Apple Mail

Apple Mail MCP

Let Claude read, search, sort and answer your Apple Mail: fast, local, and with you in control of what gets sent.

Apple Mail MCP is an MCP server for the Mail app on your Mac, plus a small menu bar app. Claude (Claude Code, the Claude app, or any MCP client) can search years of mail in milliseconds, read threads, find what needs a reply, draft answers in your voice, clean up newsletters and file attachments, and it can only send an email after you click Send.

Any email account, ready for AI

Apple Mail MCP turns any email account you can add to Apple Mail into one that Claude and other MCP clients can work with: iCloud, Gmail and Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Outlook.com and Exchange, Yahoo, Fastmail, your company's or your hosting provider's IMAP server, even old POP mailboxes.

Your provider needs no API, no developer account and no MCP support of its own. Add the account in Mail › Settings › Accounts as you normally would. As soon as Mail syncs it, the account gets the same tools as every other one: search, threads, needs-a-reply, drafts, sending with your approval, filing, snoozing, unsubscribing, extraction and authenticity checks. Several accounts work side by side, and every tool can be limited to one of them with account.

Your password stays in Mail and in your keychain: this app never sees it and never connects to your provider. It reads what Mail has already downloaded and asks Mail itself to move, draft or send.

Why another Mail server?

Most Mail servers drive Mail with AppleScript for everything, including reading. Mail then walks its mailboxes one message at a time, so a search through a large inbox takes minutes or times out, and Mail freezes meanwhile.

Apple Mail MCP reads Mail's own database and message files directly, the same data Mail shows you, and only talks to Mail to change something (move, flag, draft, send). Searches stay fast on any mailbox size and never disturb Mail. See Benchmarks.

• Fast on big mailboxes: a few milliseconds for searches, threads and statistics over 80,000+ messages, faster than every other Apple Mail MCP server we measured (Benchmarks).
• Full-text search of message bodies through a local index, built in about a minute.
• Safe by default: replies and new mail are saved as drafts; with "Ask me first" nothing is sent without your click; bulk changes have previews and limits; nothing is ever permanently deleted.
• Smart views out of the box: what needs your reply, what you're still waiting on, top senders, weekly stats.
• Eight Claude skills that turn the tools into workflows: triage, inbox zero, follow-ups, a reply writer that matches your voice, newsletter cleanup, research, attachments and a weekly report.
• No passwords, no cloud: it works with every account Mail has (iCloud, Gmail, Exchange, IMAP) and everything stays on your Mac.

Install

Homebrew:

brew install --cask mp-consulting/tap/apple-mail-mcp

Or download the app or the Claude extension from the latest release:

File	For
AppleMailMCP-x.y.z.dmg	The menu bar app with the server inside: approvals, activity, search index, skills, one-click setup. Recommended.
AppleMailMCP-x.y.z.mcpb	The Claude app only: double-click to install the server as a Claude extension, no config or restart.

Both are notarized, signed with Developer ID, and run on Apple silicon and Intel Macs (macOS 14+). The server is also listed in the MCP registry as io.github.mp-consulting/apple-mail-mcp.

Then:

1. Open Apple Mail MCP: an envelope appears in the menu bar.
2. Click the envelope, open the Claude tab and click Connect next to Claude Code and/or the Claude app.
   • Claude Code gets the server and all the skills; new sessions see them.
   • The Claude app reads its servers only at launch: click Restart Claude when the tab offers it. For its skills, switch the Skills list to Claude app and click Export, then upload each .zip in Claude › Settings › Capabilities › Skills.
3. Give macOS permissions (one time, see Permissions).

