One of the new features that Apple is bringing to iCloud and OS X 10.10 “Yosemite” is a new way to manage attachments when you send and view them in Mail, which will bypass the common 10-25MB attachment limits imposed by e-mail providers. With this approach, Apple is allowing iCloud users who use Mail as their e-mail client, to send attachments up to 5GB in size.

Currently if you wish to send a large attachment to a colleague, you might upload it to Dropbox, Google Drive, or another online storage solution, and then provide a link to this content in your e-mail message.

Apple’s new approach works similarly, but does not require you to perform any steps beforehand. Any attachment sent via Mail will be uploaded to the user’s iCloud account, and then provided to the recipient through a link in the message. For those who use alternative e-mail clients such as Outlook, this will appear as a standard link that can be clicked to download the attachment; however, if Mail is used, then the embedded link should stream or otherwise present the attachment content directly in the viewed message.

This approach can be used for any e-mail account configured in Mail, and not just iCloud accounts; however, you will need to have your iCloud account active for Mail to properly store attachments in it.

Granted for most purposes, current 10-25MB limits for attachments should be more than adequate, and rarely will you need to send attachments that are gigabytes in size, but there will be some times when an attachment or two may be slightly over these limits, which can frustrate your ability to send a document to a colleague or friend. While technically Apple’s solution does not solve this problem, it does provide an adequate workaround that offers you a similar and seamless experience.