How to download all attachments from a Gmail email
I clicked "Download all attachments" on an email with seven documents in it. I got three files.
I built InboxBinder for a solo lawyer whose clients send their documents by email, so I made a test email that looks like what actually arrives: a photo of an ID attached to the message, a two-page PDF of a written statement as a second attachment, a zip file with two more photos of documents inside as a third attachment, and three photos of documents pasted inline within the body of the email: seven documents in total. Then I clicked Gmail’s “Download all attachments” link to see how many of them I’d get.
I got three files, and one of them was the still-compressed zip.
What “Download all attachments” gets right
Gmail shows a download icon above the attachments at the bottom of an email (hover over it and it reads “Download all attachments”). Clicking it downloads one zip file with the email’s subject line as the filename, and inside of it is every attachment, exactly as it was sent: the original photo, the original PDF, and the original zip. If what you need is the attached files only, this is the right tool and it’s already built in.
What it misses
Two things, and both of them are documents your clients meant to send you.
Photos in the body of the email. When someone pastes or drops photos into the message itself, they show up between the lines of text instead of as attachments at the bottom. “Download all attachments” ignores them. On my test email, all three inline body photos were missing from the download, Gmail does give each body photo its own Download button when you hover over it, but there’s no button that collects them all, so you go back and save each one by hand.
Anything inside an attached zip. Gmail downloads the zip as it is. The two photos inside it are still packed away, so you have to open the zip file that Gmail gave you, and then open the zip file inside of that.
So on my test email, getting every document out of Gmail took the download, two rounds of unzipping, and three trips back to the email for the body photos, before I had all seven files in one folder. The lawyer I built this for does this workflow nearly every single day.
Downloading from many emails at once
I didn’t find a way in Gmail to download attachments from several emails at once. Chrome extensions fill that gap, and three are worth knowing if this is your specific situation (all figures as of this writing, October 2026):
Badgy downloads the attachments from many emails into one organized zip and can merge PDF invoices and receipts for printing.1 It’s the first result in the Chrome Web Store for this search, with about 2,000 users. If your job is “every invoice from this client since January,” a tool like this is a better fit than anything that works one email at a time, InboxBinder included.
Bulk Attachment Downloader for Gmail adds a button that downloads all the attachments from a message or an entire thread.2 If the files you need are spread across a long back-and-forth communication, that thread button is worth a look.
Gmail Bulk Print Selected downloads attachments from the emails you select and can export the emails themselves along with their attachments in a dated zip, after a 10-use trial.3
The descriptions above are from each extension’s Chrome Web Store pages, and I suggest testing them yourself before relying on them.
Every document in two clicks: InboxBinder
InboxBinder is a Chrome extension that captures the documents from the email you have open and saves them as one PDF, completely inside your browser.
- Open the email in Gmail and click the InboxBinder extension icon.
- Check the list. Every attached PDF, JPG, and PNG is a row, the photos in the body of the email are rows with thumbnails, and an attached zip is one row whose images and PDFs are added when you save. Deselect anything you don’t want, like a logo from someone’s signature.
- Click “Save as one PDF”. You get one PDF, named with the date, the sender, and the email’s subject.
On my test email, that’s all seven documents in one file: the attached photo, both pages of the PDF, the two photos from inside the zip, and the three photos from the body. There’s nothing to unzip and no going back for the body photos. If a photo or scan is sideways, the Rotate button on its row turns it upright with one click before saving. No files are uploaded anywhere in this process.
To be clear about the tradeoff: you get one combined PDF, not the separate original files. For a case folder or a client record, one PDF is usually optimal. If you need the originals to edit or re-send, then Gmail’s own download might fit better.
What InboxBinder doesn’t do
It handles PDFs, JPGs, and PNGs only. Word documents, spreadsheets, and iPhone HEIC photos aren’t included (yet), and the popup lists them by name so you can see what was left out.
In a thread, it saves what’s in the newest message, including images and attachments that were forwarded along with it. Attachments sent with earlier replies aren’t included.
It runs in Chrome on a computer, not in Gmail’s phone apps.
The first 5 saves are free with no account. After that it’s 2 free saves a month, or unlimited for $49 a year.
Which one to use
If you need the original files from one email, Gmail’s “Download all attachments” is already there. If you need attachments from dozens of emails, one of the bulk extensions above should fit. If you need every document from a client’s email, including the photos in the body and whatever is inside an attached zip, in one file you can put straight into the case folder, that’s exactly what InboxBinder was built for.
If you pull documents out of client emails as part of your work, I’d love to hear how you do it today and which part takes the longest. I read every email at [email protected].