Version 0.8.54
QuickMail is a keyboard and screen reader friendly email program for Windows. Gmail, iCloud, Outlook.com, Microsoft 365, and IMAP/SMTP providers in general are all supported.
QuickMail installs with a standard setup wizard and then keeps itself up to date. The guiding principle is that you are in control: the defaults are designed to keep you current with no effort, you are told when a new version has been installed, and every part of the automatic behavior can be turned off — QuickMail never stops you from updating manually instead.
Most people want QuickMail-win.msi. Choose it unless you know your PC has an ARM processor.
If your PC has a Snapdragon processor — the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro models sold with Snapdragon X chips, and similar machines from other manufacturers — choose QuickMail-win-arm64.msi instead. It is built specifically for those processors and runs noticeably faster on them.
To check which you have: open Settings → System → About and read System type. “ARM-based processor” means the ARM64 download; anything else means the regular one.
If you are unsure, take the regular QuickMail-win.msi. It works on every supported PC, including ARM ones — just not as quickly on those. The ARM64 download will not start at all on a non-ARM PC, so that is the guess worth avoiding.
The two versions are otherwise identical: same features, same settings, same data.
Versions before 0.8.0 used a different installer, so moving onto the self-updating track takes one manual step:
If you have been running the regular QuickMail on a Snapdragon PC, you can switch to the ARM version to get better speed and battery life. QuickMail will not make this switch for you — automatic updates stay on the version you installed — so it is a one-time manual change.
QuickMail mentions this once when it notices it is running on an ARM PC, and the Help menu then keeps a Get the ARM Version entry that brings you back to this section, where step 2 links to the download. That entry appears only on ARM PCs running the regular build; you can also reach it from the command palette. To switch:
Do not skip step 1. Running the ARM installer on top of a regular QuickMail of the same version does not replace it — Windows treats the two as separate programs, leaves the regular one in place, and reports success. QuickMail keeps starting exactly as before, so nothing tells you the switch did not happen. Uninstalling first is what makes it work.
To confirm the switch worked, open the Help menu after restarting. Get the ARM Version is gone once you are on the ARM version, so if it is still listed, you are still running the regular build.
If it is still listed, the ARM installer did not replace anything. Uninstall QuickMail from Settings → Apps — choosing No again when asked about your data — and then start over from step 1. Do not try to judge this from Settings → Apps itself: both builds report the same name and the same version number there, and only one QuickMail entry is ever listed, so it looks identical whichever one you have. The Help menu is the reliable check.
From then on, automatic updates keep you on the ARM version. This is a one-time step — there is nothing further to do, and no need to repeat it for future releases.
Each time QuickMail starts, it quietly checks for a newer release in the background. The top entry of the Help menu always shows the result — “No updates available — running version X.Y.Z” or “Update available: vX.Y.Z” — so you can confirm where you stand at any moment.
When an update is found, QuickMail announces it once, downloads it quietly in the background, and installs it automatically the next time you exit and reopen the app. There is no download page, no installer to run, and no security warning — and nothing interrupts what you are doing.
If you would rather not wait for your next restart, activate the Help menu update entry. The QuickMail Update dialog offers three choices:
So you always know when a version change has happened, the first start after an update shows a QuickMail Update Installed dialog confirming the new version, with the same See what’s new link. Press Exit or Escape to dismiss it; it appears only once per update.
An update never touches your mail, accounts, or settings.
Two settings in Settings → Advanced, under Updates, put the whole mechanism under your control:
QuickMail.exe on the same releases page — or
QuickMail-arm64.exe for a Snapdragon PC — is a single-file
version that runs from anywhere with no installation — nothing is
written to Program Files or the registry, and it never updates itself.
The Help menu tells you when a new version is available; updating is a
manual download of the new exe, replacing the old one. Your data is
shared with an installed copy, so you can move between the two
freely.
Remove QuickMail from Settings → Apps as usual. About ten seconds after the app is removed, or longer if Windows is busy with another installation, QuickMail asks whether to also delete your data — accounts, settings, contacts, rules, templates, saved views, cached mail, and saved passwords. Choose No (the default) to keep everything, so reinstalling later picks up exactly where you left off; choose Yes to remove it all.
Running a newer installer over the QuickMail you have is an upgrade, not an uninstall, so nothing is asked and your settings, including start at sign-in, stay as they were. (Updates QuickMail installs by itself never involve this.) That holds from version 0.8.53 on; if you run the 0.8.53 installer over an older copy and it asks about your data, choose No, and if Start QuickMail automatically when I sign in to Windows is off afterwards, turn it back on in File → Settings → Startup.
Every version of QuickMail has release notes saying what was added, changed and fixed in it. They are all on the web, newest first, at QuickMail Release History.
Each version has its own page there, and every page links to the versions either side of it, so you can read back as far as you like. The list starts with version 0.5.0 in May 2026.
To find out which version you are running, open Help → About QuickMail. If you installed QuickMail with the installer it updates itself, so you are normally on the newest version already.
The same notes are on each version’s own page on GitHub, alongside that version’s downloads, at github.com/kellylford/QuickMail/releases.
Adding an account, changing one, testing it, and removing it all happen in Manage Accounts. Open it from File → Manage Accounts…, from the Accounts button on the toolbar, or from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) by choosing Manage Accounts. It has no keyboard shortcut of its own to begin with; you can give it one under File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.
Manage Accounts opens with focus on the first entry in the Accounts list, so you can arrow through your accounts straight away. New, Delete, and Set Default sit below the list; the settings for whichever account is selected fill the rest of the window; Save, Test Connection, and Close are at the bottom. When you have no accounts yet there is nothing to land on, so focus goes to New instead.
For most accounts you need three things: your provider, your email address, and your password. QuickMail knows the server settings for the providers it lists, and looks them up for the ones it does not.
Provider is the first field in the Add Account dialog, because what you choose there fills in everything below it. The list holds:
Other comes first rather than last so that Down arrow reaches the rest from where the dialog puts you. Choosing a provider announces what it did — “Gmail settings applied”, or the app-password requirement where the provider has one. Choosing Other tells you to enter your server settings under Advanced settings, and opens that section for you.
Often you need not touch the list at all: typing an address at one of these providers selects it for you. Correcting the address afterwards drops the provider again, so an address you have retyped is never saved against the previous provider’s servers.
A provider is fixed when the account is created. Manage Accounts shows it as text at the top of the account’s settings rather than as a list you can change — to move an account to a different provider, remove it and add it again.
Press New in Manage Accounts. The Add Account dialog opens with focus on the Provider list.
Whether that permission really is part of the same sign-in depends on the account. Google sign-in folds it in, and so does a personal Outlook.com account set to connect over Microsoft 365 (Graph) — one screen lists mail, contacts, and calendar together. A work or school Microsoft account asks separately once the account is added, on purpose: organizations that restrict what their users may approve would turn one over-asking screen into a failed sign-in, and no account at all.
Server names, ports, and SSL settings are behind Advanced settings, an expander that stays closed unless you need it. Tab reaches its header before its contents, so one keystroke moves past the whole thing. Sign in with Microsoft and Sign in with Google come last of all, after Advanced settings and everything inside it — signing in is the last thing you do, so it is the last thing you tab to. The same is true in Manage Accounts.
If something required is missing, Add Account does not close the dialog. It says what is missing and moves focus to the field that needs attention — the email address, the password, or, when there are no server settings at all, the IMAP host with Advanced settings opened for you.
If you type an address QuickMail does not recognize — a work or university address, for example — it looks the settings up when you leave the Email field. You hear “Looking up settings for yourdomain” while it runs, then one sentence when it finishes: the servers QuickMail settled on and where they came from, or that nothing was found.
