TideMail

A keyboard-first terminal mail client built with Bubble Tea and Lipgloss. The compose message body is powered by ripple — an owned keyboard-first text editor (selection, undo/redo, system-clipboard copy/cut/paste, word movement, soft-wrap) extracted from TideMail into a standalone Go TUI editor library.

Install

Quick install (Linux/macOS, amd64/arm64):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/allisonhere/tidemail/main/install.sh | sh

Or download a binary from the latest release.

From source:

git clone https://github.com/allisonhere/tidemail
cd tidemail
go build -o tidemail .
./tidemail

Features

• Three-pane mail layout: accounts, messages, content
• Unified Inbox across all configured accounts
• Multi-select messages with space bar — auto-advances for bulk delete, archive, move, mark read
• Select all with A — selects every message in current view
• Full email headers display — toggle with ctrl+e, configurable default in Settings
• Spam/auth headers — SPF, DKIM, DMARC results color-coded in header view
• Message text can be copied from the content pane with Vim-style v/V selection, then y or ctrl+c
• Owned compose editor for the message body — text selection (shift/ctrl+shift+arrows), select-all (ctrl+a), undo/redo (ctrl+z/ctrl+y), system-clipboard copy/cut/paste (ctrl+c/ctrl+x/ctrl+v), word movement, and soft-wrap
• Optional vim editing in compose — enable it in Settings → Editor (or [display] compose_vim); the body gets Normal/Insert/Visual modes, motions (hjkl, w/b/e, 0/^/$, gg/G, counts), edits (x, dd, yy, p, dw, cw), visual v/V, u/ctrl+r, and a : command line where :w/:wq send and :q cancels. Off by default
• IMAP/SMTP accounts using passwords or app passwords (stored in system keychain)
• Account manager for adding, editing, deleting, and discovering mailboxes
• Contacts manager for curated autocomplete, manual entries, adding seen senders, composing to selected contacts, and vCard import/export
• vCard import/export preserves email, display name, phone, organization, title, and notes
• Server-backed sync, read/unread, archive, move, delete, compose, and reply
• Local drafts — composes autosave to a per-account Drafts mailbox as you type; reopen one with Enter, delete with d, and switching the sender account moves the draft with it
• Local-first delete hides messages immediately, moves remote mail to Trash when available, and prevents deleted mail from reappearing on later syncs
• Archive auto-detection via \Archive, Archive, Archives, or All Mail
• Trash auto-detection via \Trash, Trash, Deleted Items, Deleted Messages, or Gmail's Trash label
• Command palette for main mail actions, plus contextual commands in compose, AI summary, and save-attachments overlays
• Global message search (/ enters persistent search mode; type to filter, esc to exit) and unread-only filtering
• Optional actionable links in the message content pane
• File browsers for attaching and saving attachments hide dotfiles by default; press . to toggle hidden files and folders
• AI summaries with copy and save-to-Markdown actions
• AI grammar & spell check in compose with preview overlay
• AI mail filters — describe a rule in plain English ("move newsletters from substack to Reading") and AI turns it into a real, deterministic filter that runs locally with no per-message AI cost. Choose which account it applies to (or All accounts), review the generated rule, then save (auto-applied to new mail on sync), run once on a mailbox, or run on all existing mail. Actions: move, mark read, archive, delete, spam. Open from the command palette (p → "filters").
• Theme-aware dialogs, overlays, and terminal background sync
• Collapsible account folders (System, Labels) in sidebar
• Desktop notifications on genuinely new unread mail via auto-sync (notify-send), with sender and subject details

Usage

go build -o tidemail .
./tidemail

Config is stored in ~/.config/tidemail/config.toml. The local SQLite cache is stored in ~/.local/share/tidemail/mail.db unless XDG_DATA_HOME changes that path.

Open account management with M, add an IMAP/SMTP account, then sync the selected mailbox with s. Press s on the Unified Inbox to sync every account's inbox at once. Use F to sync all mailboxes. Configure a per-account sync_minutes interval for automatic background refresh.

Composing autosaves your message to the sending account's Drafts mailbox as you type, so closing the compose modal never loses work — closing with content prompts to save or discard. Open the Drafts mailbox to see saved drafts, press Enter to reopen one in compose, and d to delete it. Sending a draft removes it from Drafts automatically.

