Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

mailmemories.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 71 posts

Re: Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

#61

Post by strnisa »

nickjj wrote: post #40
zazerr wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the same issue and found this worked great https://unattach.com/ (no affiliation, just a user)

Oh nice, if everything they say is true, this seems like a good match but it seems like it has 1 big potential downside. THE GOOD: Their FAQ says it uses OAuth to connect to your Google account and the emails never leave your browser. It also costs 83 cents for 1 month so you can go nuts. Alternatively you can pay 1 cent per email if you have a handful. I see another HN thread about it here from a few years ago: http…

Founder of Unattach here.

Just to clarify: Unattach does not corrupt or mangle emails. Because Gmail does not expose an API for modifying the original email in place, Unattach creates a new version of the email with attachments removed/downsized while preserving the email's content and metadata.

If you need the original email for legal/evidence purposes, you can back it up first, either through Gmail or Unattach.

Re: Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

#62

Post by subhobroto »

baron3dl wrote: post #45
subhobroto wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, I just one-shot a script that does the same with Claude, after it listed 5 free projects that do the same, including one GUI. The whole thing took less time than writing this comment. I'm assuming the author put in the effort to validate their program handles all kinds of pictures. With that assumption: - how did *you* validate the one-shot script that Claude handed you works correctly? - after all said and d…

It worked fist shot, and found 3k+ photos, which feels about right. Validated with Vibes. It's going to take more than $30 in time to look at them all, and it's 3k+ more photos than I had before. So, I'm satisfied. For apps without a network-effect, or highly specialized domains, coding agents are driving a convergence of the cost of software toward the cost of tokens to generate it. OP should have MIT licensed this,…

[dead]

Re: Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

#63

Post by subhobroto »

Watching this thread unfold over 24h was illuminating.

The biggest pushback seemed to be the price: people are upset it's priced at $30. Some suggested $3. A few suggested open sourcing it under MIT and moving on.

The primary argument was that there are already existing, free tools that can be chained together to do exactly what Mail Memories does. The secondary argument was that LLMs can already code this up, implying the OP was rentseeking.

IMHO, this comment (now dead) from the OP was on point and ironic:

> My target audience isn't engineers who know how to parse maildirs, it's everyday people (and busy devs) who just want a secure, 1-click interface that downloads their family photos into a folder on their computer (without touching a terminal).

This is entirely true - this thread is strong indication that this tool wasn't appreciated by the HN crowd (lots of engineers and technical people)! I noticed most of OP's comment went gray and then dead in a matter of minutes. The OP must have had a real hard time even responding to comments before HN throttled them from responding, asking them to "slow down".

But this raises a question - what if I one-shot something that my non-technical parents and family members would find incredibly valuable and so I'm hoping yours does as well? If an LLM could absolutely one shot it, perfectly, should I never post it on HN at all, in fear of the wrath that would be unleashed?

Anyone here can slap together a breakfast sandwich for ~$3 in ingredients. Is it blasphemy that you can't buy the same from a McDonald's or your neighborhood Deli for less than $15?

Re: Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

#64

Post by subhobroto »

KomoD wrote: post #29
ltiger wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, don't do that. Totally fair, though. In my defense, 98% of my time went into wrestling with IMAP parsing architectures, optimizing memory, and code-signing certificates instead of designing custom CSS layouts from scratch. I'll finesse the design in the future.

> 98% of my time went into wrestling with IMAP parsing architectures, optimizing memory, and code-signing certificates instead of designing custom CSS layouts from scratch You're just using imapflow and their Gmail search method. Why are you making things up? https://imapflow.com/docs/guides/fetching-messages#gmail-spe... You call that function with this query over and over again: filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png OR gif…

The details are interesting! How did you find all of this out? Did you download the tool in a VM and disasm it?

I assumed the OP was literally making throttled, batched, parallel IMAP FETCH calls with the BODYSTRUCTURE parameter to the mailbox, inspecting the `Content-Type` and/or `Content-Disposition` for image fingerprints and then grabbing the real payload.

However, from what you said here, it's a bit less sophisticated than that?

Re: Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

#65

Post by subhobroto »

ltiger wrote: post #49

Just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who commented today. Launching on HN isn't for the faint of heart, but it’s been really valuable. What a day. I was told my landing page looks like an AI wrote it, got roasted for a confusing illustration metric (and rightly so), and received the ultimate rite of passage: being told my app could be replaced by a couple of Linux CLI commands. Unironically, than…

I was monitoring this thread because of the comments. Unsure how I came across this post to begin with! (was it on the FP?)

You really handled all the feedback well and if you wouldn't mind answering (email works too), I had some followups:

1. Did you get a boost in sales from this post?

2. What's your typical customer like and do they email you questions/support?

3. If you had provided this as a hosted service and continued to use IMAP, would you have had to ask for the user's GMail password?

4. I see you had toyed with the idea of $5/yr - why did you withdraw it and go $30 flat rate?

5. Any idea how many customers you're leaving on the table with the $30 flat rate that would have converted at a lower price?

6. Did HN throttle your ability to respond to comments ("slow down...") during this episode?

I learned a lot from your thread - Thank You for keeping up with it

Re: Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

#66

Post by KomoD »

subhobroto wrote: post #64
KomoD wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 98% of my time went into wrestling with IMAP parsing architectures, optimizing memory, and code-signing certificates instead of designing custom CSS layouts from scratch You're just using imapflow and their Gmail search method. Why are you making things up? https://imapflow.com/docs/guides/fetching-messages#gmail-spe... You call that function with this query over and over again: filename:(jpg OR jpeg OR png OR gif…

The details are interesting! How did you find all of this out? Did you download the tool in a VM and disasm it? I assumed the OP was literally making throttled, batched, parallel IMAP FETCH calls with the BODYSTRUCTURE parameter to the mailbox, inspecting the `Content-Type` and/or `Content-Disposition` for image fingerprints and then grabbing the real payload. However, from what you said here, it's a bit less sophist…

> The details are interesting! How did you find all of this out? Did you download the tool in a VM and disasm it?

