Guide · 5 Min Read
How to Bulk Download All Photo Attachments From Gmail (Mac & Windows)
Summary
Gmail has no built-in “download all attachments” button for your whole account, it only zips up attachments one email at a time. Chrome extensions and Google Apps Script scripts can automate this, but they come with account-access and reliability risks. The safest way to bulk download every photo attachment from your Gmail account at once is a local desktop app like Mail Memories, which connects securely and saves everything straight to your computer.
Why You Can’t Just “Select All and Download” in Gmail
If you’ve tried to grab every photo ever emailed to you, you’ve probably noticed Gmail wasn’t built for this. A few things trip people up:
- No account-wide bulk download: Gmail’s “Download all attachments” option only works inside a single open email. There’s no button that reaches across your whole inbox and archive at once.
- Chrome extensions ask for a lot of access: Most “bulk Gmail attachment downloader” extensions require broad OAuth permissions to read and manage your entire mailbox. Many are side projects that are no longer maintained, and some have been flagged for suspicious behavior.
- Google Apps Script requires code and hits quotas: You could write a script that loops through your inbox and saves attachments, but that requires programming knowledge, the script would have to be updated as Gmail’s API changes, and would run into execution quotas on large archives.
- Paid forensic/eDiscovery tools are overkill: Enterprise email-export tools can do this, but they’re made (and priced, often $200+) for legal and IT teams, not for someone who just wants their family photos back.
If you already tried exporting through Google’s tools, you may have run into a related roadblock — see my guide on downloading Gmail photos without Google Takeout for why that option falls short too.
Method 1: Download Attachments Email-by-Email (Free, But Extremely Slow)
For a small number of photos, Gmail’s native tools can get you there manually:
- Search using the filter above to surface every email that contains a photo.
- Open each result. If an email has more than one attachment, hover near the attachments and click the small download icon that appears above them to save all attachments from that email as a zip file.
- If an email has just one photo, click it to preview it, then use the download icon in the top-right of the preview.
- Repeat this for every matching email.
The Catch: This works, but it’s manual for every single email. There’s no way to select a bunch of emails and pull every attachment from all of them in one action. For an inbox with a handful of photos this is fine. For 10 or 20 years of photos, it’s not realistic.
Method 2: Automated Bulk Download With a Local Desktop App (Best for Full Archives)
To actually download every photo attachment in your account in one pass, you need something that can connect to your mailbox directly and work through it automatically.
Mail Memories is a desktop application for Mac and Windows built for exactly this:
- True bulk download: One scan works through your entire Gmail history and pulls every photo attachment it finds, no need to click every email one-by-one.
- 100% Local & Private: It runs directly on your computer and connects straight to Google. There’s no browser extension requesting account access, and no third-party server ever sees your emails or photos.
- Automatic organization and de-duplication: Photos are saved into year-by-year folders (e.g., 2004, 2005, 2006), and photos that were forwarded or sent more than once are only saved a single time.
- Free to start: Download the app and bulk-save your 100 oldest photos for free before deciding to unlock the rest of your archive.
Ready to pull every photo out of your Gmail account?
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How to Bulk Download With Mail Memories: 3 Simple Steps
Step 1: Generate a Google App Password
You never enter your real Google password into Mail Memories. Instead, create a 16-character Google App Password from your Google Account security settings — a temporary, read-only key you can revoke at any time.
Step 2: Run the Bulk Scan
Enter your email address and App Password, then click Start Scan. Mail Memories works through your account and downloads every photo attachment it finds.
Step 3: Unlock the Full Archive
The free scan bulk-downloads your 100 oldest photos so you can see it working. When you’re ready to pull everything, a one-time payment unlocks an unlimited bulk download of your entire Gmail archive, saved in your Pictures folder.
Once every photo is backed up, deleting the old, bulky emails that held them is a great way to free up Gmail storage without losing anything.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I download all attachments from Gmail at once?
Not with Gmail alone. Gmail only lets you download all attachments from one email at a time as a zip file. To download every photo attachment across your whole account at once, you need a dedicated tool like Mail Memories that connects to your account and pulls every attachment automatically.
Is it safe to use a Chrome extension to download Gmail attachments?
Be cautious. Many bulk-attachment-downloader extensions request full read/write access to your Gmail account, and a large number are unmaintained or have been flagged for suspicious behavior. A local desktop app that connects over IMAP (like most email applications) with a read-only App Password, instead of OAuth via a browser extension, is a safer alternative.
How do I save all pictures from Gmail to my computer on Mac or Windows?
Open Mail Memories, sign in with a Google App Password, and start a scan. The app finds every photo attachment in your account and saves it directly to a “Mail Memories” folder inside your Pictures folder, organized by year, on both Mac and Windows.
Will bulk downloading duplicate photos that were forwarded multiple times?
No. Mail Memories checks each photo’s content against what it has already saved and skips exact duplicates, so a photo forwarded in three different email threads is only saved to your computer once.