Frequently Asked Questions

Who built this?

Unattach was created by me, Dr Rok Strniša, a solopreneur with 15+ years of experience in the tech industry. Originally from Slovenia, I earned my PhD in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, and have held various roles at renowned tech companies, such as Citrix, Winton and Improbable.

I originally started Unattach as a small side project to help my dad manage his work Gmail account more efficiently. Over time, it has evolved into a popular web application, now helping thousands of users around the world manage their email attachments.

What does 'Verified by Google' mean?

Unattach uses Google's Restricted Scopes, since it requires special permissions to update your emails in Gmail:

Unattach passed these checks, and complies with the Limited Use requirements. If Unattach had not passed these checks, Google would not allow you to give Unattach these permissions to your Gmail.

Do I need to share my Gmail password?

No. Authorization works through OAuth 2.0, which means that you authenticate with Google directly, and then Google gives Unattach a token, which gives it temporary permissions to your account.

Can you see my emails?

No. All personal data flows only between Gmail servers and your browser. For more info, see our plainly-written Privacy Policy.

How does Unattach work?

The app downloads the selected email from your Gmail account to your browser. Depending on your options, it also modifies the attachments in the local copy of this email, inserts the copy into your Gmail account, and then puts the original email into your Gmail Bin. All email metadata (like the 'Received Date') is preserved.

Which web browsers do you support?

Unattach should work with any major browser. However, please note that only Google Chrome is officially supported.

How do I start using Unattach?

If you are not signed in to Unattach, press the 'Get Started' button in the top-right. Here, you can sign up with Google or email+password, or you can sign in if you already have an Unattach account.

After you have signed in to Unattach, press 'Sign in with Google' to give Unattach permissions to your Gmail account.

You can then search for emails (e.g. those larger than 5 MB), select one or more, and press the 'Process Selected Emails' button - the default settings will simply download the emails' attachments.

I'm having trouble signing in. What could be going wrong?

The Google sign-in process relies on pop-ups and redirects. Please ensure that these are not disabled in your browser.

The app fails to load. What can I try?

Try disabling any ad blockers for the app's URL (https://unattach.com/web), because they may be preventing Google authentication and communication with Gmail, both of which are essential for the app.

How do I stop getting asked for a download location?

You need to enable Automatic Downloads in your browser. In Chrome, you can do this by going to Settings, then Privacy and security (on the left), then Site settings, then click on 'Automatic downloads'. There, you can add add https://unattach.com/ to the 'Allowed to automatically download multiple files' list.

In addition, you may need to disable the 'Ask where to save each file before downloading' setting. In Chrome, you can find this setting under Settings, then Downloads.

Can I modify an email I sent?

When you send an email to someone, they get a copy of that email in their Inbox, and you get a copy of the email in your Sent folder.

You can view, remove and modify (e.g. remove attachments from) the copy in your Sent folder.

It's not possible to modify the recipient's copy. This is not a restriction of Unattach, but a restriction of how emails work. Only the recipient can view, delete and modify their copy.

Can I insert emails back into Gmail?

Yes. You can achieve this with the Email Inserter tool.

When you enable the 'Backup Email' option within Advanced Options, you also obtain the .EML file for each processed email. The .EML file contains the whole email, including its metadata and its attachments.

You can open Email Inserter through the menu at the top-right within the Unattach app. There, you can select one or more .EML files, which will be inserted into your Gmail account as new emails.

Can I put attachments into subdirectories?

Unattach Web App runs within a browser. Due to security restrictions, browsers allow downloading files only to one specific folder.

However, you can upload your attachments to your Dropbox account using a custom directory structure. (Configured in Advanced Options.)

Once the files are in your Dropbox, you can use the Dropbox desktop app to have a synchronized copy of the whole directory structure anywhere on your computer.

Which image file formats are supported?

Unattach can downsize APNG, AVIF, BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, and WebP. Note that you can download attachments of any file format.

Why are some of my attachments not downloaded/uploaded?

This normally happens when an email contains attachments with the same filename. Unattach will still process all attachments, but the later attachments will overwrite the former ones.

A way to resolve this is to include ${EMAIL_PART} within your Filename Schema. To ensure that attachments with the same name across emails don't overwrite each other, also include ${ID:-4}, i.e. the last 4 letters of the email's ID.

It's also possible that your Attachment Filename Filter is not set to *, which means that Unattach may be filtering out some attachments.

Lastly, it's possible that the email you are processing or the attachment itself are encoded in a non-standard way, which may cause Unattach to not recognize the attachment. If you suspect this is the case, please contact us.