I downloaded the installer, opened it with 7zip, and extracted the app.asar file from resources/app.asar. All Electron apps have this, it's where the app code really lives.

Then I used asar to extract it. That gives you a few folders, including dist, which contains 5 .jsc files. Nearly everything related to fetching is in a file called engine.jsc. The jsc files are bytecode instead of raw JS because he didn't want anyone to reverse it, but with a little work you can figure it out (or you can just dump the strings and see that imapflow is in there)

Didn't need to run it at all.

> However, from what you said here, it's a bit less sophisticated than that?

Indeed. And re the image fingerprinting, it just checks the file names of "message parts", not content-type or content-disposition (even though imapflow exposes those)

Re: Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

#67

Post by nickjj »

strnisa wrote: post #61
nickjj wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh nice, if everything they say is true, this seems like a good match but it seems like it has 1 big potential downside. THE GOOD: Their FAQ says it uses OAuth to connect to your Google account and the emails never leave your browser. It also costs 83 cents for 1 month so you can go nuts. Alternatively you can pay 1 cent per email if you have a handful. I see another HN thread about it here from a few years ago: http…

Founder of Unattach here. Just to clarify: Unattach does not corrupt or mangle emails. Because Gmail does not expose an API for modifying the original email in place, Unattach creates a new version of the email with attachments removed/downsized while preserving the email's content and metadata. If you need the original email for legal/evidence purposes, you can back it up first, either through Gmail or Unattach.

> If you need the original email for legal/evidence purposes, you can back it up first, either through Gmail or Unattach.

Yes, that was covered in the other thread. Presenting a backup as evidence has a lot less strength than the original.

If the other person doesn't have the email (they deleted it) and you don't have the original because Unattach deleted it to replace it with a different copy then we're only left with an offline backup on 1 person's machine. Who's to say that offline backup wasn't tampered with (modifying headers, etc.)?

Re: Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

#68

Post by subhobroto »

KomoD wrote: post #66
subhobroto wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The details are interesting! How did you find all of this out? Did you download the tool in a VM and disasm it? I assumed the OP was literally making throttled, batched, parallel IMAP FETCH calls with the BODYSTRUCTURE parameter to the mailbox, inspecting the `Content-Type` and/or `Content-Disposition` for image fingerprints and then grabbing the real payload. However, from what you said here, it's a bit less sophist…

> The details are interesting! How did you find all of this out? Did you download the tool in a VM and disasm it? I downloaded the installer, opened it with 7zip, and extracted the app.asar file from resources/app.asar. All Electron apps have this, it's where the app code really lives. Then I used asar to extract it. That gives you a few folders, including dist, which contains 5 .jsc files. Nearly everything related…

> Indeed. And re the image fingerprinting, it just checks the file names of "message parts", not content-type or content-disposition (even though imapflow exposes those)

Thank You for the explanation. This sheds some light on why the OP kept saying this tool works only on GMail while also saying this is IMAP based. An IMAP solution should be mostly provider agnostic but because of all of this GMail filter business, it's not.

Re: Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

#69

Post by subhobroto »

nickjj wrote: post #67
strnisa wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Founder of Unattach here. Just to clarify: Unattach does not corrupt or mangle emails. Because Gmail does not expose an API for modifying the original email in place, Unattach creates a new version of the email with attachments removed/downsized while preserving the email's content and metadata. If you need the original email for legal/evidence purposes, you can back it up first, either through Gmail or Unattach.

> If you need the original email for legal/evidence purposes, you can back it up first, either through Gmail or Unattach. Yes, that was covered in the other thread. Presenting a backup as evidence has a lot less strength than the original. If the other person doesn't have the email (they deleted it) and you don't have the original because Unattach deleted it to replace it with a different copy then we're only left wi…

Are you in the U.S.? Which state?

You're trying to establish a chain of custody here. The only person who remotely cares about the forensic integrity of the message is the judge (and the jury if it's a jury trial) and it seems like an argument you would like to make is "this email came from Google's servers so we didn't tamper with it" - but the judge won't take your word for it, you will need Google to substantiate that and they won't unless it's a workspace account.

If it's a workspace account, then your org already has a retention policy.

So again, what problem are you trying to solve and in which jurisdiction?

Re: Show HN: Mail Memories – A desktop app to rescue photos from Gmail

#70

Post by nickjj »

subhobroto wrote: post #69
nickjj wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you need the original email for legal/evidence purposes, you can back it up first, either through Gmail or Unattach. Yes, that was covered in the other thread. Presenting a backup as evidence has a lot less strength than the original. If the other person doesn't have the email (they deleted it) and you don't have the original because Unattach deleted it to replace it with a different copy then we're only left wi…

Are you in the U.S.? Which state? You're trying to establish a chain of custody here. The only person who remotely cares about the forensic integrity of the message is the judge (and the jury if it's a jury trial) and it seems like an argument you would like to make is "this email came from Google's servers so we didn't tamper with it" - but the judge won't take your word for it, you will need Google to substantiate…

I'm in the US / NY, with a normal personal account.

I think the issue with localizing it to a specific state is oftentimes contracts or working agreements have jurisdiction locations that align with the company. In other words, it might not be in NY. It could be anywhere, including different countries.

Post reply on HN