Gmail users will soon be able to enjoy a new feature allowing them to watch videos right within their emails.
For many years, Gmail users have enjoyed some rather great features, but they don’t have it all. Google is doing its best, however, so the latest update will allow users to watch videos within Gmail, by using the same streaming infrastructure as YouTube and Google Drive.
The thing is, this new feature only works if you’re sending over small videos, because, as everyone knows, Gmail only permits attachments of 25MB. When it comes to video content, especially of higher quality, 25MB is easily reached even with short clips. Those larger files are automatically uploaded to Google Drive anyway, which means they can be streamed regardless if Gmail supports this feature or not.
The change obviously targets smaller clips, funny videos you want to share with your friends and family of your dog chasing its tail, or your kid throwing the food bowl across the room. Now, people won’t have to download the attachment anymore, and when it comes to less tech-savvy family members, that can only mean you save a lot of time you’d spend explaining how to open a downloaded file.
Changes coming soon
“Today, we’re rolling out a quality of life improvement to Gmail desktop users that makes previewing video attachments in Gmail much smoother and quicker. Previously, in order to view a video attachment in Gmail, you would have to download it to your computer and open it with a media player. Starting today, when opening an email with video attachments, you will see a thumbnail of the video and have the ability to stream it, right from inside Gmail,” reads Google’s blog post.
The changes are incoming, but it might take two weeks to see them in your Inbox, depending on how Google’s gradual rollout hits you.
