How to Download All Your Gmail Emails

There are exactly two practical ways to get a full copy of your Gmail account onto your own computer: Google Takeout, which is built into Google's account tools, and an IMAP-based archive tool, which connects to Gmail the same way a mail client does and downloads each message individually. They produce very different results, and which one you want depends on what you're actually trying to do with the download afterward.

Option 1: Google Takeout

Go to takeout.google.com, deselect everything except Mail, and click Create Export. Google packages your entire mailbox into one or more .mbox files (split into multiple zip archives if your mailbox is large) and emails you a download link, usually within a few hours to a day.

What you get is a single, large text file per label/folder in the classic Unix mbox format — every email concatenated one after another. It's a legitimate, complete backup, but it has real limitations:

• Not directly readable — You can't just double-click an .mbox file and browse your email. You need to import it into a mail client like Thunderbird that supports mbox import, which can take hours for a large mailbox.
• All or nothing — Takeout exports everything you select, in bulk. There's no way to grab just one folder, a date range, or specific conversations without exporting the whole label.
• One point in time — It's a snapshot. If you want an up-to-date archive next month, you have to run the whole export again from scratch.
• Fragile as a single file — If the .mbox file gets corrupted, you can lose access to every email inside it, not just one.

Option 2: IMAP archiving

Gmail also supports IMAP, the protocol every real email client uses to sync mail. An IMAP archive tool signs into your Gmail account (with OAuth, not your password) the same way Apple Mail or Outlook would, then downloads each message as its own file — typically a standard .eml file, the RFC 5322 format every mail client understands.

This approach flips every Takeout limitation:

• Individually readable — Each email is its own file. Open one directly, drag it into another mail client, or search across them with normal file search — no import step required.
• Selective — Archive a specific folder, label, or date range instead of your entire account.
• Repeatable — Run it again later and only new mail gets downloaded, so you can keep an up-to-date local copy without starting over.
• Resilient — One corrupted file affects one email, not your whole archive.

Which one should you use?

If you need a one-time, complete legal or compliance record of your account exactly as Google holds it — for example before permanently deleting the account — Takeout's raw .mbox export is a reasonable belt-and-suspenders backup to keep in a drawer. But if you actually want to use your old email — search it, read it, keep it updated as new mail arrives — an IMAP archive is the practical choice. Many people do both: a one-time Takeout export as a raw insurance copy, and an IMAP archive as the working, searchable copy they actually interact with.

Doing the IMAP archive with MailVault

MailVault is a free, open-source desktop email app for macOS and Linux built around exactly this workflow. Sign in to your Google account with OAuth (no app passwords, no fiddling with IMAP settings), pick the folders or labels you want, and MailVault downloads every message as an individual .eml file in a standard Maildir structure on your disk. You can browse, search, and open your archived mail directly in MailVault, or point any other mail client at the same files. Unlimited manual archiving is free; scheduling it to run automatically in the background is a $4/month premium feature if you want it hands-off going forward.

Frequently Asked Questions

Related reading: how to archive IMAP emails locally, what to do when Gmail storage is full, and how to leave Gmail without losing your emails. See all features.