What is Premail?
Premail is a menu-bar app that monitors your email accounts in real time, uses an AI classifier to figure out what each incoming message actually is, and automatically applies whatever rules you've configured. Archive it, trash it, move it, quarantine it. Premail handles this so you don't have to perform the heroic act of manually pressing Delete 47 times a day.
Your email stays on your provider's servers. Premail reads the sender, subject, and message body to classify each message. That content is sent to your chosen AI provider and is never stored by Premail itself. If sending message content to a cloud provider concerns you, the Ollama option keeps all processing local on your machine.
Once set up, Premail runs invisibly in the background. You can close the main window entirely and everything keeps working. There's no Premail cloud account, no subscription required for the app itself, and nothing leaves your machine except what you explicitly send to an AI provider of your choosing.
What is Premail not?
- Not an email client. You keep reading mail in Apple Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, or a browser tab. Premail has no inbox of its own.
- Not a plugin or extension. It does not attach to your mail client, so a client update cannot break it.
- Not a forwarding service. Your mail is never routed through a Premail server. There is no Premail server in the path at all.
How does it differ from your provider's own filters?
Gmail filters and Outlook rules are literal: they match exact senders, subject strings, or header fields. That works for predictable mail and fails the moment a new sender appears or an address changes. Premail asks a language model what the message actually is, so a rule like "cold sales pitches" keeps working against senders you have never seen before.
The second difference is scope. Provider filters live inside one account. Premail applies the same rule set across every inbox you connect - Gmail, Outlook, and iCloud side by side.
Where does your data go?
There is no Premail account and no sign-up. Credentials live in your operating system's keychain, and rules, thresholds, and the activity log exist only on your machine. With Ollama nothing leaves your computer at all; with Anthropic or OpenAI, classification requests go directly from your computer to the provider using your own key. See Privacy & Your Data.
Still have questions?
Contact Support (for Pro members)