Features
Everything you need in a desktop email client. Nothing you don't.
Every account, one list
Turn on All Inboxes and every account's inbox merges into a single list, newest first. It is optional, it is off until you ask for it, and any account you would rather keep separate can sit it out.
This is a real view, not a summary. Read, reply, delete, move, archive, flag, mark as spam, and add or remove Gmail labels without leaving it. Every action still applies to the message's own account, so nothing gets crossed.
- Each account gets its own color, chosen by you, so you can tell at a glance where a message came from
- Click a message's account dot to jump straight to it in its own account
- Keep any account out of the merged view from its settings, or by right-clicking it in the sidebar. Excluded accounts dim in the list so it stays obvious
- The unread, flagged, and attachment filters all work here, not just inside a single folder
- Full keyboard control: Del to delete, Ctrl+A to select all, E to archive into the message's own account
And an All Spam view, for the same reason
Spam folders empty themselves on a schedule, which is exactly how a real message disappears before you ever notice it was misfiled. All Spam puts every account's spam folder in one list so a good email has somewhere to be caught. Press ! on a message to send it back to its own account's inbox.
Email Management
A classic three-pane layout that puts you in control. Manage multiple accounts from a single window, organize your folders, and handle messages with the speed and precision you expect from a desktop client.
- Three-pane layout with resizable panels
- Multi-account support: Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Fastmail, self-hosted, and more
- Full folder management: create, rename, move, and delete
- Message operations: move, copy, archive, delete, mark read/unread, flag
- Multi-select messages with shift-click and ctrl-click
- Drag-and-drop messages between folders and accounts
Account Setup
Add your email in seconds. Melia ships with presets for over 30 email providers that auto-fill your server settings, so setup is as simple as entering your email address and password. For providers that aren't in the list, full manual IMAP/SMTP configuration is available.
- Built-in presets for over 30 email providers: Gmail, Outlook, ProtonMail Bridge, Fastmail, Yahoo, iCloud, and more
- OAuth2 authentication for Microsoft accounts; app passwords for Google
- TLS, STARTTLS, or unencrypted connections with self-signed certificate support
- Enable or disable accounts without deleting them
- Drag-and-drop account reordering in the sidebar
- Tabbed account settings: General, Server, Folders, Signatures, Aliases, Notifications, and Rules, with archive options in their own panel
- Download history, set per account: choose how much mail to pull down, from the most recent 1,000 messages, through Extended at 10,000, all the way to everything on the server
- Per-account new mail sounds and per-account colors for the All Inboxes view
Compose and Reply
Write emails the way you want. A full rich text editor, separate compose windows, inline replies, and all the tools you need to communicate clearly and efficiently.
- Rich text editor: bold, italic, underline, strikethrough, lists, blockquote, code blocks, and links
- Separate compose window with instant-open pooling, or inline reply within the reading pane
- Insert inline images via drag-and-drop, automatically converted to CID attachments at send time
- Message priority toggle: Normal, High, or Low (sets X-Priority header)
- Request read receipts or delivery receipts from the compose toolbar
- See what came back: Melia tracks whether a message you sent was delivered or read, showing the status on the message and a marker in your Sent folder
- Draft auto-save with visible countdown timer; resume drafts from any window
- Native spellcheck with dictionary suggestions and add-to-dictionary support
- Contact autocomplete, per-account signatures, and send with Ctrl+Enter
- HTML signature editor with color-coded markup, automatic indenting, tag completion, and a live preview beside the editor as you type
- No duplicate sent mail: Melia works out for each account whether your provider already files your sent copy, with a Keep a Copy in Sent setting to override it
- If a sent message cannot be saved to your Sent folder, Melia tells you the reason your mail server gave instead of failing quietly
Send from any address you own
An alias is a sending identity, not a second account. Mail addressed to it still arrives in the same inbox. The alias exists so your mail can go back out wearing the right name. Add as many as you like under Aliases in Account Settings.
