Most of us keep the same email address for years. If you take a peek at your email account, then chances are you have a few hundred, or perhaps even a few thousand emails cluttering up your inbox β but if you use macOSβ Mail app, then there might also be a few thousand email attachments cluttering up your hard drive!
By default, Mail downloads and stores every single attachment you receive, to ensure they remain available offline and also appear in your Spotlight searches.
Assuming youβre using IMAP (which Mail uses by default), all of your attachments are available on the server for you to re-download at any point, so storing them locally is almost always a complete waste of time.
If youβve never gone into the Mail application and deleted your email attachments, then you could be wasting gigabytes of space! In this article Iβll show you two different ways to delete your email attachments, and potentially free up a tonne of disk space. And, once youβve solved the problem, Iβll show you how to make sure it never happens again, by tweaking Mailβs settings so that it no longer downloads every single attachment thatβs sent to your email address.
How much space is Mail actually using?
Before you start deleting attachments, you may want to check just how much space Mail is using, so you can see exactly how much memory youβve reclaimed by deleting your attachments.
- Open a Finder window.
- Select βGo > Go to Folderβ¦β from the menu bar.
- Type β~/Library/β and then press βGo.β
- Control-click the βMailβ folder, and then select βGet Info.β The subsequent window contains lots of information about your Mail account, including the amount of space itβs taking up on your hard drive.
Clearing your email attachments
Thereβs two ways that you can banish all of those unnecessary email attachments from your Mac:
- Use a third party app. If you donβt mind downloading some additional software, then CleanMyMac 3 can identify and delete all of your attachments automatically.
- Do It Yourself. Frustratingly, thereβs no built-in way to delete all of your downloaded attachments, so if you donβt want to use a third party app, then youβll need to go through your emails manually. Thereβs a few tricks that you can use to speed up this process, but thereβs no way around it: you will need to select every email in turn, and delete its corresponding attachment.
Clearing all your attachments manually
This is the more time-consuming option, but it doesnβt require you to download any additional software β and if youβre concerned about disk space, then you might not be wild about the idea of downloading yet another application.
- Launch the Mail app, if you havenβt already.
- Select your inbox.
- You can save yourself some time by bringing the biggest messages to the top, as these will often contain the largest attachments. Open the βSort byβ dropdown, and select βSize.β
- Select the first message that has an attachment, and then click βMessage > Remove Attachmentsβ from the menu bar.
- Rinse and repeat for every message that contains an attachment.
Deleting attachments, using ClearMyMac
The quickest and easiest way to delete all of your email attachments, is to use the CleanMyMac application:
- Launch CleanMyMac.
- Click the βScanβ button.
- Once the scan is complete, itβll return its recommendations, which should include deleting any downloaded email attachments. Make sure the βMail Attachmentsβ checkbox is selected, and then click βClean.β
Stop downloading all attachments automatically
Once youβve cleared your email attachments, youβll want to make sure you never get into this situation again. You can tell Mail not to download any attachments in the future, by tweaking its settings. Note that all of your attachments will still be available online, so as long as you have an Internet connection, youβll be able to view them as normal.
- Select βMail > Preferencesβ¦β from the Mail menu bar.
- Select your account from the left-hand menu.
- Select the βAdvancedβ tab.
- Find the βAutomatically download all attachmentsβ checkbox, and deselect it.
Using Gmail?
If youβve registered your Gmail account in the Mail app, then you can also prevent your Gmail from downloading any attachments:
- Select βMail > Preferencesβ¦β from the Mail menu bar.
- Select the βAccountsβ tab.
- Choose your Gmail account from the left-hand menu.
- Make sure the βAccount Informationβ tab is selected.
- Open the βDownload Attachmentsβ dropdown, and select either βRecentβ or βNone.β
Before you go
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CleanMyMac is highest rated all-round cleaning app for the Mac, it can quickly diagnose and solve a whole plethora of common (but sometimes tedious to fix) issues at the click of a button. It also just happens to resolve many of the issues covered in the speed up section of this site, so Download CleanMyMac to get your Mac back up to speed today.

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