---
title: "Recipient autocomplete and contacts"
description: "OpenEmail suggests email recipients as you type, taken from the people in your own threads and ranked by how often and how recently they turn up."
url: "https://openemail.uk/features/contacts"
---

[Reading & organising](https://openemail.uk/features.md#reading)

# Recipient suggestions The To field already knows.

Start typing and the people from your own threads are offered, ranked by how often and how recently they turn up. Nothing to import first.

[Open mail](https://openemail.uk/mail/inbox) [Get Started](https://openemail.uk/signup.md)[All features](https://openemail.uk/features.md)

In short

## What is recipient autocomplete?

Recipient autocomplete offers matching people as you type an address, so you pick a name instead of spelling one out. Mail apps build that list from an address book, from mail already exchanged, or from both.

How it works

## Ranked by habit, not alphabet

The closest match to what you type comes first, then whoever turns up in the most threads, then the most recent. Names and addresses both match.

## A book that fills itself

Send to somebody and they are added to Contacts in the sidebar, which is offered above the names read from your threads.

## One book for the workspace

What anybody saves, everybody sees, and the API and the MCP server read and write the same rows. Audiences sort the book into named lists.

## Scopes for the contact book

Give an API key only the ones it needs.

contacts:read list and look up contacts:write save, edit, remove audiences:read list audiences audiences:write create and fill them

What you get

## In the product today

Recent threads

Suggestions read your 100 most recent threads.

Never yourself

Your own addresses and aliases are left out.

Nothing from your phone

No address book is read or uploaded from your device.

Good practice

## Getting the most out of it

1. 01
   
   Save for the team
   
   Names read from threads are offered to the workspace owner only, so save anybody colleagues need to reach.
2. 02
   
   Keep one-off senders
   
   Somebody who has only written to you drops out after 100 newer threads unless you save them.
3. 03
   
   Type the domain
   
   Addresses match too, so typing acme offers the people at acme.com.

Where it stands

## Good to know

Questions

## Asked often

Keep going

## Works well with

Sender pictures

A real picture for everyone you correspond with when one can be found, and a mark seeded on their identity when it cannot.

Full-text search

Forgiving words and operators like from: and has:, inside the folder you are reading.

REST API

A documented HTTP API with issuable, scopable, revocable keys.

Start

## Your domain, your mail.

Point a domain at OpenEmail and read it in a mailbox built around it. The free plan covers one domain.

[Open mail](https://openemail.uk/mail/inbox) [Get Started](https://openemail.uk/signup.md)[Read the reference](https://openemail.uk/docs/knowledge/reading/contacts.md)