iOS Files in GMail

Support for attachments from Files in the recently updated GMail app for iOS has been one of the greatest iPad developments ever. Initially, when Apple introduced Files, I was (naively) hoping it would be automatically available across all apps.

Unfortunately not.

It turned out the decision to use Files or not is an individual app vendor decision. And for reasons you may anticipate, Google was resistant to support local files, forcing people to use Google Drive instead. Fortunately they must have been watching usage statistics and discovered that users discovered that not being able to attach files from Files to email in GMail WAS driving their decisions on whether to use GMail or not.

So now we have it. (drumroll.... ). In GMail - pick the paperclip icon and in the second section for “Attachments” you now have a folder to open the native iOS Files picker. It seems so straightforward and obvious and easy. It is even hard to imagine this might have been missing.

The addition of the "Attachments from Files" in GMail really elevates the usability of iPad. For example you can receive an email with 3 PDF documents requesting you sign them. You can use the Adobe Fill&Sign app to sign each document and save the signed copies to Files. Than you can respond to the original email attaching the 3 signed files. Wow! Hard to imagine this had not been possible before. And it brings the iPad so much closer to being a real computer.