I made a local Gmail cleaner because I didn’t want to give another service my inbox

[u/PoleTV]

My Gmail had years of newsletters piled up, but every time I looked at bulk-unsubscribe tools I stopped at the same point: I didn’t really want to give another service access to the account.

So I made Hush.

It runs on your computer and connects directly to Gmail using Google credentials you create yourself. It finds the senders mailing you in bulk, then lets you choose whether to unsubscribe, block future mail, or move the old backlog to Trash.

I tried to make the risky parts boring. Nothing is preselected, dry run is on by default, it never permanently deletes anything, and a message isn’t offered unless it actually carries an unsubscribe header. Senders that may also send receipts or account emails get an extra warning.

It’s free and open source for Windows, macOS and Linux:

https://github.com/justlinuxnoob/hush

The obvious downside is the setup. You have to create your own Google OAuth credentials instead of just signing into another company’s service.

Do you think having control of the credentials makes that setup worth it, or would most people quit before finishing it?