Gmail finally raising file size limit for attachments

How many different ways do you already have to send a file to someone? You’ve got your pick of cloud storage providers, from Google One to Dropbox. Quick Share lets you easily send files face-to-face, and it’s even getting AirDrop support. And in a pinch, you could always use a USB drive to make the transfer. But for decades now, one of the easiest, most broadly compatible ways to get a file to someone has been to just email it to them. After far too long, Google’s support for this tried-and-true practice is finally getting a little more flexible.

Attaching a file in Gmail is already pretty straightforward. Google even goes the extra mile and can remind you if you mention an attachment in your email, but forgot to actually choose the file to send. But for years now, Google has imposed a hard limit on how large a file you can directly attach: 25MB.

So far, that limit has applied to all manner of Gmail accounts, from free personal ones to paid Workspace accounts. There’s also been a second limit imposed on how large a file attachment Gmail users can receive, topping out at 50MB.

For most of us, none of that’s changing — sorry if you had your hopes up, but we did warn you. But for Enterprise Plus accounts, Google is finally bumping the attachment limit up to 50MB for sending, and 70MB for receiving.

Admittedly, that’s not a huge increase, and many of us routinely need to work with files far in excess of even these new limits. For those, Google’s going to keep on pushing us towards sharing files via Drive links.

Still, we are absolutely jealous of everyone with an Enterprise Plus Gmail account who can now fire off those 30MB and 40MB email attachments without thinking twice about it. Must be nice!

Access to the new file size limits is rolling out now for eligible accounts, and should hit all of those within the next two weeks.