How to share files and photos in chat

The paperclip beside the composer attaches files to the message you are writing. Images arrive as thumbnails you can open properly; everything else arrives as a download chip.

How do you attach something?

Click the paperclip and pick one or more files. Each appears as a chip with a thumbnail for images, its name and size, and an uploading state while it goes up.

Remove one before sending with the × on its chip.

You can send a message with files and no text at all, which is usually what you want when the photo is the point.

Up to 10 files per message, each up to 25 MB. Going over either gives you a plain message saying which limit you hit.

The message will not send while files are still uploading, and it tells you so rather than failing silently. Wait for the chips to settle.

How do sent images look?

One image shows as a thumbnail. Several arrive as a tidy four-tile mosaic with a +N overlay when there are more.

Click any of them to open a full-screen viewer. Zoom with the scroll wheel or the + and − buttons, double-click to zoom, drag to pan, and move between images with the ← and → keys or the on-screen arrows.

Close it with Esc, the ×, or a click outside.

Why did my photo come out smaller than the original?

Because photos over a couple of hundred kilobytes are automatically resized to a maximum 2048-pixel edge and re-encoded before upload. That is what keeps a channel full of site photos quick to load on a phone.

GIFs and SVGs are left alone.

If you need the original resolution, for example a print file or a lab image, share it as a non-image file type or link to it from a document instead.

Which files preview as images?

PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF and AVIF. Everything else becomes a download chip.

That is deliberate rather than a gap: it means a file somebody uploads cannot run in your browser when you click it.

Who can open a shared file?

Only people who can see the channel, and it is checked at the moment you open it rather than only when it was sent. Losing access to a channel closes off its files too.

When should the file live somewhere else?

When it belongs to a thing rather than to a conversation.

A supplier's spec sheet belongs on the purchase order or the supplier record. A photo of a fault belongs on the repair record. A file attached to the work is found by whoever opens the work; a file in a channel is found by whoever remembers which channel.

For attaching to a task, see How to add files and comments to a task. For anything you will write around rather than just store, see What are documents?.