Hey HN, I’m the creator of Mail Memories. Like many of you, I've had my Gmail address for more than 20 years. Recently, 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 amount of nostalgic, vintage memes.
I originally built and launched this as a SaaS. To pull down attachments at scale, the app connects via IMAP using a standard Google App Password. Requesting users hand over that privileged credential to a remote cloud service is a big ask. Lots of people did and I'm grateful for that, but I really wanted more people to try the app.
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 local-first desktop app for Mac and Windows.
Now, users generate an App Password through Google and paste it directly into the app. The password is held strictly in memory (RAM). It's never written to disk, never cached, and goes away the moment they close the app.
The app connects directly to Google's servers 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 a pre-2010 Gmail account, I'd love for you to give it a spin. You'll be genuinely surprised at what you find.
I'd love to hear your feedback.