ThreadClean documentation

Documentation for ThreadClean 1.0. It cannot be installed from the Chrome Web Store today; these instructions describe the planned store release.

Requirements

Chrome 116 or newer, or another Chromium-based browser of the same version such as Edge or Brave.
Gmail in the browser (mail.google.com), signed in to the account that holds the conversation.

Open the conversation in Gmail. If Gmail was open before you installed ThreadClean, reload the tab once.
Press Export clean PDF at the bottom right of Gmail, or click the ThreadClean button in the toolbar. A preview tab opens and reads the messages from your Gmail tab; keep Gmail open until it is done.
Check the preview. After shows what goes into the PDF. Before highlights each removed passage, with its word count.
Turn on Include quoted text in the PDF if you want the full history, shown in grey.
Press Download PDF. The file is named after the conversation's subject.

Removed: quoted earlier messages under a reply (Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Yahoo), lines starting with “>”, “On … wrote:” headers and Outlook header blocks, when the quoted text repeats an earlier message of the conversation.
Removed: a signature block the same sender already had in an earlier message. The first one stays.
Kept: every message's own text, forwarded messages, and quotes of anything that is not in the conversation (for example a reply to a mail sent from another account).

3 exports are free, with every feature. Exporting the same conversation again does not count again.
A lifetime license is $29 once, sold on threadclean.atesensoftware.com through Paddle, the merchant of record. It is not a subscription.
If you buy from the extension's Buy button, the license activates in the extension by itself within a minute. Otherwise copy the key from the thank-you page (it starts with TC1.), choose Enter license key in the preview tab, paste it and press Activate. The key is checked inside the browser.