Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

tribal808

idk if other tools do it for free, but cool idea, hope that it gains the deserved visibility

baron3dl

First, I really love this idea, and I thank you for getting it into my head. That said, if no AI is really important, I guess it's worth $29, though I can't tell if you used AI to build it or not from here. Like, I just one-shot a script that does the same with Claude, after it listed 5 free projects that do the same, including one GUI. The whole thing took less time than writing this comment. Now, if it were $2.99, I probably would have just paid you.

KomoD

Or you can just use Google Takeout: https://takeout.google.com Deselect everything, select "Mail", create export, wait until it's done, and then download the zip.

Thaxll

For $30 you should sign your binary so you don't have a UAC popup. Also is it not doable with Google takeout ( with Gmail )?

murats

I like the idea. Google Takeout works, but a focused app that helps you actually find and recover old photos could still be useful.

shuirong

I like your idea. While installing the app, I suddenly had an idea for the logo: what do you think about using a tilted old photo of a child as the app icon?

artisinal

> 100% local, no cloud, no subscriptions, no AI. The world needs more of this

TazeTSchnitzel

If I have to look at yet another website with this same fucking AI-generated theme I'm gonna have to kill somebody.

ks2048

“I found photos of my niece I thought were lost forever. Thank you so much!” Emily D. Be honest, is "Emily D" a real person you got organic feedback from? Small thing that makes the vibed site off-putting. It says "Storage: 1.3 GB saved", but then says it is Read-only.

t_mahmood

Interesting! I already have a Python script that can download anything from Gmail. Making it a product?! Really have not thought about it! Which is why I am probably broke Ha Ha

nickjj

I'd love to somehow do the opposite of this but I don't think it's possible? It would be deleting attachments from emails without deleting the email thread. For example I'm always 1-2 GB away from my Google account being full. I've pruned Google Drive to the absolute bare minimum. I've had my Google account for a really long time. There's tens of thousands of emails since day 1. However, there's many emails that have attachments. For example my friends or someone might have sent me a bunch of images and there's a very long email thread going on with them. I want to delete the 300 MB of photos without deleting the email thread. I don't think Google has a way to do this. I'd easily be able to free up multiple gigs of space if this were possible. I've already bit the bullet and deleted the biggest offenders but I have a ton of emails with 1-2 attachments (pdfs, zip files, some images, etc.) that might "only" be 15 MB but I definitely don't want to delete the email since it has a record of something. Not just the attachment but the corresponding email chain.

benzofuran

Here's a gmail extractor google apps script that does the same thing, but for not $30! function autoExtractGmailMedia() { const START_TIME = Date.now(); const TIME_LIMIT = 1000 * 60 * 5; // 5 minutes (leaves a 1-minute safety buffer) const BATCH_SIZE = 50; const FOLDER_NAME = "Gmail_Media_Export"; // 1. Retrieve our current position from the script's property store const scriptProperties = PropertiesService.getScriptProperties(); let startIndex = parseInt(scriptProperties.getProperty('START_INDEX')) || 0; // Locate or create the destination folder let folder; const folders = DriveApp.getFoldersByName(FOLDER_NAME); if (folders.hasNext()) { folder = folders.next(); } else { folder = DriveApp.createFolder(FOLDER_NAME); } // 2. Process batches in a loop // Updated search query to ignore USPS and non-primary tabs const searchQuery = 'has:attachment -from:usps.gov -category:promotions -category:updates -category:social (filename:jpg OR filename:jpeg OR filename:png OR filename:zip)'; while (true) { const threads = GmailApp.search(searchQuery, startIndex, BATCH_SIZE); // If the search returns empty, we've hit the end of the inbox if (threads.length === 0) { console.log("Extraction completely finished."); scriptProperties.deleteProperty('START_INDEX'); deleteTriggers(); // Clean up so it doesn't keep running return; } for (let i = 0; i < threads.length; i++) { const messages = threads[i].getMessages(); for (let j = 0; j < messages.length; j++) { const attachments = messages[j].getAttachments(); for (let k = 0; k < attachments.length; k++) { const attachment = attachments[k]; const name = attachment.getName().toLowerCase(); const type = attachment.getContentType(); const size = attachment.getSize(); // Apply size threshold (102,400 bytes = 100KB) and file type filter if (size > 102400) { if (type.includes('image/') || name.endsWith('.zip')) { folder.createFile(attachment); } } } } } // Increment our starting index for the next batch startIndex += BATCH_SIZE; // 3. The Stopwatch Check if (Date.now() - START_TIME > TIME_LIMIT) { console.log(`Approaching timeout at index ${startIndex}. Saving state and passing the baton...`); scriptProperties.setProperty('START_INDEX', startIndex.toString()); scheduleNextRun(); return; // Exit to avoid the hard timeout exception } } } function scheduleNextRun() { deleteTriggers(); // Prevent duplicate overlapping triggers ScriptApp.newTrigger("autoExtractGmailMedia") .timeBased() .after(60 * 1000) // Fire a new execution 1 minute from now .create(); } function deleteTriggers() { const triggers = ScriptApp.getProjectTriggers(); for (let i = 0; i < triggers.length; i++) { if (triggers[i].getHandlerFunction() === "autoExtractGmailMedia") { ScriptApp.deleteTrigger(triggers[i]); } } }

ksajadi

Meta: Can someone more familiar with the rules of HN please tell me why some Show HN posts get immediately “flagged” while others don’t? I have seen commercial entires like this be flagged while this one is on the first page.

ltiger

Just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who commented today. Launching on HN isn't for the faint of heart, but it’s been really valuable. What a day. I was told my landing page looks like an AI wrote it, got roasted for a confusing illustration metric (and rightly so), and received the ultimate rite of passage: being told my app could be replaced by a couple of Linux CLI commands. Unironically, thanks everyone. Because of your feedback, the site copy's a little tighter, and the Windows installer no longer throws a scary UAC prompt. I couldn't have asked for a better (or more intense) test.

adamtheturtle

Whether or not I could have got this stuff out without the app, I wasn't going to, and I already have $29 worth of nostalgia out of it. Thank you