Permanetly saving Gmail to macOS Mail

[mdelvecchio]

I am currently using the free edition of Google's G Suite for custom-domain email. However, Google is discontinuing this product and I do not wish to subscribe to their paid replacement plan. (I'm going to switch over to iCloud+ which now has support for custom domains!)

As such, I want to download all of my G Suite emails from Google's cloud, into a local mailbox on my macOS' Mail application, so that I don't lose the messages when the G Suite account is closed.

How do I do this?

I can currently connect to my G Suite email via the macOS Mail app, just like one would for a normal Gmail account. I assume this uses IMAP and the messages are NOT all stored on my own Mac, but are in the cloud only. I want to save them all locally, so that I have them forever.

Somebody recommend Google Takeout, which exports all your mail to MBOX files, which you then download, and then can import back into macOS Mail. I will try this.

Is there another way? Another idea I was thinking:

1) complete the MX record domain change to get my custom email going to iCloud+
2) open Mail for my iCloud account
3) add my G Suite account to Mail (as it already is)
4) Drag-and-drop the G Suite account mail/folders to the iCloud account folders

...may work?

 

[mdelvecchio]

Unfortunately the Google Takeout tool's MBOX export is simply one giant folder of messages -- no label/folder designations are preserved. This is...less than useful.

New solution I'm doing now:

1) Add iCloud account in Mail
2) Add G Suite account in Mail
3) Drag-and-drop folders & messages from G Suite folders into iCloud folders
4) complete the MX record domain change to get my custom email going to iCloud+

...this seems easier than any further messing around w/ Takeout or MBOX tools.

 

[poorcody]

I've heard good things about this tool:

Official imapsync migration tool ( release 2.290 )

imapsync.lamiral.info

The author seems to have a free online version, a paid-desktop (expensive!) version, and the source-code is available on GitHub so you could compile a free desktop version yourself if that's in your wheelhouse.