Apple Mail

Apple Mail MCP

Let Claude read, search, sort and answer your Apple Mail: fast, local, and with you in control of what gets sent.

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.

Any email account, ready for AI

Apple Mail MCP turns any email account you can add to Apple Mail into one that Claude and other MCP clients can work with: iCloud, Gmail and Google Workspace, Microsoft 365, Outlook.com and Exchange, Yahoo, Fastmail, your company's or your hosting provider's IMAP server, even old POP mailboxes.

Your provider needs no API, no developer account and no MCP support of its own. Add the account in Mail › Settings › Accounts as you normally would. As soon as Mail syncs it, the account gets the same tools as every other one: search, threads, needs-a-reply, drafts, sending with your approval, filing, snoozing, unsubscribing, extraction and authenticity checks. Several accounts work side by side, and every tool can be limited to one of them with account.

Your password stays in Mail and in your keychain: this app never sees it and never connects to your provider. It reads what Mail has already downloaded and asks Mail itself to move, draft or 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: a few milliseconds for searches, threads and statistics over 80,000+ messages, faster than every other Apple Mail MCP server we measured (Benchmarks).
• 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.

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.

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

From a terminal, the same setup is:

SERVER="/Applications/Apple Mail MCP.app/Contents/Helpers/Apple Mail MCP Server.app/Contents/MacOS/apple-mail-mcp"

"$SERVER" install # Claude Code and the Claude app "$SERVER" skills install # skills for Claude Code

Any other MCP client: run /Applications/Apple Mail MCP.app/Contents/Helpers/Apple Mail MCP Server.app/Contents/MacOS/apple-mail-mcp as a stdio server (Homebrew also links it as apple-mail-mcp). Before 0.6 the server was at Apple Mail MCP.app/Contents/MacOS/apple-mail-mcp; the menu bar app moves Claude Code's and the Claude app's settings to the new path, other clients need it by hand.

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.

claude.ai and your phone

The Claude apps on iPhone, Android and the web reach Mail on your Mac as a custom connector. The menu bar app serves MCP over HTTP with OAuth; a tunnel (such as cloudflared) publishes it at an HTTPS address of yours. Turn it on in More settings… › Remote access:

1. Enter the public address the tunnel publishes, such as https://mcp.example.com/me/mail. Several servers can share one host name, each on its own path.
2. Route that path to the port (8590 by default) in the tunnel. The route must also carry the discovery documents, which OAuth puts at the root with the path appended; the settings show the exact path pattern, for example ^/(\.well-known/[^/]+/)?me/mail(/.*)?$.
3. Set a passcode to approve connections from anywhere, or approve them in the menu bar app.
4. In claude.ai, Settings › Connectors › Add custom connector with the connector URL (no client ID or secret). Connect opens the sign-in page:

A connection may do what Claude on the Mac may do, or only read; sending and big changes still wait for your OK in the menu bar app. Connected apps lists each one, and Disconnect ends it at its next request. Tokens last an hour and refresh for 90 days of use; the server keeps only their hashes. Details, the tunnel set-up and the security model: docs/remote.md.

What Claude can do

| get_message_source | Raw headers, e