- Every alias gets its own display name, address, optional Reply-To, and its own plain text or HTML signature. Leave a signature blank and it falls back to the account's
- No second password, ever. Melia signs in with the account's own credentials and rewrites the From header, so an alias never needs a login of its own
- Replies sort themselves out: when a message was addressed to one of your aliases, Melia answers as that alias automatically. Mail to sales@ goes back out as sales@, and Reply All knows not to copy you back to yourself
- The From control stays a plain label until you actually have a choice, then becomes a picker grouped under each account, so it is never unclear which account is doing the sending
- Switching identity mid-message swaps the signature live instead of stacking a second one, and a draft saved as an alias reopens as that alias
- The Sent copy carries the alias too, so your Sent folder shows what the recipient actually saw
- Aliases travel in your .meliaconfig backup, attached to their account, carrying no credentials
One caveat worth knowing up front: sending as an address on a domain you do not control can fail the recipient's SPF or DMARC checks, because your outgoing server may not be authorized to send for that domain. Melia sets the headers faithfully, but it cannot make a third-party domain vouch for your provider. Aliases work best for addresses that already route through the same provider: one on your own domain, a plus-address, or a shared mailbox you are authorized to send for.
Email Rendering
HTML emails look the way they should. Melia uses Shadow DOM isolation, intelligent dark mode transformation, and post-render quality audits to display even the most complex newsletters beautifully, in any theme.
- Shadow DOM isolation: email styles never leak into the app UI
- Intelligent dark mode: near-white backgrounds converted to dark, decorative elements lightened, template grays stripped
- Post-render contrast audit: walks visible text, checks WCAG ratios, overrides unreadable content
- Post-render padding audit: measures text positions, injects spacing where content touches container edges
- Per-message zoom: 50% to 200% with keyboard shortcuts (Ctrl+. / Ctrl+, / Ctrl+/), or scroll the mouse wheel over the zoom control and middle-click to snap back to 100%
- Quoted content auto-detected and collapsed with expand/collapse toggle
- Smart padding detection: examines HTML structure and email framework markers before injecting spacing
Every alphabet your senders use
English
Japanese
Arabic
Russian
Hindi
Spanish
Korean
Hebrew
Greek
Tamil
French
Chinese
Thai
Ukrainian
Armenian
German
Persian
Bengali
Turkish
Georgian
Vietnamese
Punjabi
Italian
Telugu
Polish
Urdu
Portuguese
Gujarati
Czech
Hungarian
Swedish
Finnish
Dutch
Romanian
Emails displayed as written. Melia reads modern Unicode mail and decades of legacy encodings, so text arrives exactly the way it was sent, in over 100 languages, from Japanese to Arabic to Cyrillic.
Every writing system on Earth
100+ languages · 40+ scriptsWestern European
English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, Icelandic, Irish, Welsh, Luxembourgish, Catalan, Galician, Basque, Afrikaans
Central & Eastern European
Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, Romanian
Baltic
Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian
Cyrillic
Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Belarusian
Greek
Greek
Turkic
Turkish, Azerbaijani
Hebrew script · right to left
Hebrew, Yiddish
Arabic script · right to left
Arabic, Persian (Farsi), Urdu, Pashto
Southeast Asian
Thai, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, Vietnamese
East Asian
Japanese, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Korean
South Asian · Indic
Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi, Nepali, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhala
Other scripts
Armenian, Georgian, Amharic, Mongolian, Tibetan
Plus full emoji and mixed-script messages. A subject line that mixes English, Kanji, and an emoji renders as one clean line.
And now Melia speaks your language
Displaying mail in any script is one thing. Using an app in your own language is another. Melia's interface now speaks Français and Português do Brasil: choose your language under Localization in Settings and the whole client follows, menus, settings, and all. German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian are next.
These translations are new, and Melia says so plainly rather than pretending otherwise. If a phrase reads wrong, the Localization section lets you suggest better wording from inside the app and export your suggestions as a file. Nothing is transmitted automatically, and nothing leaves your machine unless you decide to send it.
- French and Brazilian Portuguese interfaces available today
- A Localization section in Settings that gathers language and time format in one place
- Time format: Automatic, 12-hour, or 24-hour. Automatic follows your system's regional setting, so a 24-hour region shows 24-hour times without you changing anything
- Suggest better translations from inside the app, then export them as a file to send in. Nothing is uploaded on your behalf
Email Headers, Decoded
Most email clients bury headers behind a wall of raw text. Melia parses them into a structured, interactive viewer that makes the invisible visible, from authentication results to the exact route your email traveled.
