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

Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail(mailmemories.com)

69 points by ltiger 2 hours ago | 19 comments

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 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.

KomoD 1 hour ago |

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.

baron3dl 1 hour ago |

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.

Tiberium 1 hour ago | |

The website is clearly AI-written (along with the text), and the screenshot also looks quite like the styles that LLMs love

abirch 1 hour ago | |

My question is why not use IMAP?

subhobroto 1 hour ago | | |

That's what they used to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48708270

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.

subhobroto 1 hour ago | |

> 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.

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.

ks2048 27 minutes ago |

“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.

Thaxll 1 hour ago |

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 )?

subhobroto 1 hour ago | |

I have not used Windows for decades. With that context:

> 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.

KomoD 1 hour ago | | |

> How much does it cost to be able to sign a binary so you can deploy it on Windows without a UAC popup?

You can get a cert for $130-300/yr, and then you can use signtool to sign it.

artisinal 59 minutes ago |

> 100% local, no cloud, no subscriptions, no AI.

The world needs more of this

ltiger 38 minutes ago | |

Thanks, that means a lot.

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.

shuirong 1 hour ago |

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?

ltiger 58 minutes ago | |

Thanks!

murats 1 hour ago |

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

ltiger 1 hour ago | |

Thanks!

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.

tribal808 2 hours ago |

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

TazeTSchnitzel 50 minutes ago |

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

ltiger 14 minutes ago | |

Nah, don't do that.

Totally fair, though. In my defense, 98% of my time went into wrestling with IMAP parsing architectures, optimizing memory, and code-signing certificates instead of designing custom CSS layouts from scratch. I'll finesse the design in the future.

KomoD 36 seconds ago | | |

> 98% of my time went into wrestling with IMAP parsing architectures, optimizing memory, and code-signing certificates instead of designing custom CSS layouts from scratch

You're just using imapflow and their Gmail search method. Why are you making things up? https://imapflow.com/docs/guides/fetching-messages#gmail-spe...

You call that function with this query over and over again:

filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png OR gif OR webp OR heic OR tif) after:${year}/01/01 before:${year + 1}/01/01

And then you call their download method: https://imapflow.com/docs/guides/fetching-messages#downloadi...

All you did was throw together a frontend, paywall it, and try to obfuscate it.

> code-signing certificates

The app isn't signed though...?