Features

Everything Inboxrake can do, in one list. The README has the short version; install.md covers running it and security.md the login, multi-user and secrets options.

Views - five of them: Sender, Smart (every big sender keeps its own row; the long tail of small senders is pooled by company - all noreply@, news@, … of one domain - and by what their mails are about: orders & deliveries, appointments & bookings, job applications, support & inquiries, accounts & security, newsletters, people you write to, …, so hundreds of rows become ~50. A company row says what its mails are about; open a pooled row to see its senders and act on just some of them. The per-account threshold is “Own row from N mails”, default 10), Subject (normalized: merges Order 123 / Order 456, strips Re:/Fwd:), Thread (whole conversations) and a flat “All mails” list. The All mails view is remembered; the grouping starts at Sender.
Cleanup signals - mail count, total size (find attachment hogs), unread percentage, first->last date range (short dates, e.g. “7 Oct”), category tags (shipping, finance, shopping, social, travel, newsletters, automated…).
Swipe triage - Tools -> Triage deals out the groups of the current list one card at a time: swipe left to Trash, right to Keep, up to Unsubscribe - or use the buttons or the arrow keys. Nothing happens while you decide; at the end one confirm names every decision, then protects, unsubscribes and trashes (with the usual Undo).
Drill-down - every mail of a group with date/size/unread, full-text reader (HTML mails rendered as plain text - no remote content, no tracking pixels), per-mail selection and deletion (“Trash this mail”, or “Trash all N” for the whole group). On screens 1280 px and wider the group opens in a side pane next to the list, so you can keep scanning the list while you read; below that it is a dialog.
AI review (optional) - coarse verdicts per group (delete-safe/review/keep) and a fine-grained mode that rates every mail inside a group, with selection by rating. Verdicts are cached (by group key and Message-ID), so rescans and reopened groups cost nothing. Sends only metadata (addresses, counts, subject lines) - never mail bodies. Providers: Anthropic API, OpenAI, Claude on Microsoft Foundry, or any OpenAI-compatible local endpoint (Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM). Token usage and cost are tracked with a built-in price table.
AI sorting of Smart’s “Other” row (optional) - a button on that row asks your AI to pick one of the fixed kinds (orders, appointments, applications, support, accounts, newsletters, individuals, other) for the senders the rules could not place. It shows the scope and cost first, sends only the sender’s name and address, mail count and up to three recent subject lines (plus your own instructions from Settings, which you can edit), places senders without moving or deleting any mail, caches each answer until that sender’s mails change, and can be removed again.
Filing senders in Smart - tick senders in a pooled row and choose “File in Smart as…” (a kind, or one of your own categories) to decide where a sender - or its whole company - belongs. It only places the sender: no mail is moved, it is remembered (per user, on your server only, never sent to an AI), undoable, and a sender’s detail view shows how it is filed and why. After an AI sorting run you can keep its answers as your own rules too; clearer mail still wins over a kept answer. Settings > Filed senders lists everything Inboxrake knows this way - searchable and sortable, editable in place, with delete, “Remove unused”, and download / upload of just this list.
Attachment explorer - an on-demand BODYSTRUCTURE pass (structure only, no content downloaded) lists mails by attachment size with file names, adds a 📎 aggregate to groups, and enables the att:>10m filter. Proton IMAP can’t strip single attachments, so cleanup means deleting the whole mail (reversible as always).
Statistics (Tools -> Statistics) - mails-per-year histogram, top domains by size, scan history and per-month cleanup tallies (“moved to Trash” and, for permanent deletes only, “freed”), persisted across restarts.
Space map (Tools -> Space map) - a treemap of the whole mailbox by size: tiles are domains, tap one to see its senders; tiny ones fold into an “Other” tile. Color by engagement, age of the last mail or AI verdict. “Select” ticks tiles (protected senders are skipped), and “Done” hands exactly those senders to the Sender list’s normal selection for Trash / Archive with the usual confirmation - the map itself never moves mail.
Your year in mail (Tools -> Your year in mail, or from Statistics) - a full-screen story of one calendar year: how many mails you received, your loudest senders, the month that buried you, your busiest weekday and hour, ghost senders (10+ mails, none ever opened), your biggest mail and what you cleaned up (moves, permanent deletes, unsubscribes, rule runs). Tap right/left or use the arrow keys, hold to pause. The last card saves a summary image, generated in your browser with sender names hidden unless you tick “Show names”. Based on the mail in the mailbox now; metadata only, nothing is uploaded.