QuickMail tries, in order:
Step 4 matters for business mail. Most Microsoft 365 and Google
Workspace customers use their own domain —
you@yourcompany.com — and publish nothing that steps 2 and
3 can read. Without it, a perfectly ordinary work account ends at “enter
your IMAP host”, for an account that has no IMAP host to enter: the way
in is a sign-in. When your domain’s mail is delivered to Microsoft,
QuickMail selects Outlook.com / Microsoft 365 and
offers Sign in with Microsoft; when it is delivered to
Google, it selects Gmail.
This step reads where your mail goes, rather than who your organisation is with. That distinction matters: a domain keeps its Microsoft account long after its mail has moved elsewhere, and plenty of companies run their own mail while using Microsoft 365 for everything else. Asking the first question would put Microsoft’s servers on an account that is not on Microsoft’s mail, and your password would be rejected. If QuickMail still gets it wrong, change the Provider, or open Advanced settings and enter your own servers.
Settings that arrive over the network are never accepted unless they are encrypted, so a lookup can never quietly hand your password to a server that would take it in the clear. Servers you type yourself are your own business and are left alone.
When nothing is found, Advanced settings opens automatically and focus moves to the IMAP host field, so you can type the settings yourself. The message also names the way out for a work or school Microsoft 365 account, which has no IMAP host to type: choose Outlook.com / Microsoft 365 as the provider and sign in.
To turn off steps 2, 3, and 4, set
AutoDiscoverOnline = off in config.ini. The
built-in provider list keeps working either way.
Choose Other, or open Advanced settings for any provider, to enter:
Advanced settings opens by itself in the two cases where you have no choice but to use it: when you choose Other, and when a settings lookup finds nothing.
Anything you enter here is yours to keep. Once you have changed a server field — a host, a port, or an SSL setting — no provider match and no later lookup overwrites it.
There is one exception, and it applies only to accounts you have never saved in Manage Accounts. At startup, if such an account points at a server QuickMail ships settings for, on the exact port QuickMail publishes for that server, and the encryption setting disagrees with the published one, the encryption setting is corrected. That pairing cannot work — implicit SSL against a STARTTLS port fails every send about a second after you press the button — so leaving it alone would only preserve a broken account. One of those servers on any other port is left exactly as you set it, and once you have saved an account yourself nothing touches it again.
For almost every account these are the same thing, and the Login username box under Advanced settings stays empty.
They come apart when your mail provider keeps a separate account name. An iCloud mailbox that receives mail at your own domain still signs in under the Apple ID; some hosted servers want a bare user name rather than a full address. In that case:
you@yourdomain.com. This is what recipients see in the From
line of everything you send, so it has to be an address that works.Putting the login name in the Email address box instead sends mail with a From line that is not an address, and servers reject it. QuickMail will not save an account whose email address is missing its domain; the message points you at the Login username box.
If you already had an account set up that way, QuickMail copies the login name into Login username for you the first time it starts after the update — so when you correct the Email address, the login that was working goes on working. You only need to enter the address.
Test Connection is on both the Add Account dialog and Manage Accounts, so it is as useful on an account that has stopped working as on one you are still setting up. In Manage Accounts it appears as soon as an account is selected.
QuickMail checks incoming and outgoing mail separately and reports both — “IMAP: OK. SMTP: OK.” A failure names its own side and gives the reason, so a working inbox with a misconfigured send server is caught here rather than the first time you try to send. Neither check waits longer than 30 seconds; one that runs out of time reports that it timed out rather than leaving you waiting.
Microsoft 365 accounts are tested too, by asking Microsoft for the signed-in mailbox: “Microsoft 365 connection successful.” Sign in first, so there is an account to test.
The result is announced and stays on screen as status text near the buttons. In the Add Account dialog the button disables itself while the test runs, and focus returns to it when the result arrives.
QuickMail signs in to Microsoft mailboxes rather than asking for a password — work or school Microsoft 365 / Exchange Online accounts and personal Outlook.com / Hotmail / Live.com accounts alike.
Sign in as the same address you typed into the account. If the account you sign in with does not match, QuickMail warns you and keeps the address you entered rather than silently switching to a different mailbox — this matters most in organizations where an administrator signs in at the approval screen.
Work or school accounts connect through Microsoft 365 directly (the Microsoft Graph service), so there are no server names or ports to enter. QuickMail arranges that for you: an address on your organization’s own domain — anything other than outlook.com, hotmail.com, live.com, msn.com, or passport.com — moves onto that connection method as you type it. The reason is that most organizations have never approved the separate IMAP and SMTP permissions, and many switch IMAP off altogether, so a work account left on IMAP ends its sign-in at “your administrator needs to make a change” for a mailbox that signs in perfectly well the other way.
Personal Outlook.com, Hotmail, and Live.com accounts connect over IMAP with the same Microsoft sign-in. There is no organization involved and nothing to approve, so this route needs no change.
You can also choose for yourself. Open Advanced settings and use the Connection method list to pick Standard IMAP/SMTP or Microsoft 365 (Graph); choosing Graph announces that IMAP and SMTP settings are not required, and choosing IMAP fills the Outlook server settings back in. This choice is fixed when the account is created — to change it later, remove the account and add it again.
Work or school accounts may need your administrator’s approval first. Many organizations require an administrator to approve a new app for the whole organization before anyone can sign in. If your sign-in ends at a “needs admin approval” message with no way to continue, QuickMail is working correctly — your organization has not yet approved it. Send your IT administrator to For Microsoft 365 Administrators and Tenant Owners; once they approve QuickMail, sign-in works normally. Personal Outlook.com accounts are not affected and need no approval.
If an administrator signs in at that approval screen, they can approve QuickMail for the whole organization there (there is a “consent on behalf of your organization” option). Because the administrator’s account is not the one you were adding, QuickMail leaves your account unchanged and offers to sign you in again as yourself — choose Yes to finish connecting. An administrator can also approve QuickMail ahead of time without this back-and-forth via Help → Grant Admin Consent for Your Organization or the administrators section above.
To bring this account’s contacts into your address book, check Sync contacts from this account before signing in. See Syncing Contacts from Your Accounts.
To show this account’s calendar in the Calendar view, check Sync calendar from this account. See the Calendar section for details.
Use a Gmail app password. Google sign-in is currently blocked for new QuickMail accounts, so an app password is what works today, and it is what QuickMail selects when you choose Gmail or type a Gmail address.
Enter the app password, not your regular Google password. Gmail’s server settings fill in automatically.
App passwords are not offered if your account is enrolled in Google’s Advanced Protection Program. This route gives you full mail — send, receive, folders, search — but not Google calendar or contact sync, which need the Google sign-in described below and available only to accounts authorized before Google closed it.
Google stopped granting QuickMail new authorizations, so for most people the sign-in route can only end in a refusal — which is why QuickMail no longer offers it by default. If your Google account was authorized before that happened, it still works, and you can turn the option back on:
You now have a Gmail (sign in with Google) entry in the Provider list, sitting directly below plain Gmail, and a Google OAuth (Gmail) choice under Advanced settings → Authentication.
Choose Gmail (sign in with Google) and there is no password box at all — Gmail’s servers fill in as usual and a Sign in with Google button takes the password’s place. Activate it; your browser opens to a Google sign-in page. Complete the sign-in, grant QuickMail permission to read and send mail, then close the browser window and activate Add Account.
If you would rather not use the Settings dialog, the same switch is
GoogleAuth = true under [features] in
config.ini, or --feature GoogleAuth on the
command line.
Accounts you already have are not affected by this setting. A Gmail account that already signs in with Google keeps working whether the setting is on or off, keeps syncing mail, contacts, and calendar, and still shows Google OAuth (Gmail) as its authentication in Manage Accounts. The setting governs only whether the option is offered when you set an account up.