- Seven collapsible groups: addressing, content, identity, authentication, routing, metadata, and more
- Routing chain timeline: a visual map of every server hop with protocols and timestamps
- Transit time badge: see how long your email took from first hop to delivery
- Color-coded SPF, DKIM, and DMARC badges with detailed hover tooltips
- Clickable email address pills that open a compose window
- Toggle between structured pretty view and raw plaintext
Gmail Labels, Done Right
Gmail labels are more than folders, and Melia treats them that way. For Gmail and Google Workspace accounts, every label shows up as a colored chip throughout the app, and you can create, apply, and manage them without ever leaving the keyboard. Melia even keeps whole threads labeled as they grow, and lets you attach labels before a message is ever sent.
Everywhere You Look
- Colored label chips on every message in the list, so you can scan your inbox at a glance
- Nested labels (Travel/Flights, Work/Clients) shown as a real hierarchy in the sidebar, each with its own colored badge
- A Labels row in the reading pane with one-click add and remove
- Adaptive layout: full label names when they fit, compact single-letter color beads when space runs short
- Automatic, consistent colors: a label is the same color everywhere in the app, or right-click any label to choose your own
- Your own labels front and center; Gmail system labels stay out of the way
Create, Apply, and Manage
- Label picker: filter as you type, or create a brand-new label on the spot, nested labels included
- Apply and remove labels instantly, with every change synced straight back to Gmail
- Multi-select to label many messages at once
- Keyboard-first: press
Gto open the picker, then arrow keys and Enter to toggle - Rename or delete labels right from the folder tree
- The picker is a real window: drag it where you want it, pull the edge to resize when you have a lot of labels, and Melia remembers the size
Sticky Labels
- Label a conversation once and it stays labeled: every reply, incoming and outgoing, inherits the thread's labels automatically
Send With Labels
- Assign labels while you compose a new message, straight from the composer
- Melia files the sent copy under those labels automatically once it reaches the server
- Your Sent mail arrives already organized, with no cleanup afterward
Search
Two ways to find anything. A quick filter for the folder you're in, and a full Advanced Search window for everything else. Both private, offline, and instant.
Quick Search
- As-you-type filtering of the current folder; results update instantly
- Matches against subject, sender name, and sender address
- Highlighted matches so you can scan results at a glance
- Keyboard-first: hit
/orCtrl+Fto start searching
Advanced Search
- Dedicated search window powered by SQLite FTS5 full-text indexing
- Search across all accounts and folders, or scope to a specific account or folder
- Toggle which fields to search: subject, sender, snippet, or full body text
- Date range presets: today, last 7 days, last 30 days, last 3 months, and more
- Relevance-ranked results with match highlighting and percentage scores
- Search history with autocomplete: your recent searches, one keystroke away
Contacts
Melia builds your address book automatically from sent and received email. Organize contacts, mark VIPs, track engagement, and enjoy instant autocomplete when composing.
- Three browsing tabs: Contacted (people you've emailed), All, and VIP
- Per-contact details: edit name and email, add notes, view trust status
- Engagement tracking: times contacted, first and last contact dates
- Domain grouping for easier browsing of organizational contacts
- Cleanup utility: remove stale or auto-generated contacts in bulk
- Feeds autocomplete in the compose window for fast addressing
Inbox Rules
Route your email automatically with per-account rules. Build conditions based on sender, subject, or body content, and direct matching messages to any folder, spam, or trash.
- Rule builder: IF [field] [operator] [value] THEN move to [destination]
- Match on sender name, sender email, sender domain, subject, or body
- Operators: contains, equals, or wildcard matching
- Drag-and-drop rule reordering (first match wins, top to bottom)
- Hit counter shows how many messages matched each rule
- Quick-create: right-click any message or address pill to create a spam rule pre-filled with sender details
Tidy & Trim
Two powerful tools to keep your mailbox clean. Tidy consolidates duplicate IMAP folders. Trim deletes old messages in bulk with a live preview before you commit.