Open Contacts with C. Contacts are the curated address book used for compose autocomplete. Add contacts manually with n, add addresses already seen in mail with f, import a vCard file with i, export to contacts.vcf with x, select multiple contacts with Space, press c to compose to the selected contact(s), and delete selected contacts with d. vCard import/export keeps email, display name, phone, organization, title, and note fields.

Credential safety

TideMail stores IMAP/SMTP passwords and AI API keys in the system keychain via secret-tool (libsecret on Linux, Keychain on macOS). Empty password and openai_key/claude_key/gemini_key fields in the config file are looked up from the keychain at startup. When you save settings, any in-memory secrets are moved to the keychain and removed from the config file automatically.

If secret-tool is not installed, passwords and API keys fall back to being stored directly in ~/.config/tidemail/config.toml. Treat the config file like a secret in that case.

• Gmail: enable 2-Step Verification, then Google Account → Security → App passwords
• Yahoo: Account Security → Generate app password
• iCloud: Apple ID → Sign-In and Security → App-Specific Passwords

If you paste or accidentally expose an app password, revoke it and create a new one.

Gmail

Gmail requires a Google App Password (OAuth "Sign in with Google" was removed in v0.5.0):

1. Enable 2-Step Verification on your Google account
2. Create an app password at myaccount.google.com/apppasswords
3. Press M to open the account manager, add or edit your Gmail account
4. Paste the app password into the password field and save (Ctrl+S)

The app password is stored in the system keychain (or the config file if secret-tool is unavailable).

Example account config:

theme = "catppuccin-mocha"

[[account]]
name = "Personal"
imap_host = "imap.example.com"
imap_port = 993
imap_tls = true
smtp_host = "smtp.example.com"
smtp_port = 587
smtp_tls = true
user = "alice@example.com"
password = "app-password"
from = "Alice <alice@example.com>"
sync_minutes = 5  # auto-sync every 5 min (0 = off)

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key	Action
: or Ctrl+P	Command palette (also contextual commands in compose, AI summary, and save-attachments overlays). In a vim compose body : is the editor's command line — use Ctrl+P there
m	Move selected message(s) to folder/label
M	Account manager
C	Contacts manager
c in Contacts	Compose to selected contact(s)
s	Sync current mailbox (Unified Inbox: syncs all inboxes)
F	Sync all mailboxes
c	Compose (autosaves to Drafts as you type)
Enter in Drafts	Reopen selected draft in compose
d in Drafts	Delete selected draft
r	Toggle read/unread in message list, reply from content
a	Archive selected message
d	Delete selected message
Space	Multi-select messages; auto-advances and keeps the cursor visible (then d/a/m/x for bulk actions)
A	Select all messages in current view
R	Mark selected mailbox/account read
/	Search messages
Shift+Left / Shift+Right	Resize the accounts pane
Shift+Up / Shift+Down	Resize the messages/content split
u	Toggle unread-only view
o	Open link on the focus line (falls back to the selected content link)
Ctrl+N / Alt+N	Next content link
Alt+P	Previous content link
Ctrl+E	Toggle email headers on/off
Ctrl+F	Find in message
v / V	Visual select line range / whole message
`	AI summary
S	Settings
T	Theme picker
Ctrl+D	Save attachments to folder
Ctrl+G	AI grammar & spell check (compose)
Vim editing (compose)	Optional — enable in Settings → Editor; :w/:wq send, :q or double-Esc cancels
?	Help
q	Quit

Settings

Settings are opened with S.

• Display: icons, date format, mark-read behavior, focus line, show sender, unread-first ordering, actionable links, reading width, browser command, density, show email headers, desktop notifications, and quit confirmation
• Editor: vim keys in the compose body (off by default)
• Updates: check, install, restart, or copy a manual install command
• AI: OpenAI, Claude, Gemini, or Ollama summary settings
• Advanced: view logs and feed max body size
• About: repository and issue links

(Account details are managed in the Account Manager — press M — not in Settings.)

Related projects

TideMail grew alongside two of its own libraries:

• tideui — a themeable multi-pane terminal UI toolkit for Bubble Tea and Lipgloss. It was extracted from this project and used to build the base of TideMail's interface (the multi-pane layout, theming, and styles live on in internal/ui).
• ripple — the keyboard-first text editor behind the compose message body, later extracted into a standalone library. TideMail depends on it directly (github.com/allisonhere/ripple).

Development

Run the full suite:

go test ./...

The mail refactor intentionally removes RSS/GReader/OPML behavior. Any remaining RSS-era naming in internal style names is compatibility debt, not product direction.