To bring this account’s contacts into your address book, check Sync contacts from this account before signing in — for Google this is folded into the same sign-in consent. See Syncing Contacts from Your Accounts.
To show this account’s calendar in the Calendar view, check Sync calendar from this account — Google’s calendar permission is part of the same sign-in. See the Calendar section for details.
With Google sign-in you may see a message that no password was saved for the account. This is expected — Gmail signs in through your Google account rather than a stored password, so there is no password to save. The sign-in itself is stored securely in Windows Credential Manager and refreshes automatically.
Google also shows a warning that QuickMail is an unverified app, and may end the sign-in with “This app has been blocked.” That message means your account is not one of the ones authorized earlier, and no setting in QuickMail can change it — Google’s app-verification process can take several weeks and may require an expensive third-party security assessment. The app password route above is the reliable path.
Choose Yahoo Mail or type your Yahoo address
(@yahoo.com, @ymail.com,
@rocketmail.com, and the regional variants).
App password required. Yahoo does not accept your regular account password from third-party mail apps. Generate one at login.yahoo.com/account/security under App passwords, and enter it in the Password field. QuickMail links to that page when Yahoo is selected.
Choose iCloud Mail or type your iCloud address
(@icloud.com, @me.com, or
@mac.com) — QuickMail fills in Apple’s server settings
automatically.
App-specific password required. Apple does not allow third-party apps to use your Apple ID password directly. Generate an app-specific password at appleid.apple.com (Sign-In & Security → App-Specific Passwords) and enter it in the Password field. QuickMail shows a reminder above the password box, with a link to that page.
To bring in your iCloud data, check Sync contacts from this account and/or Sync calendar from this account — QuickMail uses the same app-specific password for both, so there’s nothing else to set up. iCloud contacts are read-only; iCloud calendars you can also add, edit, and delete single (non-repeating) appointments on. See Syncing Contacts from Your Accounts and the Calendar section for details.
Some mail services offer POP3 and nothing else. QuickMail can collect mail over POP3 and send over SMTP as usual — but POP3 works differently enough from IMAP that it is worth reading this section before you choose it.
Turning it on. POP3 is off until you ask for it. In
File → Settings (Ctrl+comma), open the
Advanced tab, and under Account Types
check Offer POP3 when adding an account. It takes
effect the next time QuickMail starts. (Equivalently,
Pop3Backend = true under [features] in
config.ini, or --feature Pop3Backend at launch
— they are the same switch, so there is no need to set more than
one.)
Adding the account. Add it as you would any other: New in Manage Accounts, then open Advanced settings and choose POP3/SMTP under Connection method. The Incoming Mail (POP3) fields replace the IMAP ones. Gmail, Outlook.com and Yahoo Mail fill in their POP3 server for you; for anything else, type the server, port and security yourself. iCloud is not offered a POP3 server because Apple does not run one — iCloud is IMAP only.
Two things most services require before POP3 will answer at all: POP3 switched on in the service’s own web settings, and — for Gmail and Yahoo — an app password rather than your account password.
What is different from IMAP:
Keep mail on the server after downloading. This is checked by default, and while it is checked QuickMail never deletes anything from your mail service: collect mail here and it is still there for your phone, webmail, or anything else you use.
Clear it and QuickMail removes each message from the server once it is safely stored here — the classic POP3 behaviour, and the reason POP3 has the reputation it has. This computer then holds the only copy, so think about backups before choosing it. You can change the setting later in Manage Accounts. Clearing it also applies to mail collected earlier, as POP3 programs have traditionally worked: on the next collection QuickMail removes the server copies of messages it already downloaded — every one of them is already stored here, so nothing is lost, but if your phone or another program has not collected that mailbox yet, leave the setting checked until it has.
Either way, deleting a message in QuickMail is two steps, as it is everywhere else: to Trash, then permanently. Only the permanent delete can reach the server, and only for an account set to remove collected mail. QuickMail confirms it is deleting the right message first — a message some other program has already collected is left alone rather than deleted by position.
With keep mail on the server checked, a permanent delete (including emptying the Trash) is local and final: the message is gone from QuickMail for good, the server copy stays where it is for whatever else reads that mailbox, and QuickMail remembers the deletion so the message is never downloaded again.
Where your POP3 mail lives. In QuickMail’s data
folder for that profile (%APPDATA%\QuickMail by default),
in mail.db. For an IMAP account that file is a cache and
can be deleted safely; for a POP3 account with “keep mail on the server”
cleared, it is your mail. Back it up accordingly, and see Moving to a new computer.
Select an account in the Accounts list and its settings appear beside it. You can change:
Press Save — the default button, so Enter is enough — to keep the changes. The two sync checkboxes are the exception: they apply the moment you change them, with no Save step. Switching one on asks for the permission it needs and pulls the first batch immediately; switching it off removes what had been synced. iCloud prompts for nothing, because it uses the app-specific password you already entered.
Sign in with Microsoft and Sign in with Google are here too, for when a sign-in needs renewing.
Set Default marks the selected account as your default — the account new messages are sent from unless you choose another, and the one the Rules Manager opens on when you are not in a particular account (in All Inboxes, for example). The default account is announced as “default” alongside its name in the list.
Server settings sit behind the same Advanced settings expander as in Add Account, so an account that is working needs no scrolling past hosts and ports to reach the settings people actually change. The Provider at the top is fixed when the account is created; to change it, remove the account and add it again.
An account that shows as disconnected can be reconnected where you are. Move to the Accounts list in the main window, select the account, open the context menu (Shift+F10 or the Applications key), and choose Reconnect. You can also open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and choose Reconnect Account, which acts on the account selected in the Accounts list. It has no keyboard shortcut to begin with; you can give it one under File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.
The status bar says how it went: “Work reconnected.”, or “Could not reconnect Work.” followed by the reason, such as no saved password, no network connection, or a server that could not be reached. A reconnect you ask for tries once and reports straight away.
Accounts appear in the order you added them, and you can rearrange them. Move to the Accounts list in the main window, select an account, and either press a key or use the context menu (Shift+F10, the Applications key, or right-click):
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Alt+Up |
Move Up |
Alt+Down |
Move Down |
Alt+Home |
Move to Start |
Alt+End |
Move to End |
Each move says where the account landed — “Moved above Work” — and leaves you on the account you moved, so you can press the key again. At either end of the list QuickMail tells you that too, rather than doing nothing.
The order is not just the account list. It is the order the accounts appear in the folder tree, and the order of the From list when you compose a message, so putting the account you use most at the top puts it first everywhere. The four moves are also in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P), and you can give them different keys in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.
Select the account and press Delete. For an ordinary account there is no confirmation step, and the removal happens at once: QuickMail forgets the account’s password from Windows Credential Manager, deletes the mail it had cached, removes any contacts synced from it, and for Microsoft and Google accounts signs out as well. You hear “Account deleted. Cleaning up…”, then “Account deleted.” when the tidying has finished. (Deleting an account that a shared mailbox reads through does ask first, because it removes the shared mailbox too — see Shared mailboxes.)
Nothing is deleted from the mail server. Removing an account removes it from QuickMail only — add it again and your mail is still there.
A shared mailbox is a mailbox several people read and send from — a
support@, info@, or sales@
address that belongs to a team rather than a person. If your
organization has given you access to one, you can add it to QuickMail
and it appears as its own mailbox in the folder tree, alongside your own
accounts.
