Help
Lost your licence key?
Add an account
imaily reads mail over IMAP and sends over SMTP. It never hard-deletes: "bin" always means your provider's Bin/Trash folder.
- iCloud — appleid.apple.com → Sign-In and Security → App-Specific Passwords → generate one. Login is your full iCloud address.
- Yahoo — Account security → Generate app password.
- Business mailbox (20i, cPanel, Plesk, Fastmail…) — the normal mailbox password usually works; ask your host for the IMAP and SMTP server names (20i: imap.stackmail.com / smtp.stackmail.com).
- Gmail / Google Workspace — Sign in with Google is built but not switched on in this build. Gmail works today by forwarding (next section); the button lights up when Google's review completes. Once it does: Settings → Accounts → Sign in with Google. Google opens in your browser and asks you to let imaily read, organise and send mail; say yes and come back. The Bin and Sent folders are found automatically, in whatever language your Gmail uses.
- Google sign-in expired — the account shows sign-in expired: click reconnect. It happens when you change your Google password, remove imaily at myaccount.google.com/permissions, or do not open imaily for six months. If your company's Google admin blocks apps they have not approved, Google says so on its sign-in page — your admin has to allow imaily.
- Outlook / Microsoft 365 — Microsoft has switched app passwords off for most accounts and Microsoft sign-in is next on the roadmap. Until then, use forwarding (next section).
Outlook (or Gmail before sign-in): forward into an account imaily can read
- Pick the account imaily already reads (iCloud, Yahoo or your business mailbox) as the destination.
- Gmail: Settings → See all settings → Forwarding and POP/IMAP → Add a forwarding address → enter the destination → Google emails a confirmation code to that address → paste it back. Then choose Forward a copy… and archive Gmail's copy so Gmail stays clean.
- Outlook.com: Settings → Mail → Forwarding → enable, enter the destination, tick Keep a copy only if you still read Outlook directly.
- In the destination account, make a folder per forwarded address (e.g. "gmail-old") and a server-side rule "addressed to that Gmail → move to the folder". imaily reads every folder, so the mail shows up in the briefing under the account it landed in.
- Replies go out from the destination address, not from the Gmail one — that is the trade-off. If you must reply as the Gmail address, switch to Sign in with Google once it is on.
What the Briefing decides
- Needs you: someone is waiting on you, a deadline, money, a security notice.
- FYI: worth knowing, no action.
- Noise: promotions, notifications, digests — candidates for a rule.
The narrative comes from the AI; the classification is verified against headers (List-Unsubscribe, sender, thread). When the AI is off, the briefing still works with header rules only.
Standing rules
Say it in Ask — "always delete Optima Bank mails", "future pCloud mails to gsuite@… go to bin". Rules run when the briefing loads and report what they moved. Security and verification mail (codes, password resets) is never touched. Remove a rule in Settings → Rules.
Subscriptions and unsubscribe
One button per sender: imaily uses the sender's one-click unsubscribe header (RFC 8058) when it exists, otherwise the mailto: address, otherwise opens the unsubscribe page for you. Whatever happens, it also adds a bin-on-arrival rule, so the sender is gone even if they ignore the request. The status column says which method ran.
Renewals
Built from your own receipts — no bank access. Receipts within 3 days count as one charge; a cadence needs three billing dates (two a year apart count as yearly); merchants with no receipt for twice their cadence show as stopped. Click "how?" on any row to see the arithmetic. The scan reads INBOX plus folders named like invoices/receipts/billing; file receipts there and they will be found.
Reply tracking
When you reply from imaily, the mail is watched by its Message-ID. A reply that references it clears the "waiting on" entry; a bounce marks it as not delivered. There is no open tracking — Apple and Gmail hide opens anyway, so imaily does not pretend.
Updates
imaily checks once a day whether a newer version exists and asks before installing it. Settings → About has Check for updates and the daily switch. Every update is signed by us and notarized by Apple; imaily refuses one that is not. If macOS asks whether imaily may use a Keychain item after an update, choose Always Allow — it asks once per item, not per update.
Your licence
Early access is free and needs no key. Once imaily is for sale, a licence covers a number of Macs (1, 5 or 12), whoever uses them.
- Open Settings → About → Licence.
- Paste the key from your licence email and click Activate.
The key is checked on this Mac; nothing is sent to us. It includes twelve months of updates; after that, renewing is optional, and if you never renew imaily keeps working exactly as it is — only the updates stop.
- Lost the key? imaily.app/help has a form that emails every key held by your address to that address. Or write to [email protected].
- Receipts and invoices come from Stripe, who handles the sale ("Sold through Link").
Privacy
Mail goes from your provider to this Mac and nowhere else. Passwords and Google sign-in tokens live in the macOS Keychain (item names start with app.imaily.desktop); the account list without secrets is in ~/.config/imaily/accounts.json. The first time the signed app reads a password saved by an older build, macOS may ask once whether imaily may use it — choose Always Allow. Removing an account deletes its Keychain item and, for Google, revokes the sign-in at Google. The outside calls are the AI — subjects, senders and short snippets go to Anthropic under your own API key — and the daily update check, which tells dl.imaily.app the imaily version and nothing about you or your mail. Turn images off in Settings → Reading if you do not want senders to know you opened a mail.