From a terminal, the same setup is:

SERVER="/Applications/Apple Mail MCP.app/Contents/Helpers/Apple Mail MCP Server.app/Contents/MacOS/apple-mail-mcp"
"$SERVER" install        # Claude Code and the Claude app
"$SERVER" skills install # skills for Claude Code

Any other MCP client: run /Applications/Apple Mail MCP.app/Contents/Helpers/Apple Mail MCP Server.app/Contents/MacOS/apple-mail-mcp as a stdio server (Homebrew also links it as apple-mail-mcp). Before 0.6 the server was at Apple Mail MCP.app/Contents/MacOS/apple-mail-mcp; the menu bar app moves Claude Code's and the Claude app's settings to the new path, other clients need it by hand.

Permissions

macOS asks for two permissions, for the app that starts the server (Claude, your terminal, VS Code…):

Permission	Why	Where
Full Disk Access	Read Mail's database and message files	System Settings › Privacy & Security › Full Disk Access
Automation › Mail	Move, flag, draft and send (asked the first time)	System Settings › Privacy & Security › Automation

Give Full Disk Access to Apple Mail MCP too, for the panel's counts and the search index. If something is missing, every tool answers with the exact app to allow, and the panel shows it under Needs attention. Run apple-mail-mcp doctor for a full check.

What Claude can do

Tool	What it does
inbox_overview	Unread counts, latest unread, what needs a reply, flagged mail, in one call
search_messages	Any mix of text (several alternatives), subject, sender, recipient, body, mailbox, account, dates, unread, flags, attachments, Mail's categories; exclusions (subjects, senders, replies, yourself) and direction (received or sent); paginated, or counts per sender, domain or month with group_by
export_search	Every match of a search to one CSV, JSON or XLSX file, optionally with invoice totals and numbers; returns only the path and row count
get_message, get_messages, get_thread	One message, up to 200 at once, or a whole conversation, with quotes stripped on request
extract_invoice_fields	Vendor, invoice number, total and currency from invoice and receipt bodies and attached PDFs
extract_fields	Tracking numbers (with the carrier), verification codes, booking and order references, flights, calendar invitations
check_authenticity	Whether a message is really from who it says: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, look-alike domains, spoofed names, links that lie
find_contact	Addresses from Contacts and from the people you write with, most frequent first
wait_for_mail	Waits for a matching message to arrive (a sign-in code, an expected reply) and returns it
mail_setup	Your Mail rules, VIPs, smart mailboxes and signatures
create_rule, update_rule, set_rule_enabled, delete_rule	Make, change, turn on or off and delete Mail rules (forwarding, replies and deleting ask first), each checked against Mail's saved rules and undoable with undo_change
apply_rules	Run rules on mail already in a mailbox, like Message › Apply Rules; a dry run shows what each rule would do
needs_response	Mail from people, to you, still waiting on you (lists, promotions and no-reply excluded)
awaiting_reply	What you sent that nobody answered
mail_statistics, top_senders	Volume, busiest days and hours, categories, who writes most
list_accounts, list_mailboxes	Accounts, folders and counts
list_attachments, save_attachment, export_messages	Attachments to disk, messages to .eml or Markdown
get_message_source	Raw headers, e.g. to check authentication or unsubscribe links
move_messages, update_messages, trash_messages, create_mailbox	Archive and file, read/unread and flags, Trash; previews with dry_run
undo_change	Lists recent moves, trashes, flag and rule changes and puts one back
snooze_messages, list_scheduled, cancel_scheduled	Hide messages until a day, then back to the inbox unread; see or cancel snoozes and scheduled sends
compose_email, reply_to_message, forward_message	Draft (default), open for review, send, or send later (send_at); plain text or formatted HTML (replies and forwards quote the original with its formatting)
list_drafts, send_draft	Unsent drafts with their recipients; send one as it is
unsubscribe	Leaves mailing lists: one-click for signed senders, an unsubscribe email, or the link to open
open_in_mail, check_new_mail, body_index	Show a message in Mail, fetch new mail, manage the search index

Message ids are Mail's own; a moved message gets a new id, which move_messages returns.

