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I want to just delete email attachments.

Mainly from gmail accounts, but it would be nice from other accounts too like iCloud.

The idea is to delete de attachments while keeping the mail.

Everything I've tried is painfully slow or manual or both or isn't not really deleting the email but creating a clone without attachments, so you need to remove them after.

Either if I try mail app on macOS or thunderbird (either with our without the AttachmentExtractor) what I'm getting is a copy of the email without attachment, so I have to manually delete the original one.

Is there nothing out there that just works?

lpuerto
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3 Answers3

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GMail: For Gmail, there exists the website Unattach which is commercial with a limited free license. For the Free plan, the email address you use to sign in to Unattach needs to be the same as the email address of your Gmail account (the password is not shared).

Thunderbird: The Thunderbird attachment AttachmentExtractor Continued is a fixed version of the original Add-on "AttachmentExtractor" which was no longer supported.

It does what you want, but doesn't work for Thunderbird versions later than Thunderbird 78 (the developer just gave up). To use this extension would require installing an old version of Thunderbird, which you may find in the Thunderbird archives. You would need to be careful to disable automatic updates immediately after the installation.

It doesn't seem to be possible to do this in the latest Thunderbird release.

Apple Mail: Another possibility is Apple mail, which allows to select multiple messages and then do Message > Remove attachments.

Script: For Python, you will find a script at imap size reducer which you could adapt to your needs. For GMail this may require a 2FA-enabled account so you can use App Passwords to circumvent their OAuth2 requirement.

harrymc
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As of February 2025, there is a version of Attachment Extractor that works for TB versions 125-130. Doesn't seem to work perfectly though, I'm having some issues, will let the developer know.

pmassat
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Unattach is a web application for Gmail that lets you download and remove attachments in bulk, and downsize images.

You can try it out with the free option, which is limited to 30 mails/month. Subscribe at least once for €10 per year to clean up an entire inbox.

Check out this introductory blog post for more info and the Product Hunt page for reviews.

cachius
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