How do I download Gmail attachments in bulk?

Last reviewed: September 23, 2026 · Markdown version

Google's help page on downloading attachments documents no bulk-download button — not for a mailbox, and not even for one message. That is worth saying plainly before you go looking for one. Three routes actually work, they produce quite different things, and picking the wrong one costs an afternoon.

Route 1 — one at a time, or straight to Drive

Google's own page on opening and downloading attachments documents exactly two actions, and neither is a bulk one (Open & download attachments in Gmail, read 23 September 2026). To download: "Open a message", "At the bottom of the message, hover over the attachment", "Click Download". To send it to Drive instead, the same three steps and then "Click Add to Drive" — with the caveat Google flags, "You can’t add certain attachments to Google Drive".

That page does not document a save-all control, so if a guide describes a "download all attachments" button, check it against your own screen before relying on it.

Route 2 — Google Takeout (the whole mailbox)

Takeout exports the mail you have not deleted, and Google lists "Attachments" among what the download includes (Export your data from Gmail, read 23 September 2026). Two further things Google states: "each message's labels are preserved in a special X-Gmail-Labels header in your download file", and "Unfortunately at this time, we don’t support timeframe exports" — you cannot ask for just last year (How to download your Google data, read 23 September 2026).

What neither Google page says is how the attachments are laid out in the export, so do not count on a tidy folder of loose PDFs. The same Google page talks about the labels header in terms of what "mail clients" can read, which suggests the file is meant for a mail program rather than a file browser. Takeout is the right tool for keeping a copy of everything and the wrong one for getting my invoices out.

Route 3 — narrow the search first, then download

Usually the real request is "all the attachments of a certain kind", and that is a search problem. These operators are all documented by Google (Refine searches in Gmail, read 23 September 2026):

has:attachment filename:pdf from:billing@example.com — one sender's PDFs.
has:attachment larger:5M older_than:1y — the heavy old ones, which is what people mean when the account is full.
has:attachment filename:xlsx after:2025/01/01 — one file type, one period.

Work through that result set message by message. It is manual, but it is a bounded list rather than a mailbox. The full operator set.

A word on third-party "attachment downloader" add-ons

Add-ons that promise this need access to your mail to do it. That is a real decision, not a formality: an add-on that can read every message is an add-on that can read every message. Check what scope it asks for before installing, and prefer one that names exactly what it will touch.

The step everyone forgets

Downloading an attachment copies it. It does not remove it from Gmail, and it does not give you a single byte of storage back. Google's own words: "Attachments count toward your Google storage. Storage is shared across Drive, Photos, and Gmail" (Send attachments with your Gmail message, read 23 September 2026). If the point of the exercise was space, the download is step one of two, and step two is deleting the mail that carried it. What is actually holding the bytes.