The skills are also served as MCP prompts (in Claude Code: /mcp__apple-mail__mail-triage and so on), and two resources, mail://inbox/unread and mail://needs-response, notify subscribed clients when mail changes. Snoozes and scheduled sends are carried out by the menu bar app, so it has to be running for them.

Skills

Pick them in the panel's Claude tab: each one shows what it does and whether it's installed.

Skill	Or just ask…
/mail-triage	"What needs my attention in my mail today?"
/mail-inbox-zero	"Help me get my inbox to zero."
/mail-follow-up	"Who hasn't replied to me this week?"
/mail-reply-writer	"Reply to Anna's email about the roadmap."
/mail-newsletter-cleanup	"I get too many newsletters, clean that up."
/mail-research	"Find the confirmation code from my hotel booking."
/mail-attachments	"Save all invoices from 2025 into Documents/Invoices."
/mail-weekly-report	"How was my week in email?"

Claude picks the right skill from your request; in Claude Code you can also start one with its slash command. In the Claude app, skills are used automatically once uploaded.

They follow the same rules as the server: drafts before sending, previews before bulk changes, and quoting as little of your mail as possible. When the app updates, skills you installed update with it.

You stay in control

When Claude wants to send, a small window pops up (and the panel's Mail tab shows a count). With several emails waiting you review them one by one; nothing goes out without a click on Send.

• Send policy (Settings): Ask me first (the default) shows each outgoing email (recipients, subject, text, attachments) for Send or Don't Send, and refuses to send while the menu bar app is not running; Send right away; or Never send (drafts only).
• Signed approvals: your answers and scheduled sends are signed with a key in your Keychain, so another program cannot approve a send by writing a file.
• Drafts by default: compose, reply and forward save to Drafts unless Claude is asked to send.
• Batch limits: at most 50 messages per change by default; dry_run previews moves and trash. Optionally, moves and trashes above a size you choose wait for your OK in the menu bar app.
• Undo: every move, trash and flag change can be put back with undo_change (the journal keeps Message-IDs and mailbox names only, owner-only).
• Unsubscribing follows the send policy: with Ask me first you confirm each one. One-click requests go only to senders whose DKIM signature verified for their own domain; for anyone else you get the link.
• No permanent deletion: Trash only, never emptied.
• Files: saved attachments can't go into startup, config or system folders; secrets (~/.ssh, .env, keychains, browser profiles, Mail's own data) can't be attached. Optional allowlists in Settings.
• Read-only mode: apple-mail-mcp --read-only offers only the reading tools.
• Activity: every tool call is listed in the Mail tab (never with message content).
• Search index without text: Mail's data is behind Full Disk Access; the body index in ~/Library/Application Support/apple-mail-mcp is not, so it stores no words, only keyed hashes (no order, no positions). The key ("Apple Mail MCP search index key") is in your Keychain, in an access group only the app and its server can claim (the Claude extension, which runs the server on its own, keeps its key in the login Keychain), so another app cannot use the index, and even with the key it could only test guessed words. The file is owner-only and kept out of Time Machine. If the key is missing or refused, body searches scan messages instead.

Benchmarks

The same questions to every Apple Mail MCP server in the MCP registry, over MCP stdio like a client sees it, on an Apple M1 (16 GB) with a real mailbox (account of 80,551 messages, 1,336 in its inbox), version 0.6.0. Median of 25 warm runs each. The servers that read Mail's files are called in turns, one call each per round, so a change in the machine's load hits them all alike. Full tables, with response sizes: Benchmarks/compare-mcp-servers.md.

