apple-mail-mcp 0.1.3

Fast MCP server for Apple Mail with FTS5 search index

Apple Mail MCP

A fast MCP server for Apple Mail — 87x faster email fetching via batch JXA, plus an FTS5 search index for 700–3500x faster body search (~2ms vs ~7s).

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)

# Requires Full Disk Access for Terminal
# System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access → Add Terminal

apple-mail-mcp index --verbose

Tools

Tool	Purpose
list_accounts()	List email accounts
list_mailboxes(account?)	List mailboxes
get_emails(filter?, limit?)	Get emails — all, unread, flagged, today, this_week
get_email(message_id)	Get single email with full content + attachments
search(query, scope?)	Search — all, subject, sender, body, attachments
get_attachment(message_id, filename)	Extract attachment content (base64)

Performance

Scenario	Apple Mail MCP	Best alternative	Speedup
Fetch 50 emails	529ms	15,288ms	29x
Body search	~2ms	~7,000ms (or unsupported)	3500x
List accounts	108ms	146ms	Fastest

Benchmarked against 7 other Apple Mail MCP servers at the MCP protocol level.

Configuration

Variable	Default	Description
APPLE_MAIL_DEFAULT_ACCOUNT	First account	Default email account
APPLE_MAIL_DEFAULT_MAILBOX	INBOX	Default mailbox
APPLE_MAIL_INDEX_PATH	~/.apple-mail-mcp/index.db	Index location
APPLE_MAIL_INDEX_EXCLUDE_MAILBOXES	Drafts	Mailboxes to skip in search

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mail": {
      "command": "apple-mail-mcp",
      "args": ["--watch"],
      "env": {
        "APPLE_MAIL_DEFAULT_ACCOUNT": "Work"
      }
    }
  }
}

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