Leaving a job or closing Gmail? How to keep a searchable copy of your email

You are about to lose access to a mailbox, whether a work account that closes on your last day or a Gmail address you are finally shutting down, and somewhere in it are receipts, contracts, contacts and conversations you will want again. A raw export is easy to get and nearly useless on its own. This post walks through exporting the mail, importing it into mailin on your Mac, and keeping it searchable and private for as long as you need it.

First, get the export

Every major mail system can hand you a copy of your mail, and mailin reads all of the common formats natively.

• Gmail: go to Google Takeout, choose Deselect all, select only Mail, click Create export, and wait. Large mailboxes can take hours. Download the ZIP when it is ready.
• Outlook: a .pst archive or .ost offline cache opens directly, up to 50 GB per file. Single saved messages are .msg.
• Apple Mail: messages are stored as .emlx files under ~/Library/Mail/. Select or drag them in.
• Thunderbird and others: standard .mbox and .eml files.

For a work account, check what you are permitted to take before exporting anything. The steps below are the same either way, but that permission is not mailin's to give.

Unzip, then import

If your export came as a ZIP, unzip it first. mailin 2.0 does not extract ZIP files on its own. Inside a Takeout archive you will find the mbox file, sometimes without any extension; mailin detects the format from the contents, so that is fine.

Drag the files onto the mailin window or choose them with the file picker. You can import several at once, and a progress indicator tracks large files. The importer streams messages in batches of 200, so memory use stays flat whether the export is small or 200 GB, and it checkpoints after every batch. If the app quits partway, dropping the same file again resumes from the last checkpoint. The Gmail Takeout guide covers the mbox path step by step.

Use the Personal workflows

mailin 2.0 ships with guided workflows, and seven of them are built for exactly this situation. Each one runs step by step, auto-saves, and keeps a numbered document you can reopen later. The Personal set follows a simple sequence: Backup, Dedupe, Categorize, Purge, Export.

• Full Backup is the starting point after a job change: import everything, then export a complete copy in a durable format.
• Find & Export is for pulling out a subset, such as every message involving a particular client or from a date range.
• Receipts & Records Roundup is aimed at the invoices, confirmations and similar records buried in years of mail.
• Contacts Roundup rebuilds an address book from the people in your headers.
• Find Attachments collects the files rather than the messages around them.
• Archive Cleanup and Unsubscribe & Declutter handle duplicates and noise before you keep the result.

The workflow runner shows a "you are here" roadmap, opens heavier tools beside the job, and marks steps complete as you fill them in. Everything you did is recorded in Documents & History, so you can come back months later and see what you exported and when.

Pick formats that will still open

The export step is where a lot of backups quietly fail: a proprietary format that only one application reads is a liability. mailin exports MBOX for a complete, re-importable mailbox and EML for individual messages; both are open standards that nearly any mail client understands. PDF is right for anything a person needs to read or print. Portable HTML gives you a browsable copy with no mail software required.

Contacts from your headers export as vCard, calendar items as ICS, and metadata as CSV or JSON. The export formats guide compares them. One thing to avoid: mailin's PST export is experimental and may not open in Outlook, so do not make it your only copy.

Nothing is uploaded

An email archive is one of the most personal datasets a person owns, and the whole point of mailin is that it never leaves your device. There is no account to create, the app works fully offline, and the developer collects nothing: no analytics, no telemetry, no tracking, no third-party SDKs. The shipped app contains no IMAP, SMTP or Gmail API code, so it cannot connect to a mail server even if you wanted it to.

For a sensitive archive you can turn on encrypted storage using AES-256 and lock the app with Touch ID or Face ID. iCloud sync covers settings only, never mail. If you decide to stop using mailin, data can be cleared from Settings and is permanently deleted from the device. The privacy post goes into what the app can and cannot reach on the network.

What it costs

The Free tier imports up to 500 emails with no account or payment details, which is enough to confirm your export parses and search works the way you expect. Beyond that, the Personal tier is $4.99 a month, $44.99 a year, or $99.99 as a one-time lifetime purchase that never renews. A backup you intend to keep for years suits the lifetime option, and the purchase is universal: buy once and use it on Mac, iPhone and iPad, with Family Sharing supported.

FAQ

Can I open the Takeout ZIP directly?

No. Unzip it first and import the mbox file inside; mailin 2.0 does not auto-extract ZIP archives.

Will my old email be uploaded anywhere?

No. mailin reads and indexes the files on your device, has no account system, and the developer collects no data from the app.

Is the free tier enough to test my export?

For a first check, yes. It imports up to 500 emails in any supported format; a full mailbox beyond that needs the Personal tier.