Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail
Hey HN, I’m the creator of Mail Memories. Like many of you, I've had my Gmail address for more than 20 years. A few years ago, I got curious and wanted to see what photos were buried deep in my account. I ended up finding lots of "lost" pictures of old friends, family members, and a ridiculous number of vintage memes. 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…
Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail launched on July 2, 2026 with 103 votes, #399 of 24,623 launches that month and more than 95% of that year's launches.
In plain words
Mail Memories is a desktop application for Mac and Windows that extracts photos from Gmail accounts. Users connect their Gmail directly to the app, which processes all data locally on their computer and downloads photos to their hard drive. The application runs entirely offline after connecting to Google's servers, storing no data on external servers. Users can download their 50 oldest photos free without requiring a credit card to preview what photos exist in their account.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
Mail Memories connects with your Gmail account, finds all the images you’ve received and shows them in a gallery where you can view and download the ones you want to save.
Securely scan your Gmail history to rescue decades of forgotten photos. Runs locally on your Mac or PC.
Securely scan your entire email history to locate every photo attachment you’ve ever received. Mail Memories runs 100% locally on your computer to rescue your memories, neatly organized and ready to share. Technically, your photos are in your inbox. But practically? They’re gone. A cherished memory buried under decades of newsletters, receipts, and spam isn’t something you have , it’s just data. If you can’t find it, view it, or share it, it might as well not exist. Mail Memories rescues the photos buried in your email archive and puts them back where they belong—safely on your computer, ready to view, share, and keep forever. “I found photos of my niece I thought were lost forever.…from mailmemories.com
In the maker’s words, at launch
Hey HN, I’m the creator of Mail Memories. Like many of you, I've had my Gmail address for more than 20 years. A few years ago, I got curious and wanted to see what photos were buried deep in my account. I ended up finding lots of "lost" pictures of old friends, family members, and a ridiculous number of vintage…
Does a similar job
all alternatives →
Memories – FOSS Google Photos alternative built for high performance2024 · memories.gallery · ▲797Memories is a FOSS Google Photos alternative that you can self-host (it runs as a Nextcloud plugin). Website: https://memories.gallery/ GitHub: https://github.com/pulsejet/memories Demo Server: https://demo.memories.gallery/apps/memories/ (demo runs in San Francisco on a free-tier cloud vm) Memories has been built ground-up for high performance and is extremely fast when configured correctly. In our testing environment, it can load a timeline view with 100k photos in under 500ms, including query and rendering time! Some features to…
Google Photos 2.02016 · google.com · ▲416Free storage & automatic organization for all your memories
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Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part
Launched alongside, July 2026
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