Recover Gmail emails deleted (by mistake) via Apple Mail?

My main work email address is a Gmail one, and on my main machine I use Apple Mail to send and receive Gmail mail.

Some months back I accidentally deleted all my email, everything, the lot. They didn’t just go from the machine but Gmail too.

I managed to recover the stuff I needed so didn’t worry too much. But now I need some emails sent prior to the deletion… What are my options? If any.

This machine backs up to Time Machine. Might I recover them that way?

Have you looked in the Time Machine backup under /Users/username/Library/Mail ? The Library folder under username is usually hidden, I have mine set to default to be visible.

Have a look in the most recent folder name and see if there are files there (matching mail folder names) ending .mbox

You’ll likely have to do this “offline”. If you restore the mbox and then start Mail, it will sync to Gmail and remove them immediately. Having no internet connection enabled should allow you to prevent that.

Are the messages no longer in the Gmail interface? I don’t use it much, but I thought they still keep messages after being deleted.