Posted by ltiger 4 hours ago
I originally built and launched this as a SaaS, but even with code and policies in place that kept users' photos private, I figured everyone would feel more comfortable with a desktop app.
So, I threw out the server architecture and completely rewrote it as a 100% local desktop app for Mac and Windows.
How it works now: The app connects directly to Google's server from your computer, processes everything entirely on your system, and saves photos straight to your hard drive.
You can download your 50 oldest photos for free (no credit card required) just to see what's in there. If you want to download all the pictures in your account, it's a one-time payment of $29. No subscriptions.
If you have an old, pre-2010 Gmail account, definitely give it a spin. You'll be surprised at what you find deep in your archive.
I'd love to hear your feedback on the layout, scanning performance, or anything else.
TL;DR: I turned my SaaS into a local desktop app (Mac/Windows) that recovers decades of forgotten photos from your Gmail. 100% local, no cloud, no subscriptions, no AI.
Deselect everything, select "Mail", create export, wait until it's done, and then download the zip.
When you export Mail with Takeout, Google dumps your entire history into a huge .mbox file. If you have a 20-year-old account, you're downloading tens of gigabytes of raw text data, headers, and metadata just to get to the images. Once you have that huge file, you still have to figure out a way to extract and decode the image attachments from the raw email text.
Mail Memories just gives you what you want: the photos.
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.
The OP had posted a detailed reply here as well, that they since deleted - I think because they didn't want to deal with all the pushback here.
I intentionally chose a local IMAP pipeline over the official Gmail API because of platform gatekeeping. To use the API for this, Google forces independent developers into a "Restricted Scope" tier, which requires an annual $15,000+ third-party security assessment.
Going the local IMAP route lets me bypass that completely while keeping user data 100% local and secure.
My main complaints:
- Why is this $30?
- Why is it Windows/Mac only?
- Why is it Gmail only when it's using IMAP?
But what really irks me is that you know you can do this exact thing with like two Linux CLI commands?
```
$ offlineimap -c <configfile with credentials>
$ mae export --maildir=test/fixtures/simple --output-dir=test/tmp_output
```
I'm assuming the author put in the effort to validate their program handles all kinds of pictures. With that assumption:
- how did *you* validate the one-shot script that Claude handed you works correctly?
- after all said and done, and getting it to work correctly, did you end up spending atleast $30 in time, effort and money?
I am curious how coding agents would affect the future of "micro apps" - apps/scripts that do one thing and just one thing very well.
I'm pretty sure the dev has good intentions, the app is safe, and it works... but I'm not going to find out because it's too much money and too risky.
It is a good idea, though. I'll check the comments for free, open-source alternatives, but if I don't find one, I'll probably just generate a script that does this when I get back home.
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.
THE GOOD:
Their FAQ says it uses OAuth to connect to your Google account and the emails never leave your browser.
It also costs 83 cents for 1 month so you can go nuts. Alternatively you can pay 1 cent per email if you have a handful.
I see another HN thread about it here from a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32462878
THE BAD:
I don't know if it can be used with total confidence because that HN thread makes it sound like they delete the original email and create a new email with the same meta data but some of the comments indicate that's not quite the same as the original. If you had to present this email as evidence, you could run into friction since the original no longer exists. Technically it looks like you can back the original up but as someone mentioned in a comment that seems like it would add a lot of friction in a legal case.
I have no intent on ever needing to use old emails with large attachments in a legal case but knowing this could be a problem makes me hesitant. Although on the bright side, it would be fine to use for anything you 100% know won't ever be used legally.
The world needs more of this
I rebuilt the app because I was feeling that same fatigue. It felt like every cool new tool I looked at wanted to upload personal data to a remote server, hook it up to a third-party AI API, or charge a recurring fee.
The original version of the app actually was a cloud-based SaaS. But I figured people would feel significantly more comfortable having a sensitive tool like this run entirely on their own hardware instead of in the cloud like everything else. Making it local-first also makes it easier for people to download and try it out.
Also is it not doable with Google takeout ( with Gmail )?
> For $30 you should sign your binary so you don't have a UAC popup.
How much does it cost to be able to sign a binary so you can deploy it on Windows without a UAC popup? How arduous is it?
> Also is it not doable with Google takeout ( with Gmail )?
It sure is. You do a takeout and iterate over the compressed mbox looking for media attachments. Then you write them out. The edge cases, and the actual value is ensuring you properly grab all the media dispositions.
I also have emails from people who like to zip up a bunch of pictures and then email them to me - my own script takes care of this detail but I wonder if most other tools, including this one does.
You can get a cert for $130-300/yr, and then you can use signtool to sign it.
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.
Yes, use Google Takeout if you want a full account archive. It's a pain if you just want to get your photos, though.
You have to deal with huge .mbox files, download gigabytes of unnecessary text, and sometimes you have to wait days for the export.
The short version is that Mail Memories lets you get the images you want instead of an all-or-nothing data dump.