How to download all attachments in Gmail

How to download all attachments in Gmail from one email: open it and click the Download all icon at the right end of the attachment row; Gmail hands you a ZIP. For attachments from multiple emails there is no built-in button, but a label export through Google Takeout, opened in your browser with the converter, gives a ZIP per message without uploading anything.

Download all attachments in Gmail from one email

1. Open the email in Gmail on a computer.
2. Scroll to the attachment row at the bottom of the message. Hover over it; two icons appear at the right end of the row.
3. Click Download all attachments (the down arrow). The other icon, Add all to Drive, saves them to Google Drive instead.
4. Gmail builds a .zip named after the subject and downloads it. Unzip it to get the files.

The icons show only when a message has two or more attachments; a single attachment has its own download arrow on hover. Inline images pasted into the body are not attachments and are not in the ZIP; right-click them and save, or use the converter route below, which pulls them out of the message. If the ZIP never arrives, the browser may have blocked multiple downloads; check the download bar for a prompt.

Have the email as a file (EML, MSG, MBOX)? Convert it to PDF in your browser: nothing is uploaded.

Find the emails with attachments first

Gmail's search operators do the sorting so you do not open every message. Combine them in the search box:

• has:attachment lists every message with a file.
• filename:pdf or filename:invoice narrows by type or name; filename:jpg OR filename:png finds photos.
• larger:5M finds big files; from:supplier@example.com has:attachment after:2026/01/01 finds one sender's files in one year.

Select the results, apply a label (for example Attachments Q1), and you have a working set for the steps below. The label also makes a tidy Takeout export later.

Download attachments from multiple emails

There is no multi-email download in Gmail: selecting ten messages in the list and looking for a download option finds nothing. The built-in tools that come close are Drive and Takeout.

1. Add to Drive, message by message. Open each message, click Add all to Drive, pick a folder. Fine for a dozen emails; slow for a hundred.
2. Takeout plus the converter. Export the label with Google Takeout (Mail, All Mail data included, only that label) and download the ZIP. Drop the .mbox on SaveMail. The list shows every message; open one and the attachment list below the message offers each file or all as a ZIP. Repeat for each message.
3. A desktop mail client. Thunderbird with IMAP can save attachments from a selected set of messages through an add-on; it means installing software and syncing the mailbox first.

The converter route keeps everything on your device: the MBOX is read by the browser's File API, nothing is uploaded, and the tab can even be offline. It is still one message at a time, so for several hundred emails expect a session, not a click. The export steps in detail: export Gmail emails.

Which method when

On Android and iPhone

The Gmail app shows attachments as cards under the message. Tap a card to preview it, then tap the download icon (Android, saved to the Downloads folder) or the share icon and Save to Files (iPhone). The Add to Drive icon on each card saves it to Drive. The app has no Download all for a message; each file is a tap. For a message you received as an .eml file, the converter works in a phone browser for single EML and MSG files, and the attachment list is downloadable there as well.

Keep the attachments with the email

A folder of PDFs with no record of who sent them and when is a weak record. If the files are for an expense report, a claim or a client matter, keep the message with them: Download message from the three-dot menu gives an .eml that already contains the attachments, and the converter turns it into a PDF with the From, To, Date, Subject and Message-ID block above the body and the attachment list under it. Store the PDF and the ZIP in one folder named by date. The broader method is in save an email with attachments, and the Gmail-specific save paths are in save attachments from Gmail.

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