The MacBook’s inbuilt email client “Mail” is definitely not a people’s favorite. There are plenty of alternatives that exist in the market and you can pick from both free and paid ones. Even we at AppleSutra – great fans of most things Apple – prefer Airmail over Mail!
That’s not to say that Mail is completely useless. There are some decent features in it, and we’d like to highlight them in this post. We’ll be discussing the two least used features, namely Mail Drop and Markup.
Mail Drop
You know that you cannot send files over 25MB as attachments to your Gmail messages. This can get quite frustrating if you’re required to send heavy files for personal or professional reasons. With Mail Drop, size limitation on your attachment is a thing of the past, since you can send files as large as 5GB.
All you need to do is click on the little paperclip icon at the top of the “New Message” window. From the pop-up window that opens, navigate to the destination where you’ve stored the files and click “Choose File”.
Mail Drop also works really well for folders! Mail will upload the entire file/folder to your iCloud and simply insert a link in its place in your email. If you’re attaching photos or videos and your recipient also uses Mail, your attachments will be automatically downloaded and displayed inline. If they use some other email client, they’ll get a link to the iCloud. Clicking on it will let them download the file/folder.
Please note: Convenient as this feature might be, you will need some patience. Attaching large files can take some time to send as Apple will first have to upload the entire file to iCloud.
Markup
With Markup, you can annotate an image or a PDF right from within the Mail app. Markup lets you add text, drawings, shapes, and even signatures to your attachments.
It’s especially helpful when you need to draw attention to a specific segment of the document or add a personal touch to the files you’re sending.
Using it is super easy as well! Just drag and drop your file into the “New Message” window. Once the file is displayed, hover the cursor over the right top corner of the preview. A small down-arrow should have appeared there.
Click on that button and choose “Markup” from the pop-down menu. Your image automatically appears in an extended window that’s independent of the message window. Like this:
Using the menu options that appear on top, you can annotate the image to your heart’s content.
Once you’ve made the necessary additions to your file, click “Done” in the top right corner. The image should now appear in-line within your email, all pepped up with your personal markings! Just like so:
Did you notice how the attachment size increased (almost doubled, in fact) from before the annotations?
Yeah, we’ll wait for you to scroll up to the previous image and double check.
Back? Now, did you notice the size difference in the attachment? That’s proof that Markup does a pretty good job with the annotations, making sure they are of high pixel density and high resolution.
Of course, if your image is getting too large, you can always click on the small pull down menu on the right titled “Image Size”. From there, choose “Small” or “Medium” depending on your requirement.
Or you could just use the Mail Drop feature we explained earlier!!
So there you go. Mail is not completely useless after all. You just needed to dig around a little bit and you’ll see it has some pretty nifty and valuable features.
But who has time for that, right? Yeah, we get it and that’s why we took on this laborious task. We work hard so you enjoy the benefits!
You’re welcome!