Shared mailboxes are a Microsoft 365 work or school feature. You add one through an account you already have: QuickMail reads and sends the shared mailbox using your existing sign-in, so there is no separate password and no separate sign-in for it. Personal Outlook.com accounts and non-Microsoft (IMAP) accounts do not have shared mailboxes, so the option is offered only when you have a work or school Microsoft 365 account to read it through.
To add a shared mailbox: open Account Manager (Tools menu), activate Add shared mailbox, choose the work or school account that has access to it if you are asked, and type the shared mailbox’s email address. Press Add. The mailbox connects using that account and its folders load. You do not need access to a password — access comes from your own account’s permission to the mailbox, which your organization grants.
Reading and sending. A shared mailbox reads like any other: select it in the folder tree and open its folders. To send from it, choose the shared address in the From list when composing — the message goes out as the shared mailbox, not as you.
Sending while it is disconnected. A shared mailbox sends through the sign-in of the account it belongs to, so while that account is signed out the shared mailbox is disconnected and cannot send. A message you send from it then waits in the Outbox instead of failing: you hear “Message queued. It will be sent when Support is connected again.” (with your shared mailbox’s name), the window closes, and the message goes out once the account it belongs to is signed in again. To do that now, reconnect the shared mailbox from the Accounts list.
Freshness. A shared mailbox updates on a timer rather than the instant new mail arrives: shared mailboxes update every few minutes, not instantly. Your own mailboxes still update live; only the shared one waits for the next check.
New-mail notifications are off for a shared mailbox by default. A shared mailbox is often a busy team address, so QuickMail does not pop a notification for every message that lands in it. If you do want notifications for a particular shared mailbox, select it in Account Manager and turn on Notify me of new mail in this shared mailbox. The main Show a Notification When New Mail Arrives setting still has to be on for any notification to appear.
Rules. A shared mailbox’s rules are managed in Outlook, not in QuickMail, so a shared mailbox is not in the Rules Manager’s Account list. QuickMail cannot reach a shared mailbox’s server-side rules, and a client-side rule would act, from your computer only, on mail everyone else reads. Create Rule from Message is not in the context menu for a shared mailbox’s messages, and Ctrl+Shift+T and the command palette say so on the status bar instead of making a rule from one. In the mailbox’s folders, the rule summary on the status bar says its rules are managed in Outlook. A client-side rule saved on a shared mailbox by an earlier version is kept but no longer runs.
Removing. Removing the account that a shared mailbox reads through also removes the shared mailbox — you are told which shared mailboxes will go when you delete their parent account. Removing a shared mailbox on its own leaves the account it read through untouched.
This section is for whoever owns or administers a Microsoft 365 organization whose users want to use QuickMail — a tenant owner can make these changes; a dedicated IT administrator is not required. Personal Outlook.com / Hotmail / Live.com users do not need any of this — it applies only to work or school (Microsoft 365 / Exchange Online) accounts.
The short version: QuickMail is a Microsoft-registered desktop application that signs each user in to their own mailbox with their own credentials. Many organizations require an administrator to approve a new application once, for the whole organization, before users can sign in. Until you do, your users will hit a “needs admin approval” wall and cannot proceed. Granting approval is a one-time action and takes a couple of minutes.
| Application (client) ID | bcdc84f1-d37c-4581-b14a-a01f7b3a1312 |
| Name in Enterprise applications | QuickMail |
| Publisher | Kelly Ford (the QuickMail project) |
| Supported accounts | Work/school and personal Microsoft accounts |
All are delegated (act as the signed-in user, in their own mailbox):
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
Mail.ReadWrite, Mail.Send |
Read, organize, delete, draft, and send the user’s mail |
Calendars.ReadWrite |
Read and update the user’s own calendar (only if they enable calendar sync) |
Contacts.Read, People.Read |
Read the user’s own contacts and frequent correspondents (only if they enable contact sync) |
MailboxSettings.ReadWrite |
The user’s own mailbox settings, for a planned server-side rules feature |
User.Read, User.ReadBasic.All |
Resolve the signed-in user and display recipient names |
If users connect over IMAP/SMTP instead of the default Microsoft 365
option, two Exchange Online scopes (IMAP.AccessAsUser.All,
SMTP.Send) are used as well.
Any of these roles can grant approval — Global Administrator is not required: Cloud Application Administrator or Application Administrator.
Option A — Entra admin center. Sign in at entra.microsoft.com → Entra ID → Enterprise applications → QuickMail → Security → Permissions → “Grant admin consent for <your organization>”, review the list, and approve. (If QuickMail is not yet listed under Enterprise applications, use Option B — the first admin consent creates it.)
Option B — single-step consent URL. Sign in as one of the admin roles above and open:
https://login.microsoftonline.com/organizations/adminconsent?client_id=bcdc84f1-d37c-4581-b14a-a01f7b3a1312Open this in a private/InPrivate browser window. A cached Microsoft sign-in session will skip the consent screen and send you straight to an error page (see Troubleshooting).
Replace organizations with your tenant ID or a verified
domain to target a specific tenant. Review the permission list Microsoft
shows and approve. This grants consent tenant-wide in one step.
Option C — from inside QuickMail. If you have QuickMail installed, choose Help → Grant Admin Consent for Your Organization…. Sign in as one of the admin roles above in the window that opens, review the permission list, and approve. This grants QuickMail’s Microsoft Graph permissions tenant-wide in one step without building a URL by hand, and it works even before anyone in your organization has added an account — the consent itself registers QuickMail in your tenant. QuickMail tells you when consent has been granted.
After approval, your users sign in normally with no further prompts.
http://localhost. That is expected and means it
worked. QuickMail is a desktop app, so Microsoft redirects to a local
address with nothing listening. Your approval is recorded
before that redirect. Confirm it under Enterprise
applications → QuickMail → Security → Permissions, which will
now list the granted permissions.The main window has four panes reachable by pressing F6 to cycle forward or Shift+F6 to cycle backward:
You can also jump directly to any pane:
| Shortcut | Destination |
|---|---|
Ctrl+1 |
Account list |
Ctrl+2 |
Folder tree |
Ctrl+3 |
Message list |
Ctrl+9 |
Status bar |
Select All Inboxes at the top of the folder tree to see messages from all accounts merged into one list, sorted by date. The same All Mail group also holds All Drafts, All Sent, and All Trash, each merging that kind of folder across every account; All Archive, which follows each account’s own archive setting; All Flagged, which collects flagged messages from every folder rather than from one kind of folder; and Watched Conversations, described below.
In any of these merged views, each row also says which folder the message came from — qualified with the account name when the view spans more than one account, so “Work, Archive” and “Home, Archive” are told apart. In an ordinary single-folder view the folder is already known, so nothing extra is said. You can move where this falls in the row, or turn it off, in Message List Fields.
When a conversation matters — a release announcement, a bug thread, a trip itinerary — you can watch it, and every message in it collects in one place, including the replies that have not arrived yet.
Press Ctrl+Shift+W on any message in the conversation,
or choose Message → Watch Conversation. You will hear
“Watching conversation” and the subject. From then on, Watched
Conversations — the last item in the All Mail
group of the folder tree — lists every message in that conversation,
from every folder and every account, newest first. New replies join on
their own as they arrive; you do not have to mark them.
This is what makes watching different from flagging. A flag marks a message you already have, so you have to notice each new one first. A watch is a standing subscription to the conversation, so the ones you have not seen yet are already collected for you.
To stop watching, press Ctrl+Shift+W again on any
message in the conversation — the same key does both. If you are in the
Watched Conversations folder at the time, that conversation’s messages
leave the list straight away and the selection moves to the next
message. Watching changes nothing on the mail server and nothing in
other mail programs; it is remembered on this computer only.
