Allow users to choose not to get giant attachments in email

Contribute Feature

AI-generated summary

The discussion proposes a feature allowing users to opt out of receiving large attachments in email notifications. jidanni notes that currently, Discourse includes full replies with multi-megabyte attachments in emails, whereas other platforms often send only text with links. While an admin setting exists to limit total attachment size, there is no user-level preference to control this behavior. PortChange expresses interest in the feature and asks if development has started. colorfulcms suggests implementing either a per-user size threshold or a simple “links only” toggle, arguing that a threshold would be more flexible for users on slow or metered connections who may still want small inline images.

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There is no setting in preferences/emails to preclude the possibility of massive emails being sent.

Let’s say someone posts a reply to one of your posts, and that reply has a multi-megabyte screencast attached.

Well, it gets attached to the email too.

Other software might just include the text part of the reply, with links to the full reply, but Discourse throws in the full reply.

Yes, there is "email total attachment size limit kb" setting: what does it do exactly? but that is an admin tool. I’m talking about a way for users to avoid getting giant emails, without help from admins.

It seems like this is a case where thought has been given to restricting a problem from occurring, but it was not remembered to also allow end users to do the same about what affects them.

Remove images from emailed reply to forum is also only for admins.

2 Likes
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I am also very interested in this feature. Is there somebody already working on it?

3

Would this work better as a per-user size threshold or as a simple “links only, no attachments” toggle? A threshold seems more flexible, since small inline images are usually fine in email, while the existing admin setting for total attachment size is site-wide and can’t be tuned for individual users who are on slow or metered connections.