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karatektus/pl_mail

Self-hosted, Gmail-style mail client. Multi-account IMAP, threaded conversations, real-time push via IMAP IDLE + Mercure. Built with Symfony, FrankenPHP, Hotwire Turbo. Clone and docker compose up.

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README.md

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# plMail

Self-hosted mail with a calendar beside it. Connect the mailboxes you already have — IMAP, Gmail,
Outlook — and read them side by side in one inbox, on a server you own.

![PHP](https://img.shields.io/badge/PHP-8.4+-777BB4?logo=php&logoColor=white)
![Symfony](https://img.shields.io/badge/Symfony-8-000000?logo=symfony&logoColor=white)
![PostgreSQL](https://img.shields.io/badge/PostgreSQL-18-4169E1?logo=postgresql&logoColor=white)
![License](https://img.shields.io/badge/license-AGPL--3.0-green)

### 📖 [Read the handbook →](https://karatektus.github.io/pl_mail/docs/)

Installing on Docker, Linux, WSL2, macOS or a NAS · every feature in detail · connecting Gmail and
Outlook, with the exact permissions to tick · how the internals work.
Also on the [wiki](https://github.com/karatektus/pl_mail/wiki) and in [`docs/`](docs/) — all three
are built from the same files.

### 📱 Apps for your phone

- **Android** — [karatektus/pl_mail_android](https://github.com/karatektus/pl_mail_android)
- **iOS** — [karatektus/pl_mail_ios](https://github.com/karatektus/pl_mail_ios)

Both connect to your own plMail server.

---

## What it is

A mail client you host yourself. It connects to the mailboxes you already have — IMAP, Gmail,
Outlook — syncs them into your own PostgreSQL database, and gives them one inbox, one search box and
one set of labels in the browser.

It is **not** a mail server: it doesn't receive mail from the internet or host your domain. Because
everything is synced locally, search runs against your database, and your mail stays readable when a
provider doesn't.

![The plMail inbox](docs/screenshots/inbox.png)

## Highlights

- **Every account in one place** — IMAP, Gmail and Outlook side by side, sending aliases included.
  Credentials are encrypted before they touch the database.
- **New mail arrives on its own** — IMAP IDLE, Gmail and Outlook push, browser notifications.
- **Search that means it** — full text plus `from:`, `subject:`, `label:`, `has:`, `before:` and
  friends, completed as you type. Every hit shows the words it matched on, marked, in a window of
  the message around them. What the words found comes first; what the model merely thought looked
  similar follows, labelled, and never pushes a real match off the page.
- **Filters as a tree** — any/all/none, nested, restated in plain English and counted against real
  mail before you save. Apply one to mail that arrived before it existed.
- **Filed where you drop it** — drag a conversation onto a folder, a label or one of the inbox tabs,
  several at once if they are ticked. A folder moves it and a label just adds itself, so dropping on
  "Receipts" does not take the mail out of your inbox; **Starred** stars it and **Unread** — an
  optional list of every unread conversation, whatever folder it is in — marks it unread, both where
  it lies. Only the targets that will accept it light up, and a tab you choose by hand stays chosen
  when the next message in the thread arrives.
- **A calendar beside the mail** — two-way sync with Google, Microsoft and CalDAV, a drag-to-move
  week grid that pans rather than squeezes on a phone, invitations answered in place and landing in
  the calendar as you answer them, share and booking links. The time is always in view — on the Happening Soon button, under the name, or at
  the foot of the sidebar with the next thing coming up.
- **Files where you keep them** — attach from and save to Drive, Photos, OneDrive, Dropbox,
  Nextcloud, Immich and Paperless-ngx.
- **A language model, if you want one** — point plMail at an Ollama box on your own network, or at
  any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, and it can search by meaning, draft replies, summarise a thread
  and sort mail into tabs. A long thread is summarised from as much of it as fits, and says so; ask
  for the whole conversation and it runs as a job with a context window to match. What it has been told about how you write is editable in the
  composer, for one attempt at a time. Off by default, each of the four switched on separately. Mail
  goes to the model host you name and nowhere else, so with a model on your own machine nothing
  leaves your network.
- **You decide what sorts your mail** — header rules that answer the same way every time, or the
  model reading each message; and on Gmail, whether either of them is allowed to disagree with
  Google. Change your mind and the mailbox re-sorts itself in the background. Every message's
  **Details** panel shows what all three said and which one won, and a **Report** button tells your
  administrator when it got it wrong.
- **It tells you when something breaks** — a sign-in that has expired, a calendar that stopped
  syncing, push that lapsed, work the queue gave up on. Each with what it means for your mail and
  the smallest thing that fixes it. A Google sign-in dying every week gets named for what it is —
  Google expires tokens for an app still in Testing — and warned about before the next one.
- **And when there is something newer** — follow releases or the main branch, and the
  administrators hear about each new build once: on their devices and at the top of the admin area,
  with what changed since the one they run.
- **Yours** — two-factor auth, sign-in through Authentik, Keycloak or any other OpenID Connect
  provider, per-app JMAP passwords, 41 themes, ten icons for the tab and the phone's home screen,
  English, German, French and Pirate.

