Support & FAQ

What is mailin?

mailin is a privacy-first email archive analyzer for Mac, iPhone, and iPad. It lets you import email archives from Gmail, Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail, and other providers, then search, filter, analyze, and export your email history. The interface is available in 11 languages, and email content in those languages is detected and analyzed. Everything runs on your device — no cloud servers, no data collection, no account required.

What file formats does mailin support?

mailin supports all major email archive formats:

You can also import .zip files containing any of the above formats. mailin will automatically extract and parse them.

How do I import emails?

Open mailin and click "Select Files" or drag and drop files onto the window. You can select one or multiple files at once. mailin will automatically detect the format and begin parsing.

How do I import my Gmail emails?

1. Go to Google Takeout
2. Deselect all, then select only "Mail"
3. Choose your export format (default is fine) and click "Create export"
4. Wait for Google to prepare your archive (may take hours for large mailboxes)
5. Download the .zip file when ready
6. Open mailin and select the .zip file, or extract it and open the .mbox file inside

How do I import from Apple Mail?

Apple Mail stores emails as .emlx files inside ~/Library/Mail/. In mailin, click "Select Files" and navigate to your Mail library to select .emlx files. You can also drag and drop .emlx files from Finder directly into mailin.

How do I import from Outlook?

If you have Outlook .pst or .ost archive files, open them directly in mailin. For individual emails saved as .msg files, select those too. mailin handles all Outlook formats natively.

What are the system requirements?

mailin runs on both Mac and iOS:

• Mac: macOS 14.6 (Sonoma) or later — Apple Silicon and Intel
• iPhone & iPad: iOS 17.6 / iPadOS 17.6 or later

Apple Intelligence features require macOS 26 (Tahoe) or later with a supported device.

What languages does mailin support?

The interface is available in 11 languages — English, German, Spanish, French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese (Simplified) and Chinese (Traditional). mailin follows your system language; on macOS a per-app language can be set in System Settings > General > Language & Region > Applications, on iOS in Settings > Apps > mailin > Language.

Email content in the same 11 languages is detected and analyzed, so search, sentiment and topic analysis work on a multilingual archive. Your own messages are never translated or altered — only the interface changes language. In the app, Settings > General > Language shows the language in use and opens the system setting that changes it.

Where do I download mailin?

On the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/mailin/id6767245397. One app for Mac, iPhone and iPad; a purchase on one device unlocks the others signed in to the same Apple Account. To update, open the App Store, go to your account (iPhone/iPad) or Updates (Mac), and update mailin to 3.0.1.

What is new in 3.0.1?

Every export now ends with a receipt that reports the real result (complete, limited by the Free plan, cancelled, or failed with the reason); Outlook Archive (.pst) is in every Export menu; on the Free plan, lists and searches say how many of their emails fall within your newest 500; empty date filters read “From the first email” and “To the last email”; cleaner analytics charts; new Feature Guide entries; clearer error messages; and fixes on iPhone and iPad.

What changed in version 3.0?

A three-pane archive shell (mailboxes, sources and labels; the list; the message), an import queue, export pre-flight and resume, moving the archive to another disk, search results that say where they matched and what the index covered, direct ZIP import, and single messages over 100 MB kept instead of reported as damaged. Also new: finding deleted mail still inside your mailbox files, searching the text in scanned PDFs and photos, Scripts and Shortcuts actions, Review Packs and team cases, hidden header timestamps with ARC and DKIM checks, a rebuilt Outlook .pst export, and (on Mac) Send to DEVONthink and links to any email. AI Insights and Professional Workflows are now separate pages you switch on. There is no Live Mail page in this version; mailin connects to no mail server.

Does the AI assistant need Apple Intelligence?

No. With Apple Intelligence on (macOS 26 / iOS 26 and later), the assistant writes summaries and stories from your emails. With it off, or on an older system, the assistant still answers from the emails themselves: it finds the matching messages on-device and quotes the relevant lines. Either way, every answer lists the emails it used, and counts, dates and amounts are read from the archive by the app rather than generated.

Which languages is the 3.0 interface in?

Eleven: English, German, Spanish, French, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Brazilian Portuguese, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese. Settings → General → Language shows the language in use and opens the system setting that changes it. AI answers are written in English.

How does the import queue work?

Add as many files as you like. Each one shows its stage, throughput and an estimated time. You can pause and resume the whole queue, stop a single file (what it already wrote stays), and reorder what comes next. Every finished import produces a signed receipt: what was found, written, skipped and why. If mailin is quit or crashes mid-import, the next launch resumes from the last checkpoint.

Can I move my archive to an external disk?

Yes. Settings → Archive location lets you choose a folder on another disk. mailin copies the archive there, verifies the copy, records the new location and opens from it after a relaunch. If the disk is not connected, the copy on this Mac is used. The old copy is offered for deletion only after the new location is in use. Cloud-synced folders (iCloud Drive, Dropbox and similar) are refused, because a database that syncs while it is open can be corrupted.

What happens to very large messages?

Messages up to 100 MB are stored inside the archive. A single message larger than that is kept by byte range: mailin records where it sits in the file you imported and reads it from there when you open or export it, after checking the file is still the one that was imported. Keep that file where it is. If it is moved or deleted, the message shows as unavailable rather than empty.

Why does a search say how much of the archive it covered?

While an import is still being indexed, a search cannot have seen every message. Rather than show a bare zero, mailin tells you how many messages the index covered when it answered and which sources are still indexing. Results also say where they matched: From, Subject, Body or an attachment's name or text.

What are the optional pages?

AI Insights (ask questions with citations that reopen the exact message, summaries, reports) and Professional Workflows (custodians and legal holds, chain of custody, Bates numbering, redaction, review batches, eDiscovery, investigation reports, reasoning studios, and a production window). Both are off on a fresh install. The page switcher shows what each one needs; nothing they need runs until you enable them.

Can I export what was interrupted?

Yes. A cancelled or failed export keeps what it wrote, cut back to the last recorded batch, and its receipt offers Resume. Resume checks that the archive selection has not changed and that the partial output is exactly what the receipt recorded before it appends anything. If either check fails, it tells you to start again rather than guess.

What AI features does mailin include?

mailin uses Apple's on-device NaturalLanguage framework for:

• Sentiment analysis — see the emotional tone of every email
• Topic and keyword extraction — automatically identify key topics
• Language detection — identify languages in multilingual archives
• Priority scoring — AI highlights what matters most
• PII scanning — detect personal information for GDPR compliance
• AI Assistant — ask natural language questions about your emails
• AI Smart Filters — describe what you're looking for in plain English

On macOS 26+, mailin also supports Apple Intelligence for enhanced on-device AI capabilities. All AI processing happens entirely on your Mac — nothing is sent to any server.

How does search work?

mailin provides powerful full-text search across subjects, senders, recipients, and email body content. Search features include:

• Boolean operators — use AND, OR, NOT to combine search terms
• Wildcard and regex — use * for wildcards or /pattern/ for regex
• Proximity search — find terms near each other (e.g., "budget" NEAR/5 "deadline")
• Smart filters — filter by sender, domain, date range, labels, attachments, and more
• Gmail label detection — automatically reads labels from Google Takeout exports

What analytics are available?

The analytics dashboard shows interactive charts and statistics about your email archive:

• Email volume timeline with sent vs. received breakdown
• Top contacts and communication pairs
• Activity heatmap by day and hour
• Attachment type breakdown and email size distribution
• Contact network visualization

Analytics reports can be exported for use in presentations or documentation.

What forensic tools does mailin offer?

Professional-tier forensic tools include:

• SPF, DKIM, and DMARC analysis — verify email authentication
• Spoofing and phishing detection — identify suspicious emails
• Evidence tagging — tag and annotate emails for investigation
• Chain of custody — track who accessed evidence and when
• Tamper-proof audit trail — immutable log of all actions
• Bates numbering — sequential numbering for legal document production
• SHA-256, SHA-1, and MD5 hashing — verify email integrity
• MIME tree inspection — examine raw email structure
• Received chain analysis — trace email routing path

What export formats are available?

Every export starts with a pre-flight (what will be written, how much space it needs) and ends with a receipt that records what was requested, what was written, what was skipped and why, and the file's SHA-256. An interrupted export resumes from its receipt.

• mbox — one file for a whole selection, optionally split into parts; large messages are streamed byte for byte from their source
• EML — one file per message, compatible with any mail client
• PDF and TIFF — one document per message, with optional Bates stamping
• MSG — Outlook message format
• CSV, Word, Markdown, JSON — for spreadsheets, documents and developers
• Portable HTML viewer — a folder you can open in any browser
• vCard and ICS — contacts and calendar items found in headers
• Concordance load files, redacted sets, forensic reports — in Professional Workflows
• Bulk attachment download — save all attachments at once

PDF, TIFF and MSG need the decoded message body. A message over 100 MB whose body was not decoded at import is withheld from those formats and listed on the receipt with the reason; export it as mbox or EML, which copy the original bytes.

What is conversation threading?

mailin automatically groups related emails into conversation threads based on subject line and message references. This makes it easy to follow back-and-forth exchanges without scrolling through thousands of individual messages.

What other advanced features are available?

mailin includes many additional capabilities beyond the core features:

• Email comparison — side-by-side diff view of two emails
• Anomaly detection — automatically flag unusual patterns
• Keyword monitoring — set up alerts for specific terms
• Automation rules — auto-tag and organize emails by rules
• Archive comparison — compare two archive files
• AI Digest — generate summaries of your email archive
• Smart alerts — notifications for important patterns
• Encrypted storage — AES-256 encryption for sensitive archives
• iCloud sync — sync settings across your Apple devices (via Apple's iCloud, no third-party servers)

Does mailin support Spotlight search?

Yes. mailin can index email subjects and senders using Apple's CoreSpotlight framework, so you can find emails directly from macOS Spotlight search. This index is stored locally and never transmitted. You can disable this in Settings.

What's included in the free version?

The free tier lets you:

• Import up to 100 MB of archives and work with the newest 500 emails of the archive — in the list, search, analytics, exports and the AI assistant alike. The list shows how many emails the archive holds in total.
• Use all supported file formats
• Use basic search and filters
• View email details, headers, and attachments
• Use 5 AI assistant queries a day
• Use 5 AI smart filter queries a day
• View analytics and charts

No account or payment information is required to use the free tier.

What plans are available?

mailin offers two premium tiers, each available as a monthly subscription, yearly subscription, or one-time lifetime purchase:

Personal unlocks unlimited emails, unlimited AI, all export formats, S/MIME verification, and deduplication.

Professional adds forensic mode, audit trail, chain of custody, Bates numbering, predictive coding, custodian management, legal hold, and priority support.

How do subscriptions work?

Monthly and yearly subscriptions are auto-renewable. Your Apple ID is charged at the start of each billing period. Subscriptions automatically renew unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends.

The lifetime option is a one-time purchase — pay once, own it forever. No recurring charges.

How do I cancel my subscription?

You can cancel anytime through Apple:

1. Open System Settings on your Mac
2. Click your Apple ID at the top
3. Select Subscriptions
4. Find mailin and click Cancel Subscription

After cancelling, you'll continue to have access until the end of your current billing period. You will not be charged again.

How do I manage my subscription?

You can manage your subscription in two ways:

• From mailin: Open the app, go to the upgrade screen, and tap "Manage Subscription"
• From System Settings: Apple ID → Subscriptions → mailin

From there you can upgrade, downgrade, switch billing periods, or cancel.

How do I restore my purchase?

If you reinstalled mailin or are using a new Mac with the same Apple ID:

1. Open mailin
2. Click "Upgrade" to open the paywall
3. Click "Restore Purchases" at the bottom

Your purchases are tied to your Apple ID and will be restored automatically. This works for both subscriptions and lifetime purchases.

Can I get a refund?

Refunds are handled by Apple. Visit reportaproblem.apple.com to request a refund for any App Store purchase. We do not process refunds directly.

Can I share my purchase with my family?

Yes. All mailin purchases (subscriptions and lifetime) support Family Sharing. If you have Family Sharing set up with your Apple ID, family members can use your mailin subscription at no extra cost.

Is my email data safe?

Yes. mailin processes everything 100% on your device. Your email content is never sent to any server, cloud service, or third party. There is no analytics, no telemetry, no tracking, and no account required.

Does mailin need an internet connection?

No. mailin works entirely offline for all email processing, AI analysis, search, and export features. The only network access is for App Store purchases (handled by Apple's StoreKit), which is required to verify subscriptions and process transactions.

Does mailin use cloud AI?

No. Every AI feature runs on your device: Apple's NaturalLanguage framework everywhere, and on macOS 26+ Apple Intelligence's on-device models through the FoundationModels framework. There is no cloud AI mode and no way to add one: the app has no network entitlement, so it cannot contact any provider. Nothing is ever sent anywhere, including to us.

Where is my data stored?

All imported email data is stored locally in mailin's sandboxed app container on your Mac. You can clear all data at any time from Settings. When you clear data, it is permanently deleted from your device.

Can I lock mailin with Touch ID?

Yes. mailin supports biometric authentication via Touch ID. You can enable this in Settings to require Touch ID before accessing your email archives.

My file isn't opening. What should I do?

Check the following:

• Make sure your file has a supported extension: .mbox, .eml, .emlx, .msg, .pst, .ost, .nsf, or .zip
• Try dragging the file directly onto the mailin window instead of using the file picker
• If the file is inside a .zip, try extracting it first
• If the file is very large (over 1 GB), give it time to process — mailin uses streaming for large files

If the issue persists, contact us with the file format and size so we can investigate.

How does mailin handle large archives?

mailin uses streaming parsing for large archives. Instead of loading the entire file into memory, it processes emails incrementally. This allows mailin to handle archives of several gigabytes. You'll see a progress indicator while large files are being processed.

Some emails appear garbled or have missing characters.

This usually happens with emails that use non-standard character encodings. mailin supports all major encodings (UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, Windows-1252, and more), but some very old or non-standard emails may not render perfectly. If you encounter this, try exporting the email as EML and opening it in another viewer to verify the original encoding.

AI features aren't working.

The on-device NLP engine requires macOS 14 or later and works on all supported Macs. If AI Smart Filters or the AI Assistant aren't responding:

• Make sure you haven't exceeded the free-tier limit (3 AI queries for free users)
• Try closing and reopening mailin
• Apple Intelligence features (macOS 26+) require a supported device — check Apple's compatibility list

My purchase isn't showing up.

Try these steps in order:

1. Click "Restore Purchases" in the upgrade screen
2. Make sure you're signed in with the same Apple ID you used to purchase
3. Check your subscription status in System Settings → Apple ID → Subscriptions
4. Restart mailin

If the problem continues, contact us with your Apple ID email and approximate purchase date.

Can I use mailin on multiple Macs?

Yes. Your mailin purchase is tied to your Apple ID, not a specific Mac. Sign in with the same Apple ID on any Mac, open mailin, and tap "Restore Purchases" to activate your subscription or lifetime purchase.