Familiar from the first click
A ribbon with the everyday buttons, a date-grouped message list, conversations, flags, categories, Archive, Snooze and Undo. Ctrl+N, Ctrl+R, Ctrl+E and the rest just work.
Free & open-source email client · Beta
Your email, on your computer.
MailCraft is a free email app for Windows, macOS and Linux with the three-pane workflow you already know: folders, a message list grouped by date, a reading pane, and calendar and contacts beside it. It works with any mail provider, keeps your mail on your own machine, and never phones home.
Windows · macOS · Linux · FreeBSD — no account, no sign-up.
- Open source on GitHub
- No subscription
- No tracking
- 13 languages
Works with the email you already have
- Gmail
- Microsoft 365 & Outlook.com
- Exchange
- iCloud Mail
- Yahoo Mail
- Fastmail (JMAP)
- Any IMAP & SMTP
- POP3
Everything you do with email, every day
No learning curve: the buttons, panes and keyboard shortcuts work the way you expect.
Fast, even offline
Your folders are cached on your computer, so mail opens instantly, search is quick, and you can read and write without a connection. Changes sync when you're back online.
Search that finds it
Search every folder with from:, subject:, has:attachment and more, or use Advanced Search. Older mail is searched right on your server.
Calendar and contacts
Day, work week, week and month views, meeting invitations, reminders, and an address book — synced with CalDAV, CardDAV, Exchange or Microsoft 365.
Organized your way
Rules, Quick Steps, Search Folders, junk filters with safe and blocked senders, Clean Up for long threads, and several accounts in one window.
Bring your Outlook data files
Open Outlook data files (.pst) with their mail, contacts and calendar, and export any account back to one — see switching from Outlook.
Private by design
MailCraft talks to your mail servers and nobody else.
- No cloud in between. MailCraft connects straight to your provider over encrypted connections, with certificate checks always on.
- Passwords stay in your system's keychain — never in MailCraft's files or logs. Microsoft accounts sign in through your browser.
- Trackers stay quiet. Pictures from the web load only when you ask, and can be remembered per sender.
- Online only, if you like. Keep an account's mail on the server and in memory only — nothing of it is written to your disk.
- Portable. Run it from a USB stick: everything it writes stays in a folder beside it. How it works
- No telemetry, no analytics — in the app and on this site. Privacy details
Download MailCraft
Free for everyone. MailCraft is in beta: new test builds come out often, and your feedback shapes what comes next.
Windows
Windows 10 and 11 · x64, ARM64, x86
macOS
Apple silicon and Intel
Linux
x86_64, aarch64, riscv64
FreeBSD & more
FreeBSD x86_64, the command-line tool, the browser version
Every file is listed with its SHA-256 checksum in SHA256SUMS.txt on the MailCraft releases page. Prefer to build it yourself? cargo run --release -p mailcraft -- --sample
First launch: “Windows protected your PC” or “cannot be opened”?
MailCraft's builds aren't code-signed yet (signing certificates cost money the project doesn't have yet), so your system asks once before opening it.
- Windows: click More info, then Run anyway.
- macOS: open MailCraft once, then go to System Settings › Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway.
- Linux AppImage: make it executable (
chmod +x MailCraft*.AppImage) and run it.
The source is public and every build is made by GitHub Actions from it, with checksums published beside the files.
Guides
Getting started, step by step.
Switch from Outlook
Add your accounts, open your .pst files, keep your shortcuts — and move back any time.
Set up your email account
Gmail, Outlook.com, Microsoft 365, Exchange, iCloud, Yahoo, Fastmail or any IMAP account.
Portable email on a USB stick
Run MailCraft from any folder and leave no mail on the computer.
What's new
Reminders, Quick Steps, Search Folders and everything else, version by version.
Help make it great
MailCraft gets better because people use it and say what's missing. Found a bug, or something that works differently from what you expect? Tell us — every report is read.
Questions
Is MailCraft really free?
Yes. It's open source under the MIT or Apache-2.0 license: free to use, share and change, with no ads, no subscription and no data collection.
Which email accounts does it work with?
Any account with IMAP and SMTP (Gmail, iCloud, Yahoo, your own server…) or POP3, JMAP accounts such as Fastmail, Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com through Microsoft Graph, and your organization's own Exchange server. Settings are found from your address; the setup guide shows where Gmail, iCloud and Yahoo want an app password.
Is MailCraft an alternative to Outlook?
Yes — if you like the way Outlook works but want something free, open source and private, MailCraft gives you the same everyday workflow: folders, a reading pane, the ribbon's buttons and the familiar shortcuts. It's built from scratch from the published email standards, so none of its code, icons or images come from Microsoft, and it isn't affiliated with or endorsed by Microsoft.
Where is my mail kept?
On your computer and on your provider's servers — nowhere else. MailCraft keeps a local copy so it's fast and works offline; you choose how much (or, with Online only, none at all).
What does “beta” mean here?
The everyday features are there and in use, but MailCraft is young: expect rough edges, frequent updates, and please report what you find. Keep your mail on your provider's servers (as IMAP and Exchange do) while you try it.
Which languages does it speak?
English, Español, Français, Deutsch, Português (Brasil), Italiano, Русский, 日本語, 한국어, 简体中文, 繁體中文, العربية and עברית — following your system, or chosen in Options.
Take your inbox back.
Free, open source, and yours — on Windows, macOS and Linux.