Guide · 5 Min Read
How to Bulk Download All Photo Attachments From Gmail (Mac & Windows)
Summary
Gmail has no “download all attachments” button for your whole account. It only zips up attachments one email at a time. Chrome extensions and Google Apps Script can automate the job, but they come with account-access and reliability risks. If you want every photo attachment saved at once, a local desktop app like Mail Memories is the safer option. It connects directly to Google and saves everything straight to your computer.
Here’s why you can’t just “select all and download” in Gmail.
Gmail was built for reading email, not exporting it. A few things get in the way:
- No account-wide bulk download. Gmail’s “Download all attachments” option only works inside a single open email. No button reaches across your whole inbox and archive at once.
- Chrome extensions ask for a lot of access. Most “bulk Gmail attachment downloader” extensions want 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 Many are side projects that are no longer maintained, and some have been flagged for suspicious behavior.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 means writing code. You could script a loop through your inbox that saves attachments, but it takes programming knowledge, needs updating whenever Google’s APIs change, and runs into execution quotas on large archives.
- Forensic and eDiscovery tools are overkill. Enterprise email export tools can do it, but they’re built (and priced, often $200 or more) for legal and IT teams, not for someone who just wants their family photos back.
Already tried Google’s own export tools? See my guide on downloading Gmail photos without Google Takeout for why that route falls short too.
Method 1: Downloading email by email is free, but slow.
If you only have a few photos to save, you can do it by hand with Gmail’s built-in tools:
- Search with the filter above to surface every email that contains an image.
- 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 everything from that email as a zip file.
- If an email has just one photo, click it to open the preview, then use the download icon in the top-right corner.
- Repeat for every matching email.
The catch: This works, but it’s manual for every single email. You can’t select a batch of emails and pull the attachments from all of them at once. That’s fine for a handful of photos. But for 10 or 20 years of them, it’s not realistic.
Method 2: A local desktop app downloads every photo attachment in one pass.
To download every photo attachment in your account at once, you need something that connects to your mailbox directly and works through it automatically.
Mail Memories is built for exactly this, for Mac and Windows:
- True bulk download. One scan works through your entire Gmail history and pulls every image it finds. No clicking through emails one by one.
- 100% local and private. It runs on your computer and connects straight to Google. No browser extension asks for account access, and no third-party server ever sees your emails or photos.
- Sorted and de-duplicated. Images land in year-by-year folders (like 2004, 2005, 2006), and photos that were forwarded or sent more than once only get saved once.
- Free to try. Download the app and bulk-save your 100 oldest photos for free before deciding whether to unlock the rest of your archive.
Ready to pull every photo out of your Gmail account?
Start a free scan and watch your 100 oldest photos land on your computer in minutes.
No credit card required · Runs 100% locally
How to bulk download with Mail Memories.
Step 1: Generate a Google App Password
You never enter your real Google password into Mail Memories. Instead, you generate a 16-character Google App Password in your Google Account security settings. It’s a temporary passcode you can revoke with one click 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 image it finds.
Step 3: Unlock the Full Archive
The free scan saves your 100 oldest photos so you can see it work. When you’re ready for the rest, a one-time payment unlocks an unlimited bulk download of your entire Gmail archive, saved to your Pictures folder.
Once every photo is backed up, you can delete the bulky emails they were in. See my guide on freeing up Gmail storage without losing your photos.
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 them all automatically.
Is it safe to use a Chrome extension to download Gmail attachments?
Be cautious. Many bulk attachment downloader extensions ask for full read and 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 with a revocable App Password, the same way most email apps do, is a safer alternative to a browser extension with OAuth access.
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 to a “Mail Memories” folder inside your Pictures folder, sorted by year, on both Mac and Windows.
Will bulk downloading duplicate photos that were forwarded multiple times?
No. Mail Memories compares each photo’s content to what it has already saved and skips exact duplicates, so a photo forwarded in three different email threads only gets saved once.