Everything else in the message list works here as usual: view modes, filters, sorting, and the message list fields. Conversations view mode is a natural fit — each watched conversation becomes a single group you can expand. You can also save Watched Conversations as one of your own views, the same way you would save any other folder.
Two things worth knowing. QuickMail groups a conversation by its
subject, ignoring any Re: and Fwd: prefixes,
so a reply is recognised automatically — but two unrelated messages that
happen to share a subject count as one conversation. And a message with
no subject at all cannot be watched; if you try, you will hear “Cannot
watch a conversation with no subject” and nothing changes.
If you would like each row to say whether its conversation is watched, turn on the Watched field in Message List Fields. It is off to begin with.
To see what you are watching, choose Tools → Watched Conversations…. The window lists every watch with how many cached messages it has collected and when you started it. Press Enter on one to jump to that conversation, Delete to stop watching it, or Rename to give it a clearer label. Renaming changes the label only — which messages the watch collects is decided by the subject and does not change. Type a letter to jump down the list. The window stays open while you work, so you can leave it up and keep going; Escape closes it.
To be told when a reply arrives, turn on Settings → Notifications → Show a notification when a watched conversation gets a reply. Unlike the ordinary new-mail notification, this one applies to every folder rather than just the inbox, because a watched thread’s next message can land anywhere. The two settings are independent; if a message is both new inbox mail and part of a watched conversation you get one notification, the watched one.
To narrow any folder to watched mail, choose View → Filter → Watched. That works in any folder, and can be saved as part of one of your own views.
In the folder tree, the message list, and the Conversations, From, and To trees, type the first letter of what you want to reach and the selection jumps to the next item starting with that letter. Keep typing to narrow it — letters typed within about a second of each other build up a longer prefix, so “arc” reaches Archive rather than stopping at Address book. Pause, and the next letter starts a fresh prefix. Pressing the same letter repeatedly steps through every item beginning with it, and the search wraps around to the top when it runs off the end.
What each list matches is the text you would expect to hear first: the folder name in the folder tree (only folders currently expanded into view), the sender in the message list — or the subject when a message has no sender — the conversation subject in Conversations, and the person’s name in the From and To trees.
The same typing works in the Go to Folder picker, in the address book’s contact, group, and member lists, and in the Message List Fields window.
Right and Left arrow still open and close one folder at a time, and that has not changed. What is new is four actions for doing it in bulk — useful when an account has folders nested several levels deep, or when several accounts have filled the tree.
Each is reachable three ways:
The two “all folders” actions say what they did — “All folders collapsed” — because you can start them from the menu bar with focus anywhere. The two single-folder actions say nothing extra when you use the context menu: the folder keeps focus and your screen reader reports its own expanded or collapsed state. Started from the Folder menu or the Command Palette with focus outside the tree, where nothing is there to report it, they say what they did instead.
If collapsing hides the folder you were on, the selection moves up to the nearest folder still showing rather than disappearing into a closed branch. Choosing Expand or Collapse Folder on a folder with nothing inside it says so instead of doing nothing.
How you leave the tree is how you find it: a folder you collapse stays collapsed while QuickMail refreshes its folder list, and coming back to the tree with F6 or Ctrl+2 leaves it collapsed rather than re-opening the branch holding the folder you are reading. Go to a different folder and the tree opens up to show it again, as it always has. Expansion is not remembered between runs — QuickMail starts each account open, and opens whatever it needs to reach the folder it lands in.
Create a new folder in any of these ways:
The new folder is created under the folder currently selected in the folder tree, or under the account root when a header or nothing is selected.
Select a folder in the folder tree, press Shift+F10, and choose Move Folder… or Copy Folder…. Both open a picker showing the same hierarchical tree used in the folder panel — folders nested under their parent, everything already expanded. Arrow to the folder you want the selected folder to live under and press Enter. Copying brings the folder’s messages and any subfolders with it.
Typing jumps to a folder here as it does in the folder tree: type the beginning of a folder name and the selection moves to it. Because a bare letter belongs to that typing, the picker’s buttons take Alt+O for Open and Alt+C for Cancel. Enter and Escape work as usual. There is no New Folder button in this picker — create the folder first, then move into it.
Two things the picker leaves out on purpose:
The picker opens on the folder you came from. Since the folder you are moving is not one of the destinations, it opens on the folder that one currently sits under, so you start where you were rather than at the top of the list. For a top-level folder there is no such parent, and it opens on the first folder instead.
Because it opens there, pressing Enter straight away would put the folder back where it started. QuickMail says so rather than doing it — as it does for messages already in the folder you picked.
If those two exclusions leave nowhere to go — an account whose only folder is the one you are moving — QuickMail says so instead of opening an empty picker. The same happens if you choose Move or Copy Folder on a view rather than a folder: All Inboxes, All Mail, and the per-account All Mail entries look like folders in the tree but are collections of messages from several folders, so there is nothing to move.
Select one or more messages (or a sender/recipient group, or a conversation) and choose Move to Folder… or Copy to Folder… from the context menu (Shift+F10) or the command palette. Both open a folder picker showing the same hierarchical tree used in the main folder panel — folders nested under their parent, with account names as headers when more than one account is present. Arrow through the tree and press Enter to complete the move or copy. If you need a destination that does not exist yet, activate New Folder (or Alt+N) in the picker to create one under the selected folder and move into it without leaving the dialog.
The picker opens on the folder you last filed to, so filing several messages to the same place takes one keystroke after the first: open the picker, press Enter. Move and copy are remembered separately — copying to a reference folder does not change where Move to Folder opens — and each account keeps its own, since a folder on one account is not a destination for another.
Before you have moved anything on that account, and whenever the remembered folder is no longer there — you have deleted or renamed it — the picker opens on the folder the messages are in instead, so you still start somewhere useful. The same applies when the messages you selected come from more than one account: no single remembered folder is right for all of them.
Only the folder you choose in the picker is remembered. Archiving and deleting file messages away too, but they do not change where the picker opens. In a combined view such as All Inboxes that is the message’s own folder, not the view. If neither is available the picker opens on the first folder; it never opens with nothing selected.
Typing jumps to a folder here too, exactly as it does in the main folder tree: type the beginning of a folder name and the selection moves to it. Because a bare letter belongs to that typing, the picker’s buttons take Alt+O for Open, Alt+C for Cancel, and Alt+N for New Folder rather than plain letter shortcuts. Enter and Escape still work as usual.
Press Ctrl+Shift+V (or use the View
menu) to switch how messages are grouped:
Alt+Down moves to the nearest unread message below where
you are; Alt+Up moves to the nearest one above. They are
also Next Unread Message and Previous Unread
Message in the command palette, and you can give them different
keys in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.
In the Messages view they move down or up the list, skipping everything already read. In Conversations, From, and To they run through every message the tree holds, in group order — so they cross from one conversation or sender into the next rather than stopping at the end of the one you are in. Closed groups are searched too, and a closed group holding the unread message is opened so that message can take focus. It stays open afterwards, like any group you open yourself.
Below and above mean what they say on screen: which of them is newer depends on how the folder is sorted.
Both keys act while you are in the message list or a group tree — including when you are moving through the list with the reading pane open beside it. They do nothing while focus is inside the reading pane itself, and an open message window has its own keys: Alt+Left and Alt+Right already move to the previous and next message there.
While a message tab is showing there is no list to move through, and the two actions are not offered in that window’s command palette. Start one from the main window’s palette while the calendar is open, or while a message tab covers the list, and QuickMail says why instead of going quiet.
Neither wraps around. When there is no unread message left in the direction you are going, nothing moves and QuickMail says “No unread messages below” or “No unread messages above”, so that running out is never mistaken for a key that did not register. (That is a Result announcement — see Screen Reader Announcements if you have those switched off.)
