mail/docs/features.md

# Flectar Mail features

A closer look at what the [README](../README.md) summarizes.

- [Conversation threads](#conversation-threads)
- [Tabs](#tabs)
- [New-mail notifications](#new-mail-notifications)
- [Profiles and account colors](#profiles-and-account-colors)
- [Appearance](#appearance)
- [Frameless window](#frameless-window)
- [Calendar, contacts, and files](#calendar-contacts-and-files)
- [Signatures and OpenPGP](#signatures-and-openpgp)
- [Storage and backups](#storage-and-backups)
- [Importing accounts and mail](#importing-accounts-and-mail)
- [HTML rendering](#html-rendering)
- [Smaller screens](#smaller-screens)

## Conversation threads

Replies stay grouped in chronological order, with the active message expanded
inside the reading pane. To list, open and act on every message on its own, turn
off **Conversation view** in Settings → General.

| Keys | Action |
| --- | --- |
| **Up/Down** | Move between messages |
| **Home/End** | Jump to the first or last loaded message |
| **Page Up/Page Down** | Move a page at a time |
| **Enter** | Open the current message and focus its content |
| **Space** | Check or uncheck the message for bulk actions |
| **Tab/Shift+Tab** | Move between controls |
| **F6** | In the full workspace, move focus between the message list and reader |

In the minimal layout, arrow keys highlight messages and **Enter** opens them;
**Escape** or **F6** returns to the list.

<picture>
  <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="../resources/screenshots/desktop-thread-dark.png">
  <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)" srcset="../resources/screenshots/desktop-thread-light.png">
  <img src="../resources/screenshots/desktop-thread-light.png" alt="Flectar Mail conversation with incoming and replied messages">
</picture>

## Tabs

Keep several places open at once with browser-style tabs. Each tab remembers
its own place: a mailbox, search, or open conversation, the calendar,
contacts, files, or Settings, along with how far you scrolled the list and the
message you were reading. Pick up where you left off the next time you open
Flectar Mail.

| Action | How |
| --- | --- |
| Open a message in a background tab | Middle-click or Ctrl/⌘-click it, or choose **Open in new tab** from its menu |
| Open it and switch to it | Add Shift to the click |
| New tab | **Ctrl/⌘+T** |
| Close the current tab | **Ctrl/⌘+W**, or middle-click the tab |
| Reopen the last closed tab | **Ctrl/⌘+Shift+T** |
| Cycle through tabs | **Ctrl+Tab** and **Ctrl+Shift+Tab** |
| Jump to a tab | **Ctrl/⌘+1–8**; **Ctrl/⌘+9** jumps to the last |
| Reorder tabs | Drag them |
| Close other tabs, or those to the right | Right-click a tab |

On phones and in narrow windows, the button at the end of the toolbar shows
how many tabs are open and lays them out as cards. Tap a card to switch to it,
tap × or swipe it aside to close it, and use **+** for a new tab. Select
messages and choose **Open in new tabs** from the selection menu to open them
in the background. If you'd rather work without tabs, turn off **Tabs** in
Settings → General.

<picture>
  <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="../resources/screenshots/desktop-tabs-dark.png">
  <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)" srcset="../resources/screenshots/desktop-tabs-light.png">
  <img src="../resources/screenshots/desktop-tabs-light.png" alt="Flectar Mail with tabs for several conversations, the calendar, contacts, and files">
</picture>

## New-mail notifications

Flectar Mail lets you know when new mail reaches your Inbox while it's running:
one notification per message, with its sender and subject. When more than three
messages reach one account at once, a single notification sums them up. Choose
which mail notifies with **Desktop notifications** in Settings → Notifications:
**Important mail**, the default, leaves out newsletters and other automated
mail, **All new mail** includes it, and **Off** turns notifications off. Mail
that came in while Flectar Mail wasn't running waits quietly in the Inbox, and
mail that reaches the inbox you're looking at simply appears in the list.