I can't find modified emails - where are they?

You may notice that Unattach moves the original emails to Bin, but can't see the modified emails, i.e. the ones with attachments removed.

Most email clients show the modified emails where the original ones were. The exceptions are some versions of Outlook, which show the modified emails as if they just arrived.

Within Unattach, if you press on the title of the email after its attachments have been removed, Unattach will open the modified email in Gmail's web interface. There, you can confirm that Unattach did what it was supposed to do.

By default, Unattach moves the original emails into Bin, allowing you to revert the operations in case Unattach didn't do what you expected.

Why does Unattach not remove some inline images?

Inline images are not necessarily attachments. They can be hosted elsewhere and only linked (via the HTML img tag) from within the email. In such cases, the image data is not a part of the email, and so doesn't take any of your Google storage. Unattach cannot remove such images, because they are not attachments.

Why was Google storage not freed after I removed/downsized attachments?

Unattach replaces your original email with a smaller one. By default, Unattach puts the original email into Gmail's Bin. While the original email is in the Bin, no Google storage is freed.

Gmail will automatically permanently-delete the original email after it has been in the Bin for 30 days. You can also manually empty the Bin, which will immediately free your Google storage.

If you would like Unattach to permanently-delete the original email instead of putting it in the Bin, please select 'Permanently Delete Original Email' in Advanced Options.

Please note that it can sometimes take Google a few days to update the available storage.

Is there a way to avoid processing the same emails twice?

Yes. Unattach can add Gmail labels to the emails when you download attachments ('Add label when downloading' in 'Advanced Options') and modify emails ('Add label when modifying' in 'Advanced Options'). Then, you can use Advanced Search and add (NOT label:UnattachDownloaded) and/or (NOT label:UnattachModified) to your search query to avoid the already-processed emails from appearing in the search results.

How can multiple users use a single Pro plan account?

Reset the password for your Unattach account to a strong password that you can share with others.

Each user can use this password to sign in to Unattach, and then sign into their own Gmail account.

I'm using Gmail with POP. Can I use Unattach?

No. Unattach will not work correctly if you use POP to access Gmail, because POP moves emails from the server to your local machine, while Unattach relies on modifying existing emails on Gmail servers.

Note that it's fine if you use POP only to get emails into Gmail from other email accounts.

How do I stop attachments from opening automatically?

The simplest option is to enable the 'Zip Before Downloading' within the 'Advanced Options' of Unattach. As the name suggests, this puts each attachment into a separate zip file before downloading it. The browser will normally not open the zip file.

Your browser may also be configured to open certain types of files automatically. If you're using Chrome, you can clear such settings by going to Settings > Advanced > Downloads, and pressing on Clear for the 'Open certain file types automatically after downloading' option.

Why is email processing sometimes slow?

If your Internet connection is fast, then the most likely reason is Gmail's rate limiting. So, enjoy a coffee while Unattach does its work ☕

Why is Unattach hard to find?

Unattach is operating on a relatively low budget, and cannot afford an expensive marketing campaign. The app's ranking is slowly increasing on Google search results.

If you'd like to help others more easily discover the app, you can:

• Write a review of Unattach on Trustpilot.
• Post on X (Twitter) about it.
• Upvote this StackExchange post about deleting a Gmail attachment, but keeping the email (requires 15 reputation on WebApps or 200 reputation on any StackExchange site).
• Upvote this Quora post about bulk removing Gmail attachments.

How do I stop my Unattach subscription plan from renewing?

If you're in the home screen, press on (i) and then 'Manage'.

Or press 'Manage subscription' in the app's menu (top-right).

If you subscribed through Stripe (debit/credit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay), press 'Cancel plan' in the page that appears.

If you subscribed through PayPal, select '42nd Universe Ltd' on the page that appears, then press 'Cancel'.

In either case, this will stop your subscription plan from renewing. You will continue getting the benefits of your subscription plan until the end of the already-paid period.

If you're on the Pay-As-You-Go plan, there is no subscription to manage, but you can manage your Small Transfers account.

How can I revoke Unattach's permission to my Gmail?

Go to your Google account's permissions, select Unattach and then press on 'Remove Access'.

What happened to the desktop app?

We are not planning on releasing any new versions of the desktop app. If you own a copy of the desktop app, you can continue using it.

When the desktop app eventually stops working (e.g. when Gmail changes its protocol), the attachments you downloaded and any emails you updated will continue to be accessible.