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Email accounts

Adding Gmail, Outlook, iCloud, and IMAP/SMTP accounts. Signatures and multiple-account behavior.

Supported providers

Saymail connects to four kinds of mail server:

  • Gmail - via Google’s official API. Uses OAuth, so you sign in with Google rather than handing Saymail a password.
  • Outlook / Microsoft 365 - via the Microsoft Graph API. Also OAuth.
  • iCloud - Apple’s mailbox, over IMAP. Saymail fills in Apple’s servers for you, but iCloud will not accept your Apple ID password, so you need an app-specific password. See Connecting iCloud.
  • IMAP / SMTP - any standards-compliant mailbox. Fastmail, Proton Bridge, your own server, hosted IMAP, and almost every business mail host fall into this category.

You can mix providers freely - there is no limit on the number of accounts, and all of them sync simultaneously.

Adding an account

  1. Open the Email Accounts panel from the command palette or panel menu.
  2. Click Add. The Choose a provider dialog opens.
  3. Pick Connect to Google, Connect to Outlook, Connect to iCloud, or IMAP / SMTP.

Gmail or Outlook

Picking Gmail or Outlook starts the OAuth flow:

  1. A browser window opens at Google or Microsoft.
  2. Sign in to the account you want to add.
  3. Grant Saymail the requested scopes (read, send, modify, contacts).
  4. The browser hands control back to Saymail and the account form opens, pre-filled with your name and email address.
  5. Fill in an optional Signature (see below) and save.

Saymail never sees your provider password. The OAuth tokens are stored locally; you can revoke access from your Google/Microsoft account dashboard at any time.

iCloud

Picking iCloud opens a short form: your iCloud address and an app-specific password. Apple’s servers are filled in already and tucked under Advanced settings, so there is nothing to look up.

The app-specific password is the part that trips people up - iCloud refuses your Apple ID password and reports it as a plain authentication failure. Connecting iCloud walks through creating one.

Typing an @icloud.com, @me.com, or @mac.com address into the IMAP/SMTP path takes you to the same form, so you land in the right place either way.

IMAP / SMTP

Picking IMAP/SMTP opens the IMAP lookup gate. Type your email address and Saymail tries to autoconfigure the server settings using common domain rules. If autoconfig succeeds, the form is pre-filled with IMAP/SMTP host names, ports, and TLS settings - review and save.

If autoconfig fails, fill the fields manually:

  • IMAP host, port, encryption (TLS/STARTTLS).
  • SMTP host, port, encryption.
  • Username (usually your email address).
  • Password (Saymail stores it encrypted in your local database).

Signatures

Each account has its own Signature field at the bottom of the account form. Two modes are available:

  • Text - plain text appended to outgoing messages.
  • HTML - full HTML, useful for logos, links, and styled blocks. There is also a small visual editor for common cases.

A blank signature means Saymail won’t append anything.

Multiple accounts

There is no account limit. All accounts:

  • Sync independently and in parallel.
  • Show in a Unified Inbox at the top of the folder tree, alongside their per-account folder lists.
  • Can belong to a profile so they share a classification prompt.

When you compose a new email, the From dropdown lists every configured account; the default is the account whose folder you were in.

Reconnecting after a token expires

OAuth tokens expire if you change your provider password, revoke access, or after long inactivity. When that happens, the account shows a Reconnect banner. Click Reconnect to redo the OAuth flow - your existing data and settings are kept.

IMAP and iCloud accounts don’t expire, but if the password changes on the provider side you’ll see a similar banner. Open the account, update the password, and save. (Apple revokes app-specific passwords whenever you change your Apple ID password, so an iCloud account needs a fresh one after that.)

If a Reconnect banner appears on every account at once - for example after restoring a database backup or moving to a new machine - see Backup and restore for the per-provider steps.

Removing an account

Open the account and click Delete. This removes the local database rows for that account (folders, messages, contacts) and revokes any local OAuth tokens. Your data on the provider is untouched - you can re-add the account later and Saymail will fetch it again.