## A look around

|  |  |
|---|---|
| ![Reading a thread](docs/screenshots/thread.png) | ![Writing a message](docs/screenshots/compose.png) |
| **Threads** — replies collapse into one conversation. | **Compose** — rich text, autocomplete, undo send. |
| ![Dark mode](docs/screenshots/inbox-dark.png) | ![Calendar](docs/screenshots/calendar.png) |
| **Themes** — 41 of them, light and dark. | **Calendar** — docked beside the mail, or its own page. |
| ![Filters](docs/screenshots/filters.png) | ![Admin](docs/screenshots/admin.png) |
| **Filters** — counted before you save. | **Admin** — workers, push health, logs, queue. |
| ![Choosing an icon](docs/screenshots/icons.png) | ![Choosing its colours](docs/screenshots/colourways.png) |
| **Icons** — ten of them, a blue horn among them. | **Colourways** — each icon in its own colours, or any of 32. |

<sub>Screenshots use demo data — none of the accounts, senders or messages shown are real.</sub>

## Install

Images are published for `linux/amd64` and `linux/arm64`. Nothing to fill in first: the secrets are
generated on first start, and the public address is asked for on the setup screen.

### Docker

```bash
git clone https://github.com/karatektus/pl_mail.git
cd pl_mail
docker compose up -d
```

Open [https://localhost](https://localhost) and create your account. From another machine, open
`https://` and the server's address instead; the browser warns about the self-signed certificate
once and lets you continue.

### TrueNAS

plMail is in the TrueNAS app catalogue. **Apps → Discover Apps**, search for **plMail**, and
install it. The form asks for one thing, a database password; everything else has a default that
works.

Reach it on port `30519`, and put a reverse proxy in front of it if it should be reachable from
outside. Updates arrive through the catalogue like any other app's.

### Then

Add an IMAP mailbox in **Settings → Mail accounts** and you're done. Gmail and Outlook need OAuth
credentials from Google or Microsoft first — the handbook walks through both, including the
optional Pub/Sub topic for instant Gmail delivery.

> **Back up two things, separately:** the PostgreSQL data and `var/secrets/generated.env`. The
> database holds your mail; the key inside that file unlocks the credentials in it. Keeping them
> apart is the point — and losing the key means the stored mailbox passwords are gone.

## Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests welcome — see [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) for the dev setup,
the test suites and the console commands.

## License

AGPL-3.0.

Repository info

Default branch: main
Latest version: —
Created: 2026-07-02
Last activity: 2026-10-14
License: AGPL-3.0
Open issues: 36
Watchers: 2

Contributors

karatektus

138 contributions

Flouss

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claude

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dependabot[bot]

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jo2904

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