From Google Takeout to Self-Knowledge
Step 1: Request Your Google Data (2 minutes)
- Go to takeout.google.com
- Click "Deselect all" then select the data you want:
- - Gmail (emails and labels)
- - My Activity (search history, YouTube watches)
- - Chrome (bookmarks and history)
- - Google Chat/Hangouts (messages)
- - Keep (notes)
- - YouTube (comments, subscriptions, watch history)
- Click "Next step"
- Choose "Export once", ".zip" format, max file size 50 GB
- Click "Create export"
- Wait for the email (usually 1-24 hours for large exports)
Step 2: Download and Import (5 minutes)
- Download the ZIP file(s) from the email link
- Open MemryLab
- Click Import > Auto-detect & Import
- Select the Google Takeout ZIP file
- MemryLab auto-detects the Google Takeout format and starts importing
The import runs in the background — you can explore the app while it processes. For a typical 5-year Google account, expect: - 2,000-10,000 documents - 3-8 minutes import time - ~50-200 MB of indexed data
Step 3: Run Analysis (10-25 minutes)
After import completes, click Run Analysis in the completion banner. The 8-stage pipeline:
- Theme Extraction — identifies recurring topics in your writing
- Sentiment Tracking — emotional tone over time
- Belief Extraction — explicit and implicit beliefs
- Entity Extraction — people, places, organizations
- Insight Generation — non-obvious patterns
- Contradiction Detection — belief changes
- Evolution Arcs — trends over time
- Narrative Generation — prose summaries
Step 4: Explore Your Data
Timeline View See your writing volume by month/week/day. Spot periods of high activity and quiet stretches.
Ask View Chat with your data: "What did I care about in 2022?" or "How have my views on career changed?"
Knowledge Graph Visualize connections between people, places, and concepts in your life.
Evolution View See how themes and sentiments shifted over time. Read AI-generated narratives about your personal growth.
What Most People Discover
- Theme persistence: 2-3 topics dominate your thinking across years
- Seasonal patterns: writing volume and sentiment correlate with seasons
- Unconscious shifts: beliefs that changed gradually without your awareness
- Connection patterns: relationships that appear more in your writing than you'd expect
Privacy Note
MemryLab is local by default: your Google data stays on your device unless you choose a cloud model. Importing and storing it happen on your machine. The AI analysis runs through your configured provider, which is local Ollama by default. If you pick a cloud API instead, the text it analyses is sent to that provider.