Duplicate finder - mails with the same Message-ID (e.g. copies across folders), grouped into sets with one click to select everything but the newest copy. Only mails without a usable Message-ID (missing, or junk such as <>) are matched by identical sender + subject + size instead (and the identical id text, if there is one); two mails with their own, different Message-IDs (say, two monthly statements) are never treated as duplicates. Below the exact sets, possible duplicates lists the same sender and subject sent within ten minutes of each other (different Message-IDs, so they may differ in content): nothing there is selected for you, open the mails to compare and tick what to trash.
Rules + scheduler - save a filter query (same syntax as the filter box) plus an action as a rule, run it manually or daily/weekly. Rules always start in report mode (they only tell you what they would do); execute mode can be enabled after at least one report run. Every run is capped at 500 mails, skips protected senders, and uses the normal Trash/undo pipeline - the scheduler is a background loop inside the container, no cron needed.
Retention actions - restrict a bulk action or a rule to “keep the newest N mails” or “only mails older than N days” per group instead of the whole group - mutually exclusive, computed against the real mail list rather than just the group count.
Block a sender/domain in one click - from a group’s detail view, instantly creates a standing daily auto-trash rule for that sender or domain (optionally trashing what’s already there too). Reversible any time by unblocking, which just deletes the rule; protected senders can’t be blocked.
Saved filter presets - save the current filter query under a name and recall it with one tap from an outlined chip next to the built-in quick-select ones; edit a saved preset’s query later with the same filter builder, or delete it. Account-scoped like everything else.
New-sender review - a sender new to the mailbox since your last few scans gets a 🆕 badge and shows up under a one-tap is:new chip, so it doesn’t get lost among a thousand others - block, protect or unsubscribe right from there. Purely a read-only signal (first scan seeds silently, nothing is ever auto-actioned); the window it stays flagged for (default 7 days) is configurable in settings.
Unsubscribe watchdog - a sender you unsubscribed from successfully that still delivers mail more than two days later is flagged “Still mailing” on its row, collected under a one-tap chip and the filter is:still-mailing, and can be blocked from its detail view. Based on when the mail arrived, not its Date header; the digest counts them.
Activity digest email - an optional daily/weekly summary per account (actions taken, permanently deleted mails/bytes freed, rule previews still awaiting review, unsubscribe outcomes), sent as a branded HTML + plain-text mail at a time of day you pick; skipped entirely when nothing happened, with a “send test digest” button to preview it first and every send itself audit-logged.
“Never replied” signal - each scan also reads the To/Cc headers of your Sent folder (headers only, cached across scans): groups you have written to get a ↩ replied tag, filter with is:replied / is:noreply-ever, and the AI leans towards keeping senders you actually correspond with.
Protected senders - mark addresses or whole domains (a shield toggle in a group’s detail view, or a list in settings) as never-bulk-delete: selection presets and bulk trash skip them (trashing one explicitly asks first), and the AI is told - and forced - to never rate their mails “safe to delete”. Filter them with is:protected.
Protected mails - the same safety net for a single mail: the pin toggle on a mail row in a group’s detail view (“Protect this mail”) makes it exempt from every bulk action - group actions (trash/archive/ move), saved rules and retention actions (also in their report numbers), selection presets and AI picks (its AI rating is forced to “keep”). Marking read still works; acting on a protected mail yourself asks first. “Protect all mails in this group” (in the detail view’s … menu) pins everything currently in a group - later mail isn’t covered, that’s what the shield is for. It is remembered per account by Message-ID, so it survives rescans and folder moves. Filter groups with has:pinned. (This is a protection against accidental cleanup, not a PIN code or privacy lock.)
Engagement score - every group gets a 0-100 score for how much you actually engage with it, computed locally from what a scan already knows: the share of its mails you read (the backbone), a strong boost if you have written to its senders, a damping factor for newsletters/bulk mail, and a fade for senders that have been silent for months. It shows as a small three-step meter on each row (tap or hover for the breakdown), sorts via “Sort: engagement”, and filters with eng:low / eng:medium / eng:high (tiers <=33 / 34-66 / >=67) - usable in rules and saved presets, e.g. eng:low age:>1y. The score is never sent to the AI.
Tracker report - Tools -> Trackers shows which senders put tracking pixels or click-tracking links in their mail: the share of checked mails that carry a pixel, the senders that track most and the hosts they use, plus a small eye badge on each row (tap for the breakdown) and the has:tracker filter. It is detected locally from the HTML of mails while the local body index is built (generic heuristics, no vendor lists - hosts are read from your own mail); nothing is loaded, sent or given to the AI, and only two flags plus plain tracker domains are kept per mail. Mails indexed before this existed show up under “Check older mails” (a rebuild of the index, with the usual confirm).