Folders do not all want the same treatment. An inbox reads well grouped into Conversations; a folder full of receipts that all share one subject reads terribly that way — it collapses into a single conversation of a hundred messages.
So QuickMail remembers. Change the view mode, filter, or sort in a folder and that folder opens that way from then on, including after a restart. Set your inbox to Conversations and your receipts folder to Messages once, and each stays put.
A folder you have never changed follows the Display mode in Settings → General, which also tracks the last choice you made anywhere. So the first time you open a new folder it looks like the last folder you set up — change it once and it is that folder’s own setting from then on.
To hand a folder back to the default, use Reset Folder View from the View → Views menu or the command palette. QuickMail confirms with “Folder view reset.”
To turn the whole behaviour off, clear Remember view settings for each folder in Settings → General. The view mode and sort then apply to every folder at once, as they did before. Your per-folder settings are kept, so switching it back on restores them.
View → Density sets how much space each message row takes: Comfortable (the default) leaves room around each row, Compact tightens them so more messages fit on screen. The change applies at once and is remembered. The same choice is in Settings → Appearance under Message List Density, and Density: Comfortable and Density: Compact are in the command palette.
Density changes spacing only. What a row says, and what a screen reader reports about it, is identical either way — that is set in Message List Fields.
Press Ctrl+Shift+S, or / in the message
list, to open the search box. The list narrows as you type to the
matching messages in the folder you are in — an ordinary folder, or a
combined one such as All Inboxes or All
Mail — and the number found is announced when you pause. Press
Down or Tab to move into the results,
and Escape to clear the search and return to the whole
folder.
Search reads the whole message, not only what the list shows: the sender, the recipients and Cc, the subject, the text of the message, and the names of its attachments. It searches the copy QuickMail keeps on this computer, so the text of a message is searchable once it has been downloaded — because you opened it, because QuickMail fetched it ahead of time, or because it is inside Download messages for offline reading (see Reading messages without a connection). The sender, recipients, subject and preview are always searchable, and there a match can be part of a word.
Words. Every word you type has to be in the message,
in any order. A word finds the words that begin with it, so
budg finds “budget”, and capitals and accents don’t
matter.
"quarterly report".budget -draft.Where a word is. Put one of these in front of a word, or of a quoted phrase, to look for it in one place only:
| Type | To find it in |
|---|---|
from:sam |
the sender’s name or address |
to:ann |
the recipients |
cc:lee |
the Cc recipients |
subject:invoice |
the subject |
body:agenda |
the text of the message |
attachment:report |
the names of attached files |
Which messages. These narrow the results without looking for any text:
| Type | Finds messages |
|---|---|
has:attachment |
with attachments |
is:unread, is:read |
not yet read, or read |
is:flagged, is:unflagged |
flagged, or not |
after:2026-01-15 |
received on that day or later |
before:2026-02-01 |
received before that day |
folder:projects |
in a folder whose name contains “projects” — useful in All Mail |
account:work |
in an account whose name or address contains “work” |
A minus sign in front of has: or is:
reverses it: -has:attachment finds messages with none.
Write dates as year, month and day, or the way Windows shows a short
date on your computer.
Anything else with a colon in it — Re:, a time such as
10:30, a web address — is searched for as ordinary text, so
pasting a subject line works.
Everything combines:
from:sam budget -draft is:unread after:2026-01-01 finds
unread messages from Sam since the start of the year that mention the
budget and don’t mention a draft.
Press Ctrl+/, or choose View → Advanced Search…, to search with a form instead of typing the syntax. You can assign a different shortcut in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.
The form has a field for each part of a message — Words
anywhere, From, To,
Cc, Subject, Body and
Attachment name — and for the conditions: Has
attachments, Read state,
Flag, Received from and
Received up to (both days included). Every word in a
field is looked for in that part of the message, so
From Sam Smith finds a sender with both
words in the name or address. Words anywhere also takes
everything the search box understands, such as
folder:projects.
Under Look in, choose where to search:
The accounts are a single list: Tab reaches it, Up and Down move between accounts, and Space checks or unchecks the one you are on. Below it, Also search the mail server asks each account’s server as well as this computer — for mail older than the Sync range, or whose text was never downloaded (see Searching the server too). When a search of this computer alone finds nothing, QuickMail says so and suggests it.
Press Enter to search. When something is found the form closes, focus moves to the first result, and the number found is announced. When nothing is found the form stays open with focus back in Words anywhere, so you can change the search and try again. A search of every folder of your accounts leaves you in the folder you were in; a search of This folder leaves its words in that folder’s search box. While a search is running, Escape waits for it to finish. Clear empties the fields but keeps your choice of where to look, and Escape closes the form. F6 moves between the fields, Look in, the list of accounts and the buttons.
Search looks at the mail on this computer. To also find mail that isn’t here — older than the Sync range, or whose text was never downloaded — check Also search the mail server in Advanced Search, or with Search results already open choose Search the Server on the results bar, or Search the Server Too in the command palette. QuickMail asks each account’s mail server for the same search and adds what it finds that the results don’t already have; you hear how many more were found, or that there were none. An account whose server refuses the search is named, and the others still count; one QuickMail already knows is offline is left out quietly.
What each server can search for differs. Gmail and Microsoft 365 search the whole mailbox at once — for Gmail that is everything except Spam and Trash, and a search naming a folder goes folder by folder instead. Other mail servers are asked one folder at a time, which takes longer on a large account, and some search the text of a message more thoroughly than others. Messages found this way are shown but not kept: they stay in the results until you refresh or close them.
While a Search results folder is open, View → Views → Save View… — or Save Search as View… in the command palette — saves it as a view, with a name and, if you like, a keyboard shortcut. Choosing the view later runs the search again, so it always shows what matches now.
The Search results folder works like any other folder: every view, sort, filter and message command applies, and the search box searches within the results. Above the list, a bar shows how many were found and for what, with Change Search — or Ctrl+/ — to reopen the form with this search filled in, and Close — or Escape — to go back to the folder you started from. New mail that arrives while the results are open joins them if its sender, recipients, subject or preview match; a message that matches only in its text appears the next time the results are refreshed with F5.
The first time you start a version of QuickMail with this search, it
builds its index of the mail it already has, in the background, newest
mail first. Until that finishes, older messages are found by their
sender, recipients, subject and preview only. When QuickMail runs in
online mode (--online) there is no copy on this computer,
so search matches the sender, recipients, subject and preview of the
messages in the list, and cc: and attachment:
find nothing.
Press Ctrl+Shift+Y to search folder names. Type to
filter the tree, press Enter to navigate to the matching folder.
Press F5 to manually refresh the current folder.
Press Ctrl+Shift+P to open the command palette. It opens with focus in a filter box, and below it every command, sorted by category and then by name, with each command’s shortcut key where it has one. This is the fastest way to discover and run any action in the app, including the many that have no shortcut key.
Start typing and the list narrows to what matches. You do not have to type the start of a command’s name, or even whole words:
arch
finds Move to Archive.gtf finds
Go to Folder.mail lists the
Mail commands.arch mail finds the Mail category’s Archive command.The best match is always at the top of the list and is the one Enter runs. The command at the top is reported as it changes, and so is each command you reach by arrowing Up and Down — reported by Windows from the list itself, not announced by QuickMail over the top of it, so no announcement setting can switch it off. When a keystroke narrows the list without changing the command at the top, you hear the new count on its own — “3 commands” — because nothing else would tell you the list had moved.
Focus stays in the filter box the whole time, so you can keep typing to narrow further without moving anywhere first.
Escape clears the filter if you have typed anything, and closes the palette if the box is already empty. Page Up and Page Down move through the list ten at a time. If nothing matches what you have typed, you hear “No matching commands”, and Enter says so too rather than doing nothing silently.
