How to Backup Gmail Emails to EML Files

Google Storage Space Issue

Google provides 15GB of free storage per account. Recently, I received a notification that one of my accounts was almost full. After checking where the space was being used, I found that while Photos and Drive were using minimal space, Gmail was the main consumer.

Gmail Backup Options

Google’s Built-in Backup

Google Account allows you to backup emails in MBOX format, but the file size is too large for my needs.

Alternative Solution

Previously, when leaving Bardel, I found a script for backing up Gmail. Here’s how it looked:

While the original tool is no longer supported, the source code is still available. I forked it to my GitHub repository and made some modifications to make it work:

Gmail Backup Com

Docker-based Solution

Since Python 2 is no longer supported and setting up the development environment is difficult, I containerized the solution using Docker.

Usage

# Build the Docker container
docker-compose build

# Run with debugger
docker-compose run app python -m pdb gmail-backup.py

# Run backup
docker-compose run app python gmail-backup.py [backup dir] [gmail id] [gmail password] [start date] [end date]

This will create individual EML files for each email, organized in date-based directories within your specified backup directory.