Nicheloom

Market intelligence for builders — see what's gaining traction before it's crowded.

Mail Memories

A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

Details

External ID
48762000
Source
HN
Company
—
Product
Mail Memories
Website domain
mailmemories.com
Launched
July 2, 2026
Cohort
—
Upvotes
103
Upvotes percentile
0.9199522102747909
Tags
—
Fetched at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.
Updated at
Sept. 7, 2026, 9:26 p.m.

Description

Hey HN, I’m the creator of Mail Memories. Like many of you, I've had my Gmail address for more than 20 years. A few years ago, 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 number of vintage memes.I originally built and launched this as a SaaS, but 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 100% local desktop app for Mac and Windows.How it works now: The app connects directly to Google's server 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 an old, pre-2010 Gmail account, definitely give it a spin. You'll be surprised at what you find deep in your archive.I'd love to hear your feedback on the layout, scanning performance, or anything else.TL;DR: I turned my SaaS into a local desktop app (Mac/Windows) that recovers decades of forgotten photos from your Gmail. 100% local, no cloud, no subscriptions, no AI.

Enrichment

Theme
email infrastructure and inbox utilities
Vertical
Horizontal
Function
Vertical SaaS
Audience
B2C
AI stance
Not AI
Project type
Commercial product
Normalized one-liner
extract photos from gmail
Manually corrected
False

Could you build this?

Yes An Electron or Tauri desktop utility that uses IMAP or the Gmail API to iterate messages, filter by image MIME types, and download attachments locally is standard UI and script work.

Discussion

20 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: IPFS for backup, Arweave for permanent backup, Google Takeout, Shell scripts for email extraction, Free tools chained together

Concerns raised: Price too high at $30 (users suggested $3-5), Gmail-specific despite being IMAP-based, Backup as evidence less legally strong than original, Doubles storage usage on Google Drive/Gmail quota, Image fingerprinting less sophisticated than claimed

Feature requests: Support other email providers beyond Gmail, Jurisdiction/location specificity for legal use cases, Open source under MIT license

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one — 152 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #12 of 153 (itself plus its competitors, highest first — normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 239 days after the earliest competitor.

Other launches for this product

Same idea, different domain

Nobody's really built a vertical saas tool for Insurance yet.