The palette opens from anywhere in the main window, including while you are reading a message in the reading pane. Closing it puts you back where you were reading, and a command you choose runs before focus returns to the message.
Other windows have their own palettes on the same key — the compose window, an open message, the address book, the rules window and more — listing the commands that belong to that window.
Open File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts to reassign any shortcut to a different key. Select a command’s field and press the key combination you want — QuickMail captures it, shows you what it heard, and asks you to confirm with OK, pick another with Change, or Cancel. If the combination is already assigned to something else, a warning names the existing command so you can decide whether to reassign it. Changes take effect immediately and survive restarts.
Bare keys as shortcuts. You can assign a shortcut with no modifier key using Delete, Backspace, Insert, or any function key (F1–F24) — for example, bare Delete to delete a message, or F5 to sync. (Bare Delete ships as a default binding for exactly this reason.) Plain letters, digits, and the Spacebar cannot be bound on their own — they would swallow ordinary typing — so pair them with Ctrl, Alt, or Shift. Enter, Escape, and Tab are reserved for navigating dialogs and are never captured as shortcuts.
QuickMail checks for a newer release in the background each time it starts. The top entry of the Help menu always shows the result: “No updates available — running version X.Y.Z” when you are current, or “Update available: vX.Y.Z” when a newer release exists. If an update is found, a spoken announcement follows a few seconds after launch; the background check itself is silent when you are already up to date.
Installed copies download and install updates automatically, and both that behavior and its notifications are configurable — see Installing and Updating QuickMail for the full walkthrough.
The portable exe does not update itself. If you run
the standalone QuickMail.exe, the Help menu entry still
tells you when a new version exists; activating it opens the releases
page, and updating remains a manual download of the new exe.
The Help menu also has a Keyboard Tutorial entry, a short interactive walkthrough of core navigation (F6 pane cycling, Ctrl+1/2/3, the command palette, and Escape) for anyone new to the app.
Choose Report a Bug from the Help menu (also available from the command palette) to open a report window without needing a GitHub account. Fill in a summary and, optionally, what happened, what you expected, and steps to reproduce; a Preview box always shows exactly what will be sent. Press Send to file it directly, or Copy report and open GitHub to submit it under your own GitHub account.
This is one of three ways to report a problem. See Reporting Issues for all three — including email — and guidance on which to choose.
Press Enter on a message in the list to open it in the reading pane (or in a new tab or window, depending on your Reading Mode setting in Settings → General).
Press Ctrl+Enter to open a message in a new tab regardless of the Reading Mode setting.
The reading pane renders HTML messages with WebView2. Links open in your default browser.
Links have a context menu. With a link focused, press Shift+F10 or the Applications key (or right-click it) for Open, Copy Address, and — when the link’s text is not simply its address again — Copy Text. On an email address link a New Message to This Address entry (last in the menu) opens a new message in QuickMail, instead of handing the address to whichever mail client Windows has registered. A copy that works says nothing — it did what you asked, and it clears any earlier failure notice. A copy that fails writes a line at the end of the message, starting QuickMail:, saying what could not be copied. Read to the end of the message to find it. In the reading pane and in a tab it also goes to the status bar, so Ctrl+9 reads back the most recent one.
That line is not usually spoken as it appears: it is written just as the menu closes, while your screen reader is announcing its way back into the message, so it arrives in the middle of that and is passed over. It is there to be found rather than to interrupt — which is the right trade for something that only happens when the clipboard is briefly held by another program. Copying the address is how you check where a link actually goes before following it, and comparing it with the link’s text is how you spot one that does not go where it says it does. Closing the menu returns you to the link you opened it on, not to the top of the message. The menu is offered for ordinary web and email links; it does not appear on the Accept / Tentative / Decline buttons of a meeting invitation, which are internal to QuickMail.
Pictures. Pictures sent inside a message are shown; pictures a message links to on the web are not loaded, and their descriptions are shown instead, so no message can tell its sender you opened it. See Pictures for what is shown and when, the setting that controls it, and how pictures are kept safe.
Press F6 or Shift+F6 to move between the reading pane and other panes.
Toggle a sticky preference to read all messages as plain text instead of HTML. When on, QuickMail renders each message from its original plain-text part (or from text extracted from the HTML if the sender included no plain-text part). This gives a cleaner, low-noise read — useful when you want a simpler layout, or when you want to inspect a suspicious message’s raw text.
Toggle plain text view three ways:
| Method | How |
|---|---|
| Command Palette | Press Ctrl+Shift+P, type “Toggle Plain Text View”,
press Enter |
| View menu | Open the View menu and activate the Plain Text View item (a checkable toggle) |
| Keyboard shortcut | Press Ctrl+Shift+H |
| Settings | Open Settings (Ctrl+,), navigate to the General tab, and check Read messages as plain text |
The setting persists across app restarts and applies to the reading pane, message tabs, and standalone message windows. When a message has no plain-text part, QuickMail shows a note before the extracted text: “This message has no plain-text version; showing text extracted from the HTML.”
When Reading Mode is set to Window, messages open in a separate window. Each window has a full menu bar (File, Message, Navigate), a toolbar, and a command palette. Shortcuts work the same as in the main window:
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl+R |
Reply |
Ctrl+Shift+R |
Reply All |
Ctrl+Shift+F |
Forward |
Delete |
Delete |
Ctrl+Shift+M |
Move to Archive |
Ctrl+Q |
Mark as Read |
Ctrl+Shift+G |
Grab Addresses |
Ctrl+Shift+W |
Watch or unwatch this message’s conversation |
Alt+A |
Focus the attachment list |
Ctrl+S |
Save |
F12 |
Save As |
Ctrl+P |
Deleting a message from its window closes the window and returns focus to the originating position in the message list.
When a message has attachments, they appear in an attachments list just below the header fields (Subject, From, To, Date). This works the same way in all three reading modes — reading pane, tab, and window.
Reach the attachment list in either of two ways:
Once focus is on the list, arrow between attachments and use:
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Enter |
Open the selected attachment |
Alt+Enter |
Show the attachment’s properties |
Shift+F10 (or the Menu key) |
Open the context menu: Save…, Save All…, Open |
You can save a message to a file, or print it. Save and Save As… act on everything selected: one message, several selected messages, or a whole conversation or sender group when its heading is selected. Print acts on one message.
| Shortcut | Command | What it does |
|---|---|---|
Ctrl+S |
Save | Saves in your default format, into your save folder, without asking. |
F12 |
Save As… | Asks where to save and in which format. |
Ctrl+P |
Print… | Opens the Windows Print dialog. |
All three are on the File menu, and Save As and Print are also on a message’s context menu. They work the same way in the reading pane, a tab, and a message window, and they are in the command palette.
Formats. You can save a message in four formats:
The text, web page and PDF formats all start with the same details, in words rather than raw headers: subject, sender, reply-to address if it is different, recipients, date, the account and folder the message is in, whether it has been read, flagged, replied to or forwarded, and its attachments by name and size. Meeting invitations also list the meeting, its time and place, and the organizer.
Pictures. A saved web page, a PDF and a printout show the same pictures the reading pane does. Pictures included in the message are written into the file itself, unless Show pictures included in messages is off. Pictures from the web are included only if QuickMail already loaded them this session, with Load Pictures or the setting; saving never fetches one. Any picture left out shows its description in its place. Nothing in a saved web page runs or loads from the internet when you open it: its pictures are part of the file. The Original format keeps the message exactly as it was sent, pictures and all, and Text keeps descriptions only. See Pictures.
