Sending videos through Gmail can be a huge pain. There's the fact that Gmail attachments have a size limit — although Google did just double the size of files you can receive to 50 MB, which was a slight improvement. Attachments you send still have to be 25MB or under.
There's also the extra step you have to take when playing a video. On your desktop, you have to download it to your computer and open it in a media player (unless it comes right from YouTube, as a link, in which case you can usually play it right in Gmail).
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That's why Google is rolling out a change to the desktop version of Gmail today that will let you see a thumbnail of the video file and stream your attachment directly on the page, instead of having to download the whole thing first, The Verge reports. This will be especially useful for small videos captured on your phone, since you'll be able to watch them without that pesky extra step.
You will still be able to download video attachments, but now you'll also be able to simply click on a file and pull up a YouTube-style player to play the clip, in which you can also adjust the sound and quality. You can even (theoretically) stream it to a Chromecast device (although when The Verge writer tried, he received an error message — obviously, there are some bugs to work out).
Google says it is rolling out the feature to everybody, but for some users it may take up to 15 days to see it. So pretty soon, you'll be able to watch all those cute-baby and cat videos as soon as they hit your inbox. We'd call that a win.