We’re releasing Mail+, a native macOS menu bar app that adds power-user features to Apple Mail. It brings Gmail-style single-key keyboard shortcuts, one-keystroke sender and domain blocking, email-to-reminder conversion, and an account dashboard with activity history — all without replacing your email client.

The gap it fills

Apple Mail is capable and private, but it’s built for mouse-first users. There’s no single-key archive. No quick block. No way to turn a message into a reminder without navigating menus. If you’ve ever switched from Gmail to Apple Mail and missed the keyboard shortcuts, you know the friction.

Third-party mail clients solve this by replacing Mail.app entirely — which means trusting a new vendor with your email, learning a new interface, and often paying a subscription. Mail+ takes a different approach: it enhances the app you already have.

How it works

Mail+ sits in your menu bar and watches for Mail.app to become the frontmost application. When it is, Mail+ intercepts single keystrokes and translates them into Mail.app actions:

  • d to delete, a to archive, r to reply, f to forward
  • b to block a sender, Shift+B to block an entire domain
  • t to create a Reminder from the selected message (due tomorrow at 9am)
  • h/j/k to snooze using Mail.app’s Remind Me feature
  • Cmd+S to send (remapped to Mail.app’s actual Cmd+Shift+D)

The shortcuts are smart about context — they automatically suppress when you’re composing a message, searching, or typing in any text field. Mail+ checks the Accessibility role of the focused UI element in real time, so you’ll never accidentally archive a message while writing a reply.

Blocking is particularly useful. Press b and the sender goes into a native Mail.app rule called “Mail+ Blocks.” Press Shift+B and the entire domain is blocked. Because blocks are stored as Mail.app rules, they work even when Mail+ isn’t running — and you can manage them from the dashboard or from Mail.app’s own rules preferences.

Beyond shortcuts, Mail+ includes an account dashboard that polls Mail.app every 60 seconds to track unread counts, inbox totals, and activity patterns across all your accounts. The dashboard shows trends over 24-hour, 7-day, and 30-day windows — useful for understanding your email patterns and whether you’re gaining or losing ground.

Why it matters

Email is one of the few parts of the computing stack where privacy-respecting defaults still exist. Apple Mail stores your messages locally, doesn’t mine your content for ads, and works with any IMAP provider. But it’s also one of the few places where Apple hasn’t kept up with the productivity features that power users expect.

Mail+ bridges that gap without compromising the things that make Apple Mail worth using. No cloud service, no subscription, no data collection. Just a menu bar app built with Swift and SwiftUI that makes your existing mail client faster to use.

It’s the same philosophy behind our security tools — software that works with your system, respects your privacy, and answers to you.