How to compress photos on iPhone before you email or upload them

Someone on Reddit asked how to “compress 100-200 pictures at once before uploading”. It’s a common problem: iPhone photos are big, upload forms and inboxes aren’t.

Option 1: let Mail do it

When you attach several photos in Apple Mail and hit send, Mail offers Small, Medium, Large or Actual Size. Pick Medium or Large. Fast, but you can’t choose exact dimensions and it only works for Mail.

Option 2: shrink pixels and quality together

File size depends on two things: how many pixels and how much JPEG compression. Most of the saving comes from pixels. A 4032 × 3024 photo resized to 2000 px on the long side has about a quarter of the pixels.

In Batchly, chain two steps:

1. Resize to the long side you need (2000 px is plenty for email).
2. Compress to a quality setting, around 80%.

Add Convert to JPEG if the recipient is on Windows or an older system that struggles with HEIC.

A rough guide

Use	Long side	Typical size
Email to family	1600–2000 px	300–700 KB
Web upload form	1200–2000 px	200–600 KB
Print at 10×15 cm	keep original	as is

Sizes vary with the subject: a photo of grass compresses less well than a white wall.

Option 3: share a link instead

For hundreds of full-size photos, a shared iCloud album or a cloud folder link beats any attachment.

Related: reduce photo size in MB and compress HEIC to JPEG for uploads.