Email Video Compressor for Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and iCloud

How to compress a video for email

This email video compressor starts with the target set to 25MB, the attachment limit for Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo. If you use iCloud Mail or a work account, tap that preset and the target drops to match. Drop in your video, press Squish, and attach the MP4 you download to your email. That's all it takes to compress video for email. The compression runs on your own phone or computer, so the original video can be as big as your device can open.

I only put email presets on this page. For WhatsApp, Messenger or a quality setting with no fixed size, use the video compressor on the home page, and for Discord there's a separate Discord video compressor.

Email attachment size limits in 2026

Each provider publishes its own limit. Here's what Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple say, and the preset I picked for each one:

Two more details trip people up. Google Workspace accounts follow whatever limit the admin set, which can be lower or higher than 25MB. And the Outlook desktop app has its own default of 20MB for Gmail, Yahoo and other accounts you add to it, so the same Gmail address can allow less in Outlook than in a browser. If you send from Outlook on a PC with a non-Microsoft account, use the iCloud Mail preset at 20MB.

Remember the person on the other end too. Their mail server enforces its own limit when your email arrives. If you're sending to a company address, the work email preset protects you even if your own account allows more.

How long can a video be in an email?

At 25MB: about a minute of a phone video at 1080p, around 2 minutes at 720p and 3 minutes at 540p. Past 5 minutes the picture gets visibly soft. At iCloud's 20MB and especially at 10MB for work email, each step comes sooner.

I ran the tool's own planner on two typical sources to fill in this table: an iPhone HEVC recording at 1080p and about 10 Mbps, and an H.264 screen recording at 1080p and about 4 Mbps, the kind Zoom or a screen recorder produces. The budget column is the total bitrate the tool can spend at 25MB after its small safety margin.

Screen recordings hold up much longer because most of the frame stays still between frames, so the encoder spends very little on it. Camera footage changes everywhere at once and needs more bitrate per second. When the budget gets so thin that the result will look poor, the tool warns you before you download, and that's the point where a link usually beats an attachment.

When a video is too long for any attachment

A 10-minute family video won't look good at 25MB, whatever tool you use. Every big provider has a built-in way around the attachment limit, and it's worth using when the video matters:

• Gmail moves any attachment over the limit to Google Drive and puts a link in the email instead.
• Outlook.com lets you share a file from OneDrive as a link, for files up to 2GB.
• iCloud Mail uses Mail Drop for attachments over 20MB. The recipient gets a download link that works for 30 days, for files up to 5GB.

A link keeps the full quality, but the recipient has to download the file and the link can expire or need permissions. An attachment opens right inside the email, which is often the whole point. I'd compress for anything under about 2 minutes and share a link for anything longer.

If a video still won't send after it fits the limit, the size usually isn't the problem. My guide to videos that won't send by email or WhatsApp covers the other causes.

Sending a video from an iPhone

Apple Mail on the iPhone sometimes offers to shrink a video before it sends, or switches to Mail Drop without asking. Neither lets you choose a size. You can open this page in Safari, tap browse, pick the clip from Photos, and attach the compressed MP4 to your email from Files. iPhone videos are usually HEVC, and the tool writes H.264 MP4, which also means the recipient can play it on a Windows PC without extra codecs. I wrote more about the options in how to compress a video on iPhone.

Picking your own number

The presets cover the common cases, but you can type any size into the target box. Use a smaller number when the email also carries photos or a PDF: take 25MB and subtract the size of the other attachments. Use a bigger number only if you know the recipient's server allows it, like a Google Workspace account whose admin raised the limit.

The tool aims a little under your target, checks the real size of the MP4 it made, and runs another pass if it came out too big. If your video is already smaller than the target, it tells you there's nothing to compress instead of re-encoding it for no reason.

Frequently asked questions