What happens to the mail already in my inbox?

Turning tabs on sorts your recent inbox mail once, so the tabs are filled from the start. Mail you import from Gmail keeps the categories Gmail gave it.

Reading & organising

Inbox tabs
Mail from people comes first.

Q: How does OpenEmail decide which tab an email goes to?

It follows plain rules, with no AI. Mail from your contacts, from people you have written to and in conversations you take part in is Primary. Marketing mail goes to Promotions, receipts, codes and no-reply notices to Updates, social networks to Social and mailing lists to Forums. A tab you chose for the sender comes before those rules, and so does a category that one of your own rules sets.

Q: Can I move a sender to a different tab?

Yes. The menu of a conversation has “Always show mail from”, followed by the sender’s address and the five tabs. Pick a tab, and that sender’s inbox conversations move there and their new mail follows. Saved choices are listed in settings, where each can be removed.

Turn on Sort the inbox into tabs in your account settings and the inbox splits into Primary, Promotions, Updates, Social and Forums. Mail from people stays in Primary, and offers and receipts wait in tabs of their own.

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In short

What are inbox tabs?

Inbox tabs split one inbox into separate lists by the kind of mail, so a message from a person is not buried under offers and receipts. Here there are five, and a conversation is always in exactly one of them, decided by its newest message.

How it works

Sorted by plain rules

Mail from your contacts, from people you have written to and in conversations you take part in is Primary. Marketing mail goes to Promotions, receipts, codes and no-reply notices to Updates, social networks to Social and mailing lists to Forums. No AI is involved, and it costs nothing.

Choose a tab for a sender

The menu of a conversation has “Always show mail from”, followed by the sender’s address and the five tabs. Pick a tab, and that sender’s inbox conversations move there and their new mail follows. Saved choices are listed in settings, where each can be removed.

Alerts for Primary only

Alert me for Primary only is on from the start. Pushes, sounds and desktop notifications fire for mail in Primary, and mail in the other tabs arrives quietly.

What you get

In the product today

A count on every tab

Each tab shows its unread count, and the Inbox badge counts Primary.

Search one tab

Add category:promotions to a search and it looks in that tab only.

From code as well

The REST API, the SDKs, the command line and the MCP server can list a tab and save a choice for a sender.

Good practice

Getting the most out of it

01
Fix a sender once
When a sender lands in the wrong tab, choose a tab for them. The choice holds for everything they send next.
02
Keep alerts on Primary
Leave Alert me for Primary only on, so an offer or a receipt never interrupts you.
03
Read the other tabs in one go
Promotions and Updates can wait. Open them when you have a minute, and their unread counts tell you how much is there.

Questions

Asked often

Keep going

Works well with

Labels

Name a label, pick a colour, and filter the list down to it.

Rules you write yourself

Your own conditions, and what should happen to anything that matches them.

Subscriptions

Every newsletter and mailing list that writes to you, in one place to unsubscribe from, file away or block.

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.

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Inbox tabsMail from people comes first.