Macworld

Since iOS 14, there is no longer an option to send photos as attachments. Apple changed the creation of new emails on iOS so that as soon as any additional formatting is used, the message is no longer sent as plain text but as an HTML email. As a result, inserted images are automatically displayed within the email and are not sent as separate attachments.

Apple doesn’t seem like it will change this soon. Here are some tips for sending emails with images from the iPhone.

How to send iPhone photos as attachments

Use a different email app. To avoid embedded photos in emails, the most reliable method is to use a third-party email app such as Microsoft Outlook app on your iPhone and use it only to send photos.

Outlook for iOS is available for free from the App Store. You can use the app as a standard email client, even if you don’t have a Microsoft subscription. When sending emails, remember to send the photos via Outlook rather than the Mail app. Since iOS 18, you can set a third-party email app as the default.

Zip the photos. Another method is to send your iPhone photos as an archived ZIP file. This can be done using a shortcut called ‘Zip and Share Photos’, which we’ve made available for download through this link. Once you’ve installed the shortcut in the Shortcuts app, open your Photos library and tap the Share button on any image. In the Share menu, select the Zip and Share Photos option and then select the images you want. After tapping Add, you can select your preferred email client.

The iPhone will then create a Zip file containing the original images and attach it to the email. By default, the file is named after the device name and the current date. If desired, you can customize the automatically generated filename by adding your own variables or text blocks in the second step of the shortcut.

Print to PDF. Another method does not require any third-party apps, but it has one drawback: the selected photos are combined into a single file. To do this, use the iPhone’s built-in print function. Open the Photos app, select one or more images and tap the share arrow in the bottom-left corner.

In the Share menu, rather than selecting an app such as Mail or Messages directly, select the printer icon. The selected photos will then be displayed in a print preview, which initially suggests sending them to an available printer. Then tap the Share arrow again and send the PDF file via your preferred email service. Multiple photos will automatically be distributed across individual PDF pages and can be saved by the recipient as attachments.

Send via iCloud link. To do this, select the photos you want, tap the share icon and choose Create Shared Album Link from the menu. This requires the photos to be synchronized via iCloud. This option is not available if iCloud Photo Library is not enabled. When the recipient opens the link in a browser, they can then download all the shared images in one go.