How email attachments are annotated to iOS 9 using tagging

iOS 9 introduced several new features that dramatically improve the overall Mail experience: the ability to preview emails and links with 3D Touch, the ability to attach files and save attachments to iCloud Drive, and the ability to annotate attachments.

The new markup option allows you to add comments, draw, highlight, and even add your signature to attached documents (images and PDF only for now) from within the Mail app. Suppose you have a project at work and a document is being passed to the team for additions, comments, etc. this. Here’s how to use it:

1. Go to the Mail app and open the email with the attachment you want to annotate. Press and hold the attachment within the body of the email until the Share menu appears.

2. Tap “Dial and reply” at the bottom of the window. This will automatically open a reply email and open the attachment so it can be annotated.

3. You are now in the labeling window. There are four tools at the bottom of the screen: a drawing tool, a magnifying glass, a text tool, and a signature tool.

Four. The drawing tool allows you to make any type of marks you want in a wide variety of colors. If you draw rough shapes, say a circle around something, it will give you the option of turning it into a perfect circle, which you can resize or lengthen into an oval, etc. with drag points. The same goes for other shapes. You can also change the thickness of the brush.

5. The magnifying glass tool places a magnifying glass circle on the screen that you can move to draw attention to details. You can drag the green point to increase and decrease the magnification inside the circle and drag the blue point to increase / decrease the size of the circle.

6. The text tool opens a text box that you can move around the screen and resize. You can change the font size and justification, and you can choose from Helvetica, Georgia, and Notable fonts. You can also change the color of the text.

7. The signature tool allows you to add your signature to a document. At first, it will take you to a landscape-oriented page where you will sign your initial signature. He stores and can add it to the attachment, move it, and resize it. You can always go back and do a new signature.

8. When you’re done, tap Done at the top right. This will take you to the reply email where you can type the body of the email, add recipients, cc, etc.

This is all there is for now. One important oversight is the lack of an undo button. You can use shake to undo, but it’s very clunky. The first thing it asks is if you want to “Undo add addresses”, which, if you say yes, closes all reply email, including the modified attachment.

Just below this indicator is another undo indicator, and this is the one that refers to your last action. Another problem is that there is currently no way to save the commented attachment, other than to send it to yourselves. Hopefully these two issues will be fixed in an upcoming IOS update, but for now, they are definitely heading in the right direction with this tool.