Apple Mail MCP
The only Apple Mail MCP server with full-coverage body search — reliable on large mailboxes where AppleScript-based servers timeout. 8 tools for reading, searching, and extracting email content.
Read the docs for the full guide.
Quick Start
pipx install apple-mail-mcp
Add to your MCP client:
{
"mcpServers": {
"mail": {
"command": "apple-mail-mcp"
}
}
}
Build the Search Index (Recommended)
apple-mail-mcp index --verbose
Writes a commented config file you can edit to set defaults like your
primary account or mailbox. Every key has a matching APPLE_MAIL_* env
var if you prefer environment-based config. See
Configuration
for the full schema and precedence rules.
| Tool | Purpose |
|---|
list_accounts() | List email accounts |
list_mailboxes(account?) | List mailboxes |
get_emails(filter?, limit?) | Get emails — all, unread, flagged, today, last_7_days |
get_email(message_id) | Get single email with full content + attachments |
search(query, scope?, before?, after?, highlight?) | Search — all, subject, sender, body, attachments |
get_email_links(message_id) | Extract links from an email |
get_email_attachment(message_id, filename) | Extract attachment content |
get_attachment(message_id, filename) | Deprecated — use get_email_attachment() |
Tested against 6 other Apple Mail MCP servers on a real ~73K-message mailbox:
- Only server with full-coverage body search. Most competitors don't support body search at all; the one that does (BastianZim) live-scans only the 5000 most recent messages — silent miss on anything older. Our FTS5 index covers the entire mailbox.
- ~3ms single email fetch via disk-first
.emlx reading (no JXA round-trip).
- ~1ms
list_accounts and ~5ms 50-email listing via direct Envelope-Index SQLite reads (0.4+) — same path BastianZim/rusty/pl-lyfx use, with JXA as the correctness fallback.
- ~7ms subject search via FTS5 — competitive with native Rust on the same operation.
- Reliable across all 6 benchmarked operations on a 73K mailbox; AppleScript-based servers timeout, throw syntax errors, or skip operations they don't support.
Configuration
Apple Mail MCP works out of the box. To customize defaults, run
apple-mail-mcp init to generate a config.toml template — or use
the matching APPLE_MAIL_* environment variables. See the
Configuration docs
for the full schema and the CLI > env > file > default precedence.
Per-client env overrides via the MCP client's launch config also work:
{
"mcpServers": {
"mail": {
"command": "apple-mail-mcp",
"args": ["--watch"],
"env": {
"APPLE_MAIL_DEFAULT_ACCOUNT": "Work"
}
}
}
}
CLI Usage
All tools are also available as standalone CLI commands (no MCP server needed):
apple-mail-mcp search "quarterly report" --scope subject
apple-mail-mcp search "invoice" --after 2026-01-01 --limit 10
apple-mail-mcp read 12345
apple-mail-mcp emails --filter unread --limit 10
apple-mail-mcp accounts
apple-mail-mcp mailboxes --account Work
apple-mail-mcp extract 12345 invoice.pdf
All commands output JSON. Generate a Claude Code skill for CLI-based access:
apple-mail-mcp integrate claude > ~/.claude/skills/apple-mail.md
Development
git clone https://github.com/imdinu/apple-mail-mcp
cd apple-mail-mcp
uv sync
uv run ruff check src/
uv run pytest
License
GPL-3.0-or-later