[HN Gopher] How to Delete Gmail Attachments Without Deleting the... ___________________________________________________________________ How to Delete Gmail Attachments Without Deleting the Emails Author : strnisa Score : 39 points Date : 2022-08-14 20:58 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.unattach.app) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.unattach.app) | V__ wrote: | > From a technical point of view, the app deletes the attachment | by inserting a new email (the one without the attachment) into | your Gmail, and then deleting the original email (the one with | the attachments). | | I hope there is a big warning when using the app, because this | makes these emails (maybe even the whole conversation chain?) | wortheless should they be needed as some kind of legal evidence. | gerdesj wrote: | Long article. Looks pretty. Lot of wankery. | | I just can't be arsed to get excited about something I don't use. | | Sorry. | nousermane wrote: | Mutt can do that. Open an email, "v", select attachment to | delete, "d". Done. | | Works with gmail, too - assuming you've jumped through the | necessary hoops to enable full read-write IMAP access to your | account. | strnisa wrote: | Does it work for all types of attachments (e.g. inline) and can | be done across many emails at once? Can it add information | about what was removed? | nousermane wrote: | Yes, for any attachment/mime-section ("inline" is just a flag | of "Content-Disposition" header in corresponding mime | section). | | No, across many emails, at least not without writing some | macros. | | Sort-of, labeling deleted attachment. You can attach a label | to whole email, or edit raw, to edit/replace an attachment | with placeholder/label text. A bit fiddly, but doable with | some vim-fu. | strnisa wrote: | I've just tried doing this with Mutt. It's quite awkward, | but (after fidling with the interface) it did create a new | email with an empty attachment, i.e. the attachment is | still there, but it has zero bytes. Also, the original | email remained within Gmail. So, it seems that Mutt doesn't | work well with Gmail for this use case. | nousermane wrote: | > Also, the original email remained within Gmail. | | That's a "feature" of gmail's IMAP server that is easy to | confuse for a client bug - see pugio's comment about | having exact same problem when using Thunderbird. | | Gmail knows nothing about folders (where given email is | in exactly one of those), instead using "labels" (which | an email can have zero or more of). Problematic "feature" | here is that their IMAP interface exposes labels as | folders. So, if client asks server to delete message from | a folder, instead, server removes a label, message itself | remaining intact. | kevincox wrote: | Thunderbird can also do this. You can select which attachments to | remove. | | IDK if it supports in-place quality reduction though. | pugio wrote: | I tried to use Thunderbird for this for a while, but there's a | weird bug where it creates copies of emails that have the | deleted attachments. You then have to delete those copies to | fully delete everything. | | Switch to the featured app here and everything worked | seamlessly. Definitely worth it, as this way I don't have to | pay for Google storage and can clean out a bunch of pure junk | from my emails. | strnisa wrote: | Yes, you can remove attachments with Thunderbird, but it | requires a lot of configuration and it is highly error-prone. | psKama wrote: | A disclaimer about your relationship to unattach.app would be | very welcome when you submit a comment about it or about | their alternatives. | 1659447091 wrote: | This reminded me of a google apps script hack/solution on stack | overflow [1] | | Havent used it in awhile so not sure if anything changed | | [1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/46434390/remove-an- | attac... | strnisa wrote: | Yes, Gmail API does not support this out of the box. However, | you can download the raw email, update it locally, upload the | modified copy, and then delete the original. This is how the | web app (Unattach) described in the blog post does it. | Disclaimer: I am the author. | teruakohatu wrote: | Any chance of an client side app? | strnisa wrote: | It is a client-side app that runs inside the browser. Or do | you mean something else? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-14 23:00 UTC)