How to Open a Google Takeout MBOX File (Gmail Export)
Google Takeout gives you your Gmail as an .mbox file. Windows and macOS don't open it by double-click, and importing it into a mail app is slow. You can read it straight away in your browser.
1. Get the .mbox out of the Takeout archive
Takeout delivers a .zip (or .tgz) file. Extract it — on Windows right-click › Extract All, on a Mac double-click. Inside you'll find Takeout › Mail with a file such as All mail Including Spam and Trash.mbox. If you exported large mailboxes, Takeout may split them over several archives; each holds part of your mail.
2. Open it here
The page first finds every email in the file (a percentage shows progress — roughly 5 to 15 seconds per gigabyte on a typical computer), then lists them by Gmail label: Inbox, Sent, Important, your own labels and Gmail's categories. Labels like Opened and Unread describe an email's state, so they aren't shown as folders.
3. Save what you need
- One email as PDF: open it › Save as PDF.
- A label as PDFs: choose the label › Download folder as PDF — a PDF of each email looking as it does on screen, with its attachments if you want them.
- Attachments: download them from the email, one by one or all at once.
- Into another mail app: save an email as .eml; Apple Mail, Outlook and Thunderbird open .eml files.
Privacy
Your Gmail export contains years of private mail. This page reads it only on your computer — nothing is uploaded — so you don't have to hand it to an online converter.
Problems?
- "This does not look like an .mbox mailbox file" — the file is probably still the .zip/.tgz from Takeout, or only partly downloaded. Extract it, or download it again.
- Some emails show odd characters — very old emails sometimes don't say which character set they use. The text is still there; the attachment downloads are unaffected.