Keep the mail, drop the megabytes

How it works

1. You set the two criteria — how old the messages are, and the size from which an attachment is in your way.
2. MailSync scans and extracts — the matching messages are found, and their attachments gathered into a ZIP archive, arranged by folder. Nothing is changed in the mailbox.
3. You download the archive — and check that it really holds what you think it does. It stays available for 48 hours.
4. You confirm, or you don't — if you confirm, each message is put back without its attachments and the original is deleted. If you don't, you simply walk away with your files.

Why the archive comes first

This is the only tool in the catalogue that deletes for good. The others move things: the deduplicator sets copies aside, the cleaner sends messages to your provider's trash, and in both cases one click undoes it.

Here that isn't possible: leaving the originals in the trash wouldn't free the space you came for. So we reverse the usual order — the attachments leave the mailbox before they disappear from it. By the time the confirm button shows up, your archive is already waiting, and you've had time to open it.

What a slimmed message keeps

• Its text, in full — plain-text and HTML bodies, exactly as they were. We split the message along its MIME boundaries and reassemble what's left byte for byte; we don't rewrite it.
• Its original headers — subject, sender, recipients, Message-ID, sent date, and everything else.
• Its place and its date — same folder, same arrival date. Otherwise every slimmed old message would jump back to the top of the mailbox, as if it had just landed.
• Its state — read, flagged, answered. A read archive doesn't turn back into a pile of unread mail.
• A record of what it lost — a short note appended at the end names each removed file, with its type and size.

What we refuse to do

• Delete without checking — we put the slimmed copy back, search the folder for it by its Message-ID, and only delete the original once we've found it. If the copy doesn't arrive, the message stays untouched, attachments included.
• Empty a message — if removing the attachments would leave nothing readable, we leave the message alone. Putting a shell in place of a message we're about to delete isn't an option.
• Touch service folders — trash, spam, drafts and virtual folders are out of scope. The report shows the list of scanned folders and the ones left out, with the reason.
• Let you believe it works everywhere — on Gmail, slimming frees no space at all. We detect that during the scan and tell you in the report, before you confirm anything.

The Gmail case, plainly

Gmail doesn't have folders, it has labels: a message carries tags and lives, as a single copy, in "All Mail". Removing a message from a label is peeling off a sticker — the message stays, attachments and all, and keeps counting against your quota.

In other words: on a Gmail account, slimming frees nothing. The attachment archive, on the other hand, works perfectly — that's a legitimate way to use the tool, and plenty of people stop there. To actually reclaim space on Gmail, you have to delete the messages from "All Mail", in Gmail's own interface.