Apple Mail MCP

Apple Mail MCP is an MCP server for the Mail app on your Mac, plus a small menu bar app. Claude (Claude Code, the Claude app, or any MCP client) can search years of mail in milliseconds, read threads, find what needs a reply, draft answers in your voice, clean up newsletters and file attachments, and it can only send an email after you click Send.

Why another Mail server?

Most Mail servers drive Mail with AppleScript for everything, including reading. Mail then walks its mailboxes one message at a time, so a search through a large inbox takes minutes or times out, and Mail freezes meanwhile.

Apple Mail MCP reads Mail's own database and message files directly, the same data Mail shows you, and only talks to Mail to change something (move, flag, draft, send). Searches stay fast on any mailbox size and never disturb Mail. See Benchmarks.

• Fast on big mailboxes: tens of milliseconds for searches, threads and statistics over 80,000+ messages.

• Full-text search of message bodies through a local index, built in about a minute.

• Safe by default: replies and new mail are saved as drafts; with "Ask me first" nothing is sent without your click; bulk changes have previews and limits; nothing is ever permanently deleted.

• Smart views out of the box: what needs your reply, what you're still waiting on, top senders, weekly stats.

• Eight Claude skills that turn the tools into workflows: triage, inbox zero, follow-ups, a reply writer that matches your voice, newsletter cleanup, research, attachments and a weekly report.

• No passwords, no cloud: it works with every account Mail has (iCloud, Gmail, Exchange, IMAP) and everything stays on your Mac.

Related MCP server: Apple Mail MCP Server

Install

Homebrew:

brew install --cask mp-consulting/tap/apple-mail-mcp

Or download the app or the Claude extension from the latest release:

Both are notarized, signed with Developer ID, and run on Apple silicon and Intel Macs (macOS 14+). The server is also listed in the MCP registry as io.github.mp-consulting/apple-mail-mcp.

Then:

1. Open Apple Mail MCP: an envelope appears in the menu bar.

2. Click the envelope, open the Claude tab and click Connect next to Claude Code and/or the Claude app.

   • Claude Code gets the server and all the skills; new sessions see them.

   • The Claude app reads its servers only at launch: click Restart Claude when the tab offers it. For its skills, switch the Skills list to Claude app and click Export, then upload each .zip in Claude › Settings › Capabilities › Skills.

3. Give macOS permissions (one time, see Permissions).

From a terminal, the same setup is:

"/Applications/Apple Mail MCP.app/Contents/MacOS/apple-mail-mcp" install        # Claude Code and the Claude app
"/Applications/Apple Mail MCP.app/Contents/MacOS/apple-mail-mcp" skills install # skills for Claude Code

Any other MCP client: run /Applications/Apple Mail MCP.app/Contents/MacOS/apple-mail-mcp as a stdio server.

Permissions

macOS asks for two permissions, for the app that starts the server (Claude, your terminal, VS Code…):

Give Full Disk Access to Apple Mail MCP too, for the panel's counts and the search index. If something is missing, every tool answers with the exact app to allow, and the panel shows it under Needs attention. Run apple-mail-mcp doctor for a full check.

What Claude can do

Message ids are Mail's own; a moved message gets a new id, which move_messages returns.

Skills

Pick them in the panel's Claude tab: each one shows what it does and whether it's installed.

Claude picks the right skill from your request; in Claude Code you can also start one with its slash command. In the Claude app, skills are used automatically once uploaded.

They follow the same rules as the server: drafts before sending, previews before bulk changes, and quoting as little of your mail as possible. When the app updates, skills you installed update with it.

You stay in control

When Claude wants to send, a small window pops up (and the panel's Mail tab shows a count). With several emails waiting you review them one by one; nothing goes out without a click on Send.

• Send policy (Settings): Ask me first shows each outgoing email (recipients, subject, text, attachments) for Send or Don't Send; Send right away; or Never send (drafts only).

• Drafts by default: compose, reply and forward save to Drafts unless Claude is asked to send.

• Batch limits: at most 50 messages per change by default; dry_run previews moves and trash.

• No permanent deletion: Trash only, never emptied.

• Files: saved attachments can't go into startup, config or system folders; secrets (~/.ssh, .env, keychains, browser profiles, Mail's own data) can't be attached. Optional allowlists in Settings.

• Read-only mode: apple-mail-mcp --read-only offers only the reading tools.

• Activity: every tool call is listed in the Mail tab (never with message content).

Benchmarks

Measured on an Apple M1 (16 GB) with a real mailbox of 83,600 messages, over MCP stdio like a client sees it. Full tables: Benchmarks/compare-python.md, Benchmarks/store-real.md.

Median of 3 warm runs (one for Python), over MCP stdio. Without the body index, a body search scans recent messages in parallel instead: 0.8 s for 2,000 messages. Building the index for the whole mailbox takes about a minute.

Reproduce: swift build -c release && .build/release/mail-bench compare (needs uvx for the Python server), mail-bench store for in-process timings on your mail, or mail-bench synthetic --messages 100000 for a generated mailbox that involves no personal data. CI runs the synthetic benchmark on every push.

Command line

apple-mail-mcp [--read-only] [--write-dir DIR] [--attach-dir DIR]   serve MCP over stdio
apple-mail-mcp doctor                                               check permissions, data, index
apple-mail-mcp index [--rebuild] [--prune]                          build or update the body index
apple-mail-mcp install | uninstall [claude-code | claude-desktop]   register with Claude
apple-mail-mcp skills [list | install | uninstall | export DIR]     manage the Claude skills
apple-mail-mcp call <tool> '{"json": "arguments"}'                  run one tool

Settings live in ~/Library/Application Support/apple-mail-mcp/settings.json and are shared by the app and every server (changes apply immediately).

How it works

Claude ──MCP (stdio)──▶ apple-mail-mcp ─┬─ reads ──▶ ~/Library/Mail/V10/MailData/Envelope Index (SQLite, read-only)
                                        │            .emlx files · local full-text index (FTS5)
                                        └─ writes ─▶ Apple Events ─▶ Mail.app ─▶ your accounts
Apple Mail MCP.app (menu bar) ── settings · approvals · activity · index updates · Claude setup · updates

• MailStore reads Mail's index (accounts, mailboxes, Gmail labels, flags, categories, threads) and parses messages (MIME, charsets, HTML to text) without Mail running.

• MailAutomation sends Apple Events built from Mail's scripting dictionary (no AppleScript), addressing messages by id, serialized across processes.

• MailMCPKit defines the tools, policies, approvals and skills; MailMCPBar is the SwiftUI menu bar app (Liquid Glass on macOS 26).

Development

git clone https://github.com/mp-consulting/apple-mail-mcp && cd apple-mail-mcp
swift test --scratch-path ~/Library/Caches/apple-mail-mcp-build   # 120+ tests on synthetic mailboxes
Scripts/build-app.sh --install                                     # build, sign, install, launch the app

Requires Xcode 26 (Swift 6.2) for the app; the server builds with Swift 6.1. See CLAUDE.md for the architecture and the Mail quirks the code relies on, and CHANGELOG.md for releases.

Credits

Inspired by patrickfreyer/apple-mail-mcp, whose tool set and path-guard rules shaped this one.

License

MIT © 2026 Mickael Palma. Not affiliated with Apple. Apple Mail is a trademark of Apple Inc.