Click a notification to open its conversation, or use its buttons to mark the
message as read or move it to the archive, or to the trash for accounts without
an archive, without opening the window. A notification goes away by itself once
its message is read, leaves the Inbox, is snoozed, or is deleted, here or on
another device. Only mail from people plays a sound, once per batch; turn it off
with **Notification sounds** in Settings → Notifications. To keep getting
notifications with the window closed, turn on **Keep running in system tray** in
Settings → General, or **Keep running in the background** in the Flatpak.

macOS asks for permission the first time Flectar Mail has a notification to
show. If notifications are turned off for Flectar Mail in the system's settings,
Settings → Notifications says so, and on Windows and macOS its **Open system
settings** button goes straight there. On Linux, the desktop's notification
server shows them, or the notification portal in the Flatpak, where the desktop
also decides whether they play a sound. Android and iOS don't show
notifications yet.

The app icon shows how many unread messages are in the Inbox, counting the
same mail as notifications: Important mail, or every message with **All new
mail**. The number stays until the mail is read, here or on another device;
turn it off with **Unread count on the app icon** in Settings → Notifications.
macOS shows it on the Dock when badges are allowed for Flectar Mail in its
notification settings, Windows on the taskbar button, and Linux on docks that
show counts, such as KDE Plasma's, Ubuntu Dock and Dash to Dock, elementary
OS's and Plank.

## Profiles and account colors

Group related accounts into named profiles such as Work or Personal, then give
each profile its own color. Create a profile from the profile menu at the start
of the tab bar, or in Settings → Accounts → Profiles, and check the accounts
that belong to it. Choose a profile in that menu to focus the mail view on its
accounts: the unified inbox, search, counts, and sidebar show only their mail,
while your tabs stay the same. **All accounts** shows everything again.

You can also override an individual account's color and show the effective
color along the left edge of every message. The markers make accounts easy to
tell apart while working in the unified inbox; the example below uses purple
for Work and orange for Support.

<picture>
  <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="../resources/screenshots/desktop-profiles-dark.png">
  <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)" srcset="../resources/screenshots/desktop-profiles-light.png">
  <img src="../resources/screenshots/desktop-profiles-light.png" alt="Flectar Mail unified inbox with purple and orange profile color markers">
</picture>

## Appearance

Choose the workspace that fits the way you handle email. Keep the detailed
three-pane layout, switch to a streamlined minimal view, choose a light or dark
theme, select a built-in color palette or create a custom one, and show or hide
sender avatars. You can also give the app icon a different color: on the
taskbar or Dock, in the system tray, in the Linux app launcher, and on Android
and iOS home screens.

The full workspace keeps your folders, message list, and selected email visible
together. The minimal layout reduces visual noise and gives each part of your
inbox more room when you need it.

Message appearance can follow the app theme or stay light or dark independently.
It uses your selected color palette for HTML, plain text, and Reader mode.
To temporarily show the sender's original colors, use the contrast icon between
Find and Reader mode in the desktop message toolbar, or choose **Show original
colors** from the message's three-dot menu on any screen size.

## Frameless window

Flectar Mail replaces the system title bar with window controls in the toolbar
by default; turn off **Frameless window** in Settings → General → Interface to
bring the system title bar back. Each platform keeps its own behavior: macOS
keeps the native traffic lights, Windows keeps Snap Layouts and the system menu,
and Linux follows the button order and title-bar actions configured for GNOME or
KDE.

## Calendar, contacts, and files

Mail, calendars, and contacts sit side by side, synced over Google, Microsoft,
CalDAV, and CardDAV. Mailbox and calendar data are stored locally, so synced
data stays useful without a connection. The Files view browses JMAP and WebDAV
storage, searches mail attachments, keeps files offline, and previews PDFs,
images and text. [Contacts and CardDAV](carddav-contacts.md) describes how
contacts are stored and synced.

