Compress a video for Gmail
Gmail takes attachments up to 25 MB on personal accounts. Make your video fit, and it travels in the email itself.
Drop your video here
Choose your videoMP4, MOV, WebM or MKV. It opens right here, on your device.
- Nothing uploaded
- No sign-up
- No watermark
The limit, from the source
- Gmail
- 25 MB: Personal Gmail accounts. Gmail takes the attachment out and puts a Google Drive link in the email instead.
- What Shycut aims at
- 25 MB, the limit itself, with 4% kept spare for the file’s index, so it comes out just under.
What fits in 25 MB
| Picture | At full quality | Longest that fits |
|---|---|---|
| 1080p | 33 s | 1 min 13 s |
| 720p | 1 min 13 s | 2 min 35 s |
| 540p | 2 min 5 s | 4 min 15 s |
| 480p | 2 min 35 s | 5 min 26 s |
| 360p | 4 min 15 s | 8 min 35 s |
Shycut’s own sums for a 16:9 video at 30 frames a second with sound, at Balanced quality. “Full quality” keeps the bitrate Balanced would use anyway; past “longest that fits”, Shycut makes the picture smaller instead of letting it break up. An upright video fits the same.
Your video, by length
| Length | Comes out as |
|---|---|
| 30 s | 1080p, full quality |
| 1 min | 1080p, 3,072 kbps for the picture |
| 3 min | 540p, 939 kbps for the picture |
| 10 min | Too long: up to 8 min 35 s fits |
For a 1080p video at 30 frames a second with sound. The save window does the same sum for your own video before anything is made.
Attachment or Drive link
Over the limit, Gmail swaps the file for a Google Drive link, as its help page says. The person you write to then has to open Drive, and the video lives in your Drive storage.
Under it, the video is part of the email: it arrives with the message and stays with it. For a short clip, that is often what you want.
How it works
Open your video
Press the button and drop the file, or pick it from your files. It opens in this browser tab; nothing is uploaded, so the original can be as large as you like.
25 MB is already set
The save window opens set to an MP4 under that size. Shycut works out the bitrate from your video’s length and shows what it will do before you save.
Save
If the video can’t fit at its own size, the picture steps down (1080p, 720p…) and the window says so. If nothing fits, it tells you how long a clip does, so you can trim first.
Where these facts come from
Questions
Does the limit include other attachments?
Gmail talks about the total attachment size, so the video and anything else attached share it.
Is it the same for Google Workspace accounts?
The figure on this page is the one Gmail gives for personal accounts; work accounts are not covered here.
Will it play on the recipient’s phone?
Yes: the file is an MP4, which phones and computers play.
Your video stays with you.
Open Shycut, drop the video in and export. Free, with no account, and your video never leaves your device.
Choose your video