source curriculum has helped more than 40,000 people get jobs as developers. Get started

How do I send a video clip via email?

How to send a video through Gmail by uploading an attachment from a computer.

Go into your Gmail account..

Compose your email as usual, then select "Attach files.".

Select your file and click "Open.".

Finish typing your email and hit "Send.".

How can I email a long video clip?

Simply open the Google Drive app, tap the + icon, tap “Upload” then click “Photos and Videos” and select the file you'd like to share. Once your video is safely uploaded to drive, click the three dots and select “Share”. You can type in your recipient's email or forward them the share link.