Learn how to prevent the Mac’s Mail app from downloading all email attachments locally and taking up a lot of unnecessary space.
When setting up my wife’s new MacBook Pro, I noticed that the Mail app was not only downloading all emails from her Gmail account but also all their attachments, amounting to several gigabytes of storage space. This is of course a big waste of space since none of these attachments are so important that they must be downloaded locally.
Thankfully, you can easily change this behavior and make sure the Mail app downloads only recent attachments or none at all. Simply changing this quick setting can potentially save tons of local storage space on your Mac.
Turn off automatic attachments download for the Mail app
1) Launch the Apple Mail app on your Mac
2) Click Mail > Settings or Preferences from the top menu bar.
3) Go to the Accounts tab.
4) Select the account for which you want to change the mail download behavior in the sidebar.
5) Look for the Download Attachments option and select Recent or None from the dropdown menu.
- When you select All, Mail always downloads attachments that you receive.
- When you select Recent, Mail downloads only attachments received within the past 15 months.
- When you select None, Mail doesn’t download any attachments at all.
Now, of course, when you receive emails containing attachments, these files will still be showing in the Mail app. The difference is that if you select None, these attachments will not be automatically downloaded to your Mac but will instead reside on the Mail server.
If you receive a lot of emails, making this little change can save you gigabytes of storage space over the years. And for more, you can check out these 30 tips to free storage space on your Mac.
Other useful tips for the Mail app: