Premail v1.4.0: Google Gemini Joins the Lineup
· Written by Matt Senter, creator of Premail
Premail has never had an AI of its own. You pick the model that reads your mail: Apple Intelligence or Ollama on your own computer, or a cloud provider with your own key. Premail v1.4.0 adds a third cloud option, Google Gemini, and rebuilds the tab where you choose.
Google Gemini, with your own key
If you have a Google account, Gemini is the quickest cloud provider to set up. Open the API Keys page in Google AI Studio, copy the key it creates, and paste it on the AI Model tab. Premail loads the models that key can use and selects Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, a fast, inexpensive model. Requests go straight from your computer to Google, never through a Premail server.
Gemini is also the only cloud option with a free tier, and that comes with a catch worth knowing before you point it at your inbox. Google’s terms let it use free-tier requests, which for Premail means each email’s sender, subject, and text, to improve its products, and human reviewers may read them. With billing set up, Google does not use your requests that way. Premail shows this note right beside the key field, and the Gemini key guide walks through billing, cost, and the errors you are most likely to see.
A redesigned AI Model tab
Five providers no longer fit in a row of buttons, so each one is now a card with its logo and a short hint. The setup form sits beside the how-to steps for the provider you picked, and spend and pricing moved to the footer next to Save. Save turns on only when something changed, and the form is checked before you save or move on during setup.
Each cloud provider also keeps its own key now. Before, switching from OpenAI to Gemini carried the OpenAI key along into a field where it could never work. Now Premail sets the outgoing key aside and brings back the last key you used with the new provider, so trying a different model is no longer a chore. The AI model guide compares every option.
Replies in your conversations get through
Premail already let replies through in conversations you started. If you replied in a thread someone else began, though, the next reply still went through your rules and the AI, and a broad rule could file it away. Now, if you wrote to that sender in the conversation, Premail finds your message in your Sent folder and lets their reply straight through. A sender you blocked by address, or a custom rule that trashes or quarantines that sender, still wins.
Auto-replies that land in the right place
An automatic reply now threads under the message it answers, with Re: and the sender’s own subject, so the sender sees which email you are turning down. Send auto-reply in Activity also works on mail Premail archived, moved, or trashed, and a row says when that sender already got a reply instead of offering a button that would be refused. Premail never replies to spam, phishing, blocked senders, or mail with a dangerous attachment, since a reply only tells the sender your address is real.
iCloud users get the biggest change here. Apple stamps several authentication headers on each message, and Premail was reading only the first, which usually says nothing about the sender. Nearly every iCloud message looked unverified, so automatic replies were held back. Premail now reads Apple’s full results, and iCloud senders are verified as they should be. A few other iCloud fixes came along: replies in your iCloud conversations are recognized, search covers mailboxes with spaces in their names, and a message iCloud delivers twice shows once in Activity.
More verification codes
Security Quick Access recognizes confirmation codes, codes that follow a phrase like “to complete the sign-in process:”, and recovery email setup codes. Allowlisted senders can offer a code too when they pass your provider’s authentication checks, though Premail never offers a link from allowlisted mail. The Security Quick Access guide has the details.
Fixes and polish
On macOS, exporting rules or a settings backup now opens a save dialog and writes the file; before, nothing was saved even though Premail said it was. Unsubscribe pages open with Lockdown Mode on, so unsubscribing through a web page needs macOS 15 or later, while one-click unsubscribe works everywhere. Opening any briefing clears the tray clock for every briefing. Activity explains an allowed message in filter-strength terms and names the rule. The window shows the Premail mark while it loads instead of a blank page.
Read the v1.4.0 release notes for the full list, or download Premail for Mac, Windows, and Linux.