## Signatures and OpenPGP

Settings → Accounts → Signatures & OpenPGP provides named signatures, separate
new-message and reply defaults, and a composer signature selector. Desktop
OpenPGP/MIME signing and encryption use installed GnuPG 2.x with pinentry for
private-key passphrases. Required encryption blocks delivery when recipient keys
are missing or invalid; protected drafts remain local until Send.

S/MIME and mobile OpenPGP are not currently supported.

## Storage and backups

Settings → Storage shows how much space mail, attachments, offline files, and
databases use on the device. From the same page, you can export verified database
snapshots or transfer connected-account setup and preferences through a backup.
Passwords and OAuth tokens stay in the system keyring, so a restored device asks
you to sign in again.

POP3 accounts download mail to this device and leave it on the server unless
you choose otherwise: each account can remove mail from the server after 7, 14,
or 30 days, once you delete it here, or as soon as it's downloaded, but never
before it's stored on this device. Their folders exist only on this device, so
snapshots include that mail, and removing a POP3 account or deleting all data
offers to export it first as mbox files, one per folder, which other mail apps
can import.

<picture>
  <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="../resources/screenshots/desktop-storage-dark.png">
  <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)" srcset="../resources/screenshots/desktop-storage-light.png">
  <img src="../resources/screenshots/desktop-storage-light.png" alt="Flectar Mail Storage settings with local usage, mail on this device, database snapshot, and account backup controls">
</picture>

## Importing accounts and mail

The same import also brings accounts over from Thunderbird (a profile folder,
its Tools › Export archive, or `prefs.js`) and from Thunderbird for Android or
K-9 Mail (`.k9s` settings exports). You review each account before anything is
added: settings Flectar Mail can't reproduce, such as an Exchange server, are
explained instead of changed silently, and POP3 accounts keep their rule for
removing mail from the server. Existing accounts are never modified, and
passwords are never imported.

Saved mail comes over the same way: Thunderbird's Local Folders and the mail
its POP3 accounts downloaded, mbox files such as a Google Takeout export or
Flectar Mail's own, `.eml` messages, maildir folders, Apple Mail mailboxes, and
ZIP archives of them. You pick the files, several at once if you like, then the
folders, with Trash and Junk left out unless you check them, and the folder
structure and read and starred states come along. Mail that's already there is
skipped, so a stopped import can simply run again, and a long one can carry on
in the background. Mail that belongs to no account goes to **On this device**:
folders kept only here, which Settings → Storage can export or delete. It can
also go into a POP3 account's folders, or up to the server of an IMAP, JMAP or
Gmail account, into a folder of its own there.

## HTML rendering

To keep the client fully native and its memory use low, Flectar Mail renders
email HTML with [Blitz](https://github.com/DioxusLabs/blitz), a Rust HTML/CSS
renderer from the Dioxus team, instead of embedding a browser or WebView.

As far as we know, Flectar Mail is one of the first projects using Blitz for
arbitrary, real-world email HTML. Email markup contains plenty of unusual HTML
and CSS, so this pushes the renderer into demanding territory. We currently
carry several patches on top of Blitz and hope to upstream as much of that work
as possible over time.

If you find an email that renders incorrectly, please
[report it](https://github.com/flectar/mail/issues). This approach is still
experimental, but it is also a major reason Flectar Mail can remain so
lightweight compared with WebView-based clients built with frameworks such as
Tauri or Wails.

Desktop builds offer two renderers under Settings → General → Renderer:

| Renderer | Details |
| --- | --- |
| **CPU — Low Memory** | Selected initially. Doesn't initialize WGPU. |
| **GPU — WGPU** | Slint and Vello on a shared WGPU 30 device. A failed GPU startup falls back to CPU automatically. |

Changing the renderer takes effect after restarting the app.

## Smaller screens

The compact interface keeps the important actions within reach while giving
messages, events, and contacts the full screen when they need it.