Where Save puts files. Save uses the format and folder set in Settings → General → Saving Messages. The default is Email message in your Documents folder. Each file is named from the subject, sender and date, for example Your order has shipped - Jane Smith - 2026-09-17 1432.eml. Save never replaces or duplicates a file without asking. If you have saved the message there before, Save opens the Save As dialog on that name, so you can pick another name or folder; choose the same name and Windows asks whether to replace it. If you save several messages and some were saved there before, QuickMail asks once: Yes replaces those copies, No keeps both and saves new copies beside them, and Cancel saves nothing. The status bar says what was saved and where.
Save As. For one message, Save As opens the standard Save dialog with the file name filled in. Choose a different format with Save as type. For several messages, the dialog’s title says how many. Choose a folder and a format, and each message is saved under its own name. Save As starts in the folder you used last time, and it does not change your default format or folder.
When the original is not available. An email message file has to come from your mail server. When QuickMail cannot reach the server, or the server no longer has the message, Save As does not write something else in its place. It says why and asks whether you want to choose another format. The text file, web page and PDF formats work offline for any message whose text is on this computer.
For POP3 accounts, QuickMail keeps the original of every message it downloads, so it can always save one. Messages downloaded before version 0.8.47 kept their original only if they had attachments. For others, QuickMail downloads the original again if it is still on the server. If it is not, the message can still be saved in the other formats.
Press Alt+Enter on any message to open a properties window showing sender, recipients, date, size, and flags.
Press Ctrl+Q to mark the selected message or messages as
read. Messages are also marked read automatically when you open them
(configurable in Settings → General).
Press Delete. Deleted messages go to Trash. Press
Ctrl+Shift+E to empty the Trash for the selected
account.
Press Ctrl+Shift+M to archive the selected message — move it to your account’s Archive folder instead of deleting it. Use this for mail you want out of your inbox but want to keep. Delete is unchanged and still moves messages to Trash.
The command is named Move to Archive — it is on the message menu and the message context menu (Shift+F10), and in the command palette. Archiving works from every view. In the From, To, and Conversations groupings, archiving a group moves the whole group at once, the same way Delete does. The Ctrl+Shift+M shortcut can be changed in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.
Each account archives to its own folder — there is no single shared Archive folder. QuickMail uses the folder your provider marks as the Archive folder automatically, so most accounts need no setup. To choose a different folder, select a folder in the folder tree, open its context menu (Shift+F10), and choose Set as Archive Folder; choose Use Automatic Archive Folder to return to the automatic one.
Gmail has no dedicated Archive folder, so pick one for the account. The recommended choice is a label of your own: create a Gmail label named Archive, then select it in the folder tree and choose Set as Archive Folder. Archiving a message moves it out of the inbox and onto that label — which is what archiving means in Gmail — and it gives you a folder that holds only what you archived.
Setting [Gmail]/All Mail as the Archive folder also works and archives correctly, but that folder holds your entire mailbox, not just archived mail. Prefer a label unless you specifically want All Mail.
If an account has no Archive folder and you have not set one, QuickMail tells you rather than doing nothing.
All Archive in the folder tree gathers every account’s archived mail into one list, alongside All Inboxes, All Drafts, All Sent, and All Trash. It follows each account’s own archive setting — including a folder you chose with Set as Archive Folder — so it shows exactly the mail Move to Archive put there. Accounts with no Archive folder simply contribute nothing. This is the other reason to prefer a Gmail label over [Gmail]/All Mail: an account pointed at All Mail contributes its entire mailbox to All Archive, because for that account All Mail is the archive.
QuickMail can open messages in tabs, keeping multiple messages visible at once.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl+Tab |
Next tab |
Ctrl+Shift+Tab |
Previous tab |
Ctrl+W |
Close tab |
Ctrl+Shift+`` |
Tab list (navigate by name) |
Ctrl+Shift+T |
Focus tab strip |
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl+N |
New message |
Ctrl+R |
Reply |
Ctrl+Shift+R |
Reply All |
Ctrl+Shift+F |
Forward |
Press F6 to cycle between the address fields (To, Cc, Bcc), the subject, and the message body. You can also jump directly to a field:
| Shortcut | Destination |
|---|---|
Alt+U |
Subject field |
Alt+M |
From account |
Alt+Y |
Message body |
Press Alt+M to reach the From list, then arrow to the account you want. Press Enter and QuickMail confirms your choice — “IdeaPlace used as From address”. You can also expand the list with Alt+Down Arrow, arrow to an account, and press Enter; the same confirmation follows.
Arrowing past accounts does not announce anything extra, since your screen reader is already reading each account name as you go. The confirmation comes when the choice settles — on Enter, when the expanded list closes on a different account, or when you leave the From field having changed it. It uses the Announce action results setting, so turning that off turns this off with it.
Enter in the From list never sends the message. Sending is Alt+S or Ctrl+Enter.
Start typing a name or address in To, Cc, or Bcc. QuickMail searches your address book and recent contacts. Arrow down to choose a suggestion; press Enter or Tab to accept. Press Escape to dismiss without accepting.
Every compose window offers three modes, switchable at any time with
Ctrl+Shift+1/2/3 or the View menu:
| Mode | Shortcut | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Plain Text | Ctrl+Shift+1 |
Unformatted text |
| Markdown | Ctrl+Shift+2 |
Write Markdown; sent as formatted HTML |
| HTML | Ctrl+Shift+3 |
Rich text editor with real formatting |
Switching from a rich mode to Plain Text asks for confirmation because formatting would be lost.
Messages composed in Markdown or HTML are sent with both an HTML part and a plain text part.
| Command | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Bold | Ctrl+B |
| Italic | Ctrl+I |
| Underline (HTML only) | Ctrl+U |
| Strikethrough | Ctrl+Shift+X |
| Normal text | Ctrl+Alt+0 |
| Heading 1 to 6 | Ctrl+Alt+1 to Ctrl+Alt+6 |
| Quote | Ctrl+Shift+9 |
| Bullet list | Ctrl+Shift+L |
| Numbered list | Ctrl+Shift+N |
| Insert link | Ctrl+K in the message body, or Ctrl+L |
| Insert image | Ctrl+Shift+I |
| Image properties | Alt+Enter on a picture |
| Clear formatting | Ctrl+Space |
| Announce formatting at cursor | Ctrl+T |
| Show formatting in browsable list | Ctrl+Shift+T |
Nested lists: In a list, press Tab to indent an item (creating a sub-list); press Shift+Tab to dedent.
Every line of a message has a paragraph style: Normal text, Heading 1 to Heading 6, or Quote. A recipient’s screen reader can move by the headings and quotes you create.
Ctrl+Alt+1 to
Ctrl+Alt+6 to make the line you are on a heading of that
level (in HTML mode, every line you have selected). Pressing the same
key again makes them normal text again. When you press Enter at the end
of a heading, the new line is normal text; pressing Enter in the middle
of a heading splits it into two headings.Ctrl+Alt+0 to turn
headings or quoted lines back into ordinary paragraphs.Ctrl+Shift+9 (the same
key Gmail uses) to quote the lines you are on or have selected. Press it
again on quoted lines to take them out of the quote. Pressing Enter
inside a quote continues the quote; pressing Enter on an empty quoted
line ends it. Quotes can be inside other quotes, the way an earlier
message is quoted in a reply chain; Ctrl+Shift+9 on a quote
inside another quote takes away one level.# to ###### for headings and >
for quotes.When you reply in HTML mode, the message you are replying to is
quoted as a real quote with its own formatting — headings, lists, links
and any earlier quotes — instead of lines that begin with
>. The plain text part of the message still marks quoted
lines with >.
A picture can go in the body of a message in Markdown or HTML mode
(Ctrl+Shