Privacy

We never see your mail. There is nowhere for it to go.

bytemail talks directly to your mail provider over IMAP and SMTP. There is no bytemail server in the path, because there is no bytemail server.

No server of ours

Your Mac connects to your provider directly. There is no relay, no sync host, no account to create with us.

Keychain credentials

Passwords and OAuth tokens live in the macOS Keychain, read only at connection time.

Local index, local rules

Search, smart categories and snooze run on-device. Nothing is classified in a cloud.

No analytics

No telemetry, no crash pings unless you press Send on a report you can read first.

Outbound connections, full run
Your mail provider (IMAP, port 993)reading your mail, TLS
Your mail provider (SMTP, port 465 / 587)sending, TLS or STARTTLS
accounts.google.com · login.microsoftonline.comonly if you sign in with Google or Microsoft; token exchange, no mail content
Sender websites (favicon)a sender's brand icon for its avatar; never for spam, no identifiers sent
Image hosts inside a messageonly after you choose to load remote images
bytemailapp.comupdate check, no identifiers
—that is the whole list

Where things are stored

Credentials go in the macOS Keychain, per account, and are read only when a connection opens. The local message cache is an SQLite database inside the app's container, covered by FileVault like the rest of your disk. Deleting the app deletes the cache; removing an account deletes its Keychain entries.

Remote images and tracking pixels are blocked until you say otherwise, and never load at all in the Spam folder. Smart categories, snooze and rules all run locally — nothing about your mail is classified anywhere but on your Mac.