Tidy
- Detects duplicate standard folders (Sent / Sent Items / Sent Messages, Trash / Deleted Items, etc.)
- 4-step wizard: Analyze, Configure, Confirm, Execute
- Moves messages to your chosen canonical folder, then deletes empty duplicates
Trim
- Right-click any folder or account to trim old messages
- Flexible time picker: 1-100 of any unit from minutes to years
- Live preview count before deletion, with confirmation step
Select which folder to keep for each group.
Security and Protection
Your credentials are safe and your inbox is actively defended. Melia uses OAuth2 where available, stores passwords in your OS keyring, enforces encrypted connections, and runs every incoming message through a layered protection system.
- OAuth2 authentication for Microsoft accounts; App Passwords for Gmail and Google Workspace
- IMAP and SMTP connections secured with TLS/SSL
- Credentials stored in your OS keyring, never in plaintext
- Structured email header viewer with SPF, DKIM, DMARC badges and routing timeline
- Tracking pixel detection and blocking: surveillance pixels neutralized before they fire
- Suspicious sender detection: display name mismatches flagged automatically
- Link safety: hover any link to see its true destination before clicking; deceptive, look-alike, and redirect links flagged on-device
- Read receipt suppression: no silent confirmations sent to senders
Authentication
Suspicious
Desktop Integration
Melia is a native desktop application, not a web wrapper. It sends real notifications, supports keyboard shortcuts, and works with your desktop environment the way a local app should.
- More than two dozen built-in themes: Light, Dark, and Auto (time-based: dark before 6 AM and after 6 PM), plus community palettes like Catppuccin, Nord, Gruvbox, Dracula, and Rosé Pine
- Desktop notifications for new mail with configurable sound effects: 53 built-in sounds, or any sound file from your own computer
- Per-account arrival sounds, so you can tell which account new mail landed in without looking
- Click a new-mail notification to jump straight to that message, even when Melia is minimized
- Keep the dock badge showing unread mail only, for desktops that stack notification counts on top. The badge relies on a desktop API that Ubuntu Dock, KDE Plasma, and the Dash-to-Dock extension implement; stock GNOME Shell does not, so no badge appears there
- Open a message from anywhere with a melia:// permalink: it opens in its own window on top of what you are doing, and a Show in main window button pulls it back into the main window
- Comprehensive keyboard shortcuts for navigation, compose, and message actions
- Move through every account and folder without touching the mouse: hold Ctrl and use the arrow keys to walk the whole tree, step into folders, and collapse them, while the plain arrow keys stay with the message list
- Press 1 to 9 to jump straight to an account, or 0 for All Inboxes, pressing it again to switch to All Spam. The top-row number keys work on AZERTY and other layouts where digits need Shift
- Configuration import and export via compressed .meliaconfig files (passwords excluded)
- .eml file support: open via Ctrl+O, double-click, CLI argument, or drag-and-drop, or open an attached .eml straight from a message without saving it first
- Print any email with Ctrl+P using the native print dialog, falling back to a PDF you can print from your own viewer when that dialog is unavailable
- Save any email as a PDF from the reading-pane toolbar or the right-click menu
- Forward several emails at once: select them, right-click, and send them together as attachments in a single message
- Message list density: Compact, Comfortable, or Spacious, with separate Compact and Spacious options for the accounts and folders list
- Custom email font and font size (8-48px) from any installed system font
Light
Dark
Offline and Reliability
Melia works even when your network doesn't. An offline-first architecture backed by SQLite means your email is always accessible. Outgoing messages queue automatically and send when connectivity returns.
- Offline-first SQLite database: read, search, and browse without a connection
- Outbox with automatic retry: queued messages send when connectivity returns
- Deferred sync queue: flag changes, deletions, and moves replayed automatically
- Per-account connectivity monitoring with automatic reconnection and OAuth token refresh
- Priority connection pool: two IMAP connections per account so interactive actions never block sync
- Virtualized message lists for smooth scrolling through folders with thousands of messages
- Optimistic UI: delete, move, and read/unread changes appear instantly before server confirmation
