"size:" operator in Gmail searches for attachments sizes

Google disrupted the free email service markets when it launched Gmail. I remember how crazy people were to get the Gmail invite and try out this simplistic email service that offered 1 GB of storage space when the competition was offering 2-5 MB. Currently Gmail offers ~10 GB of space which continues to grow every second. Do you also know that the maximum size of attachment in Gmail is limited to 25 MB? Most of the files you'd want to transfer through email as attachments will be under the limit.

One of the best features of Gmail is that it comes bundled with Google's search capabilities. I've been impressed by how accurate Gmail search is. But until now, not many people knew that Gmail secretly allows searching for attachment sizes. The 'size:' operator just lets you search for attachments with size greater than the specified size.

Let's say you want to search for an email with a photo, with size greater than 5 MB. How do you search for it? Well, the technique is simple. Log into your Gmail account and issue the follow command -

size:5000000

Gmail will then scan for all the mails in your inbox and return a list of emails that have attachments with size more than 5 MB.

It's interesting to note that this operator has been undocumented so far and it's been discovered by people very recently. Found the news on the social media and decided to write a short guide on how to do these types of searches. If you know more such operators which you can use in Gmail search, please share them in response below.

Replies

  • Anoop Kumar
    Anoop Kumar
    +1... I didn't knew it.
    Lab features+truly customized filter which makes Gmail much better than other mail services.

    Even in Google drive if you have some scanned pages as image and search with a word it will look for word contained in pictures also. 😀

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