How to Download All Attachments from a Single Gmail Email at Once

When a single Gmail email has several attachments, you don't have to save them one by one. Gmail has a built-in Download all attachments button that bundles every file in that message into a single .zip download with one click. To use it, open the email, scroll to the attachment thumbnails at the bottom, and look for the download arrow near the top-right of the attachment area. That's the fastest way to download all attachments from one email in Gmail, and this guide covers exactly where the button lives, when it doesn't appear, and the Drive-based alternative.

One important point up front: this feature works per email. It grabs every file inside one message, but it can't reach across multiple emails. If you need attachments from many messages at once, that's a different job, and we'll point you to the right method at the end.

How to Use Gmail's "Download All Attachments" Button

This is the feature most people overlook, even though it's been in Gmail for years. Here's the exact flow on the desktop web version:

1. Open the email that contains the attachments.
2. Scroll to the bottom of the message, where the attachment thumbnails are displayed.
3. Move your cursor over the attachment area. A small toolbar appears near the top-right of that block.
4. Click the Download all attachments button, it's the icon that looks like a downward arrow (not the Drive triangle next to it).
5. Gmail packages every attachment in that email into a single .zip file and downloads it.

The zip lands in your browser's default download folder. Unzip it and you'll have every file from that email with the original filenames preserved. For an email with five or ten attachments, this turns ten clicks into one.

Where the Button Appears

The download-all button shows up in the hover toolbar over the attachment thumbnails, sitting right next to the Add all to Drive button. If you don't see it on hover, scroll so the full attachment block is visible, the toolbar only renders once the attachments have loaded. On smaller screens you may need to widen the browser window for the toolbar to have room to display.

When the "Download All" Button Doesn't Show Up

If you can't find the button, it's usually one of these reasons, not a bug:

• The email has only one attachment. Gmail doesn't show a "download all" button for a single file, because there's nothing to bundle. You'll just see the individual download arrow on that one attachment instead. Hover over the thumbnail and click its own download icon.
• The attachments are inline images. Pictures pasted directly into the body of a message (rather than attached as files) often don't count as downloadable attachments, so the bundle button won't appear. You can still right-click an inline image and choose "Save image as," but it won't be part of a zip.
• You're on the Gmail mobile app. The iPhone and Android apps have no "download all attachments" button at all, you save files one at a time through the share sheet. If you're on a phone, see our guide to downloading Gmail attachments on iPhone and iPad for the per-file flow and the bulk workaround.
• The file is blocked or the attachment didn't fully load. A connection hiccup or a blocked file type can leave the toolbar incomplete. Reload the email and check that none of the files triggered a security block.

The Alternative: "Add All to Drive"

Right next to the download button is Add all to Drive, and it's the better choice when you want the files in Google Drive rather than on your computer. Click it and Gmail saves every attachment from that email into your Drive, by default into a folder called "Email attachments" in your Drive root.

This keeps your files in the cloud, searchable and shareable, without using your computer's local storage. The trade-off is that the files count against your Google storage quota (Drive shares the same 15GB free allowance as Gmail and Photos), whereas downloading a zip to your computer doesn't. If you lean on Drive heavily, our guide on saving Gmail attachments to Google Drive covers how to make this automatic so you never click the button manually.

Download All vs. Save Each File Individually

You don't have to use the bundle button. Each attachment has its own download arrow and its own Drive icon when you hover over the individual thumbnail, so you can cherry-pick just the files you want.

Use the individual download when an email has, say, six attachments but you only need one of them. Use Download all when you want everything in that message and don't want to click six times. There's no quality difference, the files are identical either way; it's purely about convenience and how many you need.

The Key Limitation: It's Per Email Only

Here's the boundary that trips people up: Gmail's "Download all attachments" only ever operates on one email at a time. There is no native button to select multiple emails in your inbox and download all of their attachments together. If you have twenty separate emails, each carrying an invoice, you'd open each one and click "download all" twenty times.

For a few emails, that's perfectly fine. For dozens or hundreds, it becomes a real chore, and that's a fundamentally different task than what this button is for. Knowing which file lives in which email also matters here, so it helps to first search Gmail to find the exact attachments you need using operators like has:attachment filename:pdf from:[email protected]. A clean set of results makes the next step much faster.

How to Download Attachments Across Many Emails at Once

When the job is bigger than a single message, you have a few paths, all covered in depth in our walkthrough on how to bulk download Gmail attachments:

• Google Takeout exports your whole mailbox, but in MBOX format rather than tidy individual files, so it's better as a backup than a way to get clean attachments.
• A Google Apps Script can loop through a search query and save every matching attachment straight to a Drive folder, free, but it takes some setup and maintenance.
• A dedicated tool removes the manual step entirely.

That last option is what Dioveo is built for. It connects to your Gmail account through official Google APIs (OAuth only, so it never sees your password), indexes every attachment across your full mailbox history, and lets you select and download files in bulk, across as many emails as you like, or push them straight to Google Drive, Dropbox, or OneDrive. You can filter by sender, date, file type, or keyword, and set rules so future attachments file themselves automatically. There's a free tier with three downloads a day and a paid Pro plan for heavier volume.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I download all attachments from one Gmail email at once?

Open the email, scroll to the attachment thumbnails at the bottom, and hover over the attachment area. A toolbar appears near the top-right, click the Download all attachments button (the downward arrow). Gmail bundles every file in that email into a single .zip and downloads it to your browser's default folder.

Why is there no "Download all attachments" button on my email?

The most common reason is that the email has only one attachment, in which case Gmail shows the individual file's download arrow instead of a bundle button. It also won't appear for inline images embedded in the message body, on the Gmail mobile apps, or if an attachment failed to load fully. Reload the email and confirm there are at least two attached files.

What's the difference between "Download all" and "Add all to Drive"?

"Download all attachments" saves every file in the email as a single .zip to your computer's download folder and doesn't touch your Google storage. "Add all to Drive" saves the same files into Google Drive (the "Email attachments" folder by default), which keeps them in the cloud but counts against your 15GB Google storage quota.

Can I download attachments from multiple emails at once?

Not with the native button, it works on one email at a time only. To pull attachments across many emails, use Google Takeout for a full export, a Google Apps Script that loops through a search query, or a dedicated tool like Dioveo that downloads in bulk across your entire inbox in a single pass.

Need to grab attachments from more than one email? Use Dioveo to bulk download across your whole inbox and file every file to the cloud automatically.