Question	Apple Mail MCP	mgcrea 1.28.0	imdinu 0.5.0	parasxos 1.8.0
List accounts	0.4 ms	0.5 ms	1.8 ms	–
Unread counts per mailbox	2.1 ms	7.05 s	258 ms	76 ms
Latest 20 inbox messages	2.8 ms	2.85 s	20 ms	104 ms
Subject search, inbox	1.2 ms	31 ms	18 ms	139 ms
Subject search, all mailboxes	3.4 ms	6.8 ms	24 ms	258 ms
Sender search, inbox	2.8 ms	3.5 ms	23 ms	78 ms
Body text search, inbox	2.1 ms	1.17 s	6.5 ms	112 ms
Conversation thread	3.3 ms	29 ms	–	13 ms
Top senders, 30 days	1.9 ms	3.1 ms	–	–
Statistics · awaiting reply · needs response · overview	1.1–11 ms	–	–	–

– : the server has no tool for that question.

The servers that drive Mail with AppleScript, measured the same way (0.6.0, one call per question for every server, Benchmarks/compare-servers.md), take seconds where Apple Mail MCP takes milliseconds, and keep Mail busy while they do: ipsupport-llc 1.6.1 answered in 0.17–11 s, the Python mcp-apple-mail in 8–84 s; on this mailbox jakobfigur 0.6.2 and jayvee6 0.1.0 failed, kiki830621 2.0.1 timed out after 3 minutes, and the questions the others could not answer timed out or errored inside Mail. Apple Mail MCP answered all 13 in 0.8–17 ms.

Without the body index, a body search scans recent messages in parallel instead (27 ms here). Building the index for the whole mailbox takes about a minute.

Reproduce: Scripts/bench-servers.sh fetches and prepares the other servers (pinned versions, release files checked against the registry's SHA-256), then runs mail-bench compare; --fresh-index gives our server a throwaway index so no Keychain prompt can hold up the run. mail-bench store gives in-process timings on your mail, and mail-bench synthetic --messages 100000 a generated mailbox that involves no personal data. CI runs the synthetic benchmark on every push.

Command line

apple-mail-mcp [--read-only] [--write-dir DIR] [--attach-dir DIR]   serve MCP over stdio
apple-mail-mcp doctor                                               check permissions, data, index
apple-mail-mcp index [--rebuild] [--prune]                          build or update the body index
apple-mail-mcp install | uninstall [claude-code | claude-desktop]   register with Claude
apple-mail-mcp skills [list | install | uninstall | export DIR]     manage the Claude skills
apple-mail-mcp call <tool> '{"json": "arguments"}'                  run one tool

Settings live in ~/Library/Application Support/apple-mail-mcp/settings.json and are shared by the app and every server (changes apply immediately).

How it works

Claude ──MCP (stdio)──▶ apple-mail-mcp ─┬─ reads ──▶ ~/Library/Mail/V10/MailData/Envelope Index (SQLite, read-only)
                                        │            .emlx files · local hashed full-text index (FTS5)
                                        └─ writes ─▶ Apple Events ─▶ Mail.app ─▶ your accounts
Apple Mail MCP.app (menu bar) ── settings · approvals · activity · index updates · Claude setup · updates

• MailStore reads Mail's index (accounts, mailboxes, Gmail labels, flags, categories, threads) and parses messages (MIME, charsets, HTML to text) without Mail running.
• MailAutomation sends Apple Events built from Mail's scripting dictionary (no AppleScript), addressing messages by id, serialized across processes.
• MailMCPKit defines the tools, policies, approvals and skills; MailMCPBar is the SwiftUI menu bar app (Liquid Glass on macOS 26).

Development

git clone https://github.com/mp-consulting/apple-mail-mcp && cd apple-mail-mcp
swift test --scratch-path ~/Library/Caches/apple-mail-mcp-build   # 120+ tests on synthetic mailboxes
Scripts/build-app.sh --install                                     # build, sign, install, launch the app

Requires Xcode 26 (Swift 6.2) for the app; the server builds with Swift 6.1. See CLAUDE.md for the architecture and the Mail quirks the code relies on, and CHANGELOG.md for releases.

Credits

Inspired by patrickfreyer/apple-mail-mcp, whose tool set and path-guard rules shaped this one.

License

MIT © 2026 Mickael Palma. Not affiliated with Apple. Apple Mail is a trademark of Apple Inc.