How to Export Gmail with Google Takeout (and Open It on Mac)

Gmail is fast and convenient, but your email doesn’t really belong to you until you have a copy you control. Google Takeout is the official way to download everything in your mailbox as a single, portable MBOX file. This guide walks you through the whole process — from requesting the archive to opening it on your Mac with Mbox Viewer.

What is Google Takeout?

Google Takeout is a free Google service that lets you export your data from Gmail, Drive, Photos, and dozens of other products. For email, it produces a standard MBOX file: one plain-text container that holds every message, header, and attachment in your account. Because MBOX is an open format, you can keep that file forever and open it on any computer — even decades from now.

Step 1: Request your Gmail export

1. Go to takeout.google.com and sign in with the account you want to back up.
2. Click Deselect all so you only export what you need.
3. Scroll down, find Mail, and tick its checkbox.
4. (Optional) Click All Mail data included to choose specific labels instead of your entire mailbox — useful if you only want, say, Work or Invoices.
5. Click Next step at the bottom.

Step 2: Choose delivery and format

On the next screen you’ll set how the archive is delivered:

Option	Recommended setting	Why
Delivery method	Send download link via email	Simplest for a one-time backup
Frequency	Export once	Choose scheduled exports only for recurring backups
File type	.zip	Opens natively on macOS
File size	50 GB	Fewer files to download and reassemble

Click Create export. Google now builds your archive in the background.

Step 3: Wait for the email

Exports are not instant. A small mailbox may be ready in minutes; a large one with years of history can take several hours, or even a day or two. Google will email you a download link when it’s finished. The link stays valid for about a week, so download it promptly.

Step 4: Download and unzip

1. Open the email from Google and click Download your files.
2. Sign in again to confirm it’s really you.
3. Save the .zip to your Downloads folder.
4. Double-click the .zip in Finder to extract it.

Inside, look in Takeout/Mail/. You’ll find one or more files ending in .mbox — for example All mail Including Spam and Trash.mbox. This single file can be many gigabytes if you’ve used Gmail for years.

Step 5: Open the MBOX in Mbox Viewer

This is where most people get stuck. Apple Mail can import MBOX, but it copies every message into your live mailbox — slow, messy, and risky for huge files. Mbox Viewer takes a different approach: it opens the file directly, without importing anything.

1. Open Mbox Viewer on your Mac.
2. Drag the .mbox file onto the window, or choose File → Open.
3. The app streams the file and shows your messages in seconds — even for archives of 10 GB or more.

From there you can:

• Search across every message with operators like from:, subject:, and has:attachment.
• Read full messages with formatting and inline images intact.
• Export selected emails to EML, PDF, CSV, or plain text.
• Extract attachments in bulk to a folder.

Because Mbox Viewer reads the file in place and never phones home, your email stays entirely on your Mac.

Tips for large mailboxes

• If Takeout splits your export into multiple numbered MBOX files, you can open each one separately in Mbox Viewer.
• Store the archive on an external drive or in a backup so you always have an offline copy.
• Run Takeout once or twice a year to keep your local archive current.

Ready to open your Gmail archive?

You’ve done the hard part — your mail is now a file you own. Open it the fast, private way.

Get Mbox Viewer on the Mac App Store →