One-click unsubscribe - RFC 8058 one-click POST or unsubscribe mail via Bridge SMTP, straight from a group’s detail view - or in bulk: select any number of groups and unsubscribe from every one of their senders in the background, with live progress and cancel. Every outcome (done / needs a confirmation page / failed) is remembered per sender and survives rescans and restarts, shown as a badge on the group and filterable with is:unsubscribed / is:not-unsubscribed (and is:still-mailing, see the Unsubscribe watchdog). Protected senders are always skipped.
Sieve export - generate a Proton Sieve filter for a sender or domain (move to folder / delete on arrival / mark read) with a copy button, so future mail never clutters the mailbox again.
Undo - every move to Trash ends in a toast (“Moved 618 mails to Trash”) with an Undo button; older deletions can be restored from the Undo list in the status line above the list (destination UID and UIDVALIDITY tracking). If a server cannot identify a moved copy safely, its Undo entry is kept for manual recovery from the destination.
Trash browser - the Trash button in the header (shown while the Trash has mail; the count is as of the last scan) opens the real Trash (also mail deleted outside the app): search it, restore selected mails to any folder, or empty it. “Empty Trash…” is also in the profile menu while the Trash isn’t empty, and always asks first, naming how many mails will be deleted permanently.
Delete permanently (Trash and Junk) - in the Folders panel, select mails or a sender, delete everything received more than N days ago, or use “Empty Junk…”. The count is read live from the server, the confirm shows it (plus the mails from protected senders and the protected mails that are skipped - they are never deleted; remove the protection first to delete them) and only exactly those mails are deleted, on the server, irreversibly. Junk mails go through Trash first. Refused while Trash/Junk is ambiguous and not confirmed in Settings. Nothing is ever deleted without your click and the confirm.
Purge rules (Trash and Junk) - an opt-in kind of rule (Rules -> “Applies to”: Junk or Trash) that deletes mail that has been in that folder for more than N days (default 30, weekly) permanently, on the server. The days count from when Inboxrake first saw the mail there (so a mail you trash by mistake today is safe for N days, whatever its date), and the mail must also have been received more than N days ago; after an upgrade or a folder reset the count starts again. Nothing creates one for you; a new one starts in report mode (counts and a sender-level preview, nothing is deleted), may only be switched to execute after a report run of its current definition behind a confirm, and goes back to report mode when its folder, filter or age is edited - or when its account is renamed, its server / login changes, or the Junk / Trash folder it resolves to changes (also a folder deleted and re-created). Deleting an account deletes its purge rules (its ordinary rules stay and stop running). Every run is capped per run (oldest first; the confirm names the cap), skips protected senders and protected mails with no override, and deletes through the same exact-UID path as the manual delete above (refused when the role is ambiguous, UIDVALIDITY changed or the server lacks UIDPLUS). An empty filter means all senders in that folder. Audited as rule:<id>, counted as permanent deletes in the digest and statistics.
Persistent audit log - every mailbox action (trash/archive/move/ mark-read, incl. rule-triggered ones, rule runs, unsubscribes, undo, empty-trash) is recorded with a timestamp, actor, outcome and bytes freed - browsable in-app and exportable as CSV.
Selection bar - appears at the bottom only once something is selected, showing how many groups and mails you picked, with Clear selection, Export CSV, the retention limiter (“Limit to:”), an “Action…” picker (Archive/Move/Mark read/Unsubscribe/AI review) and the red Trash N button. Destructive actions ask first in an in-app confirmation that names what they affect (e.g. “618 mails from 6 groups will be affected”), mentions skipped protected senders and mails, and focuses Cancel; on a phone it is a bottom sheet.
Quick chips - one-tap chips under the filter box: AI-safe groups, Inactive: 6 mo | 1 yr | 2 yr, and Not yet unsubscribed (plus new senders when there are any). A chip narrows the list down to its own matches and, on the next tap, selects them; a third tap un-selects and clears. Chips never combine - use the filter box for that.
Quick wins - after a scan, a strip above the Sender list suggests a few cleanups (old newsletters you never open, quiet low-engagement senders, mail from senders you already unsubscribed from, big old attachments, what the AI rated safe) with how much each frees. Review puts the card’s filter in the box and selects its matches; Clean up goes straight to the usual Trash confirm (protected senders skipped, Undo afterwards); Not now hides a card until a later scan finds 25 % more.
Filter builder - the sliders button next to the filter box opens a click-together builder (category, AI verdict, age, unread %, attachments, flags such as “not yet unsubscribed” or “rarely engaged with”); on phones it opens as a bottom sheet. It writes the same filter syntax you can type, and the result can be saved as a preset.
Describe a filter - with an AI provider set up, the sparkles button next to the filter box turns a sentence (“shop newsletters I have not opened in a year”) into a filter you can read and edit, with a live preview of how many groups, mails and how much space it matches. Apply it, save it as a preset, or start a rule from it (rules still begin in report mode). Only your sentence, the filter syntax and your tag names are sent to the provider - no mail data - and nothing is selected or changed.
Tools menu - Rules, Attachments, Duplicates, Statistics, Space map, Your year in mail, Audit Log, AI review (once AI is set up) and Export CSV live under one Tools button. AI review and CSV export scope to the current selection once something is selected; the Tools versions (nothing selected) act on everything, as before.
Bulk workflows - background deletion queue with live progress and cancel, global mail search (optionally inside the message text, a per-account setting: your mail server does that search per query and nothing is stored, or an opt-in local word index for instant searches - see below), Empty Trash (profile menu or Trash panel), cancellable scans and AI runs. Results and errors arrive as toasts instead of a status line you have to scroll back to.
Multiple accounts - connect several providers at once (e.g. Proton Bridge + Gmail). Every account is strictly separate: its own scans, groups, rules, saved presets, digest settings, statistics, folder exclusions and replied/verdict/known-senders caches - nothing is ever mixed or aggregated. The profile menu (top right) switches the whole view between accounts; accounts can be added, renamed (all their data follows) and removed in settings, and each has its own folder-discovery picker.
Fast to open - each account’s last scan is cached on disk and shown instantly after a restart or account switch (with its age); a rescan refreshes it. Live updates stream only small status deltas - the full group list is re-fetched just when it actually changed.
Safe by design - deletions are IMAP MOVE to Trash (reversible); the only irreversible actions are the explicit permanent-delete ones in Trash and Junk (manual, or an opt-in purge rule), which confirm with counts. UIDVALIDITY is checked before every move, scans are read-only, UID bookkeeping stays server-side, the container runs as a non-root user.
Keyboard shortcuts - in the grouped views, j/k (or ↑/↓) move through the list, Enter or o opens the group, x selects it, # trashes the selection (or the focused group; it still asks first), / jumps to the filter box and Esc closes the side pane. In the All mails view only / and Esc apply.
Light and dark theme - toggle in the profile menu; remembered per browser.
Phone layout - the same app on a small screen: touch-sized controls, filters and confirmations as bottom sheets, a compact list.
Settings - Mail account, General, AI, Filed senders and (for the admin) Server; Backup & restore (config and AI verdict export + import; all passwords, tokens and API keys are left out) is on the General tab.
Polish - installable as a PWA (manifest + icon), optional desktop notifications when background jobs finish, monthly AI budget cap, a first-run setup wizard (provider -> sign in and test -> folders -> optional password -> first scan; also behind “Add account”), and error messages that are translated rather than raw server text.
Languages - English and German. Translations live in frontend/src/locales/; to contribute one, copy de.ts, translate the values and register the locale in frontend/src/i18n.ts.
Stack - FastAPI backend (SSE live updates), React + TypeScript + Tailwind frontend, single container, no external assets at runtime.

Local mail-text search index (opt-in)

Settings -> Mail account -> Mail text search -> Local word index (needs INBOXRAKE_SECRET_KEY) builds, on a button press, a small SQLite index per account next to the scan snapshots. It stores no readable mail text: for every mail only keyed hashes (HMAC-SHA256 with a key derived from INBOXRAKE_SECRET_KEY plus a random per-index salt) of its distinct words, and the same message handles the scan snapshot holds. A copied /data therefore reveals no mail content, and an index built under a different key is unusable until rebuilt. Searches match whole words (case and accents ignored, several words are ANDed) - not word parts or phrases - and are instant for any provider. The build reads the first ~256 KB of every scanned mail from your server once (cancellable, with progress); later scans only add new mails and drop vanished ones. Before anything is read, Settings shows the estimated disk use and the free space of the data volume and asks for confirmation (about 5-6 KB per mail, up to ~12 KB for text-heavy mail: roughly 0.5-1.2 GB for 100,000 mails; the build is refused if even the typical estimate would not fit). It is meant for large mailboxes and slow providers - for a few thousand mails the server-side search is already fast. Switching the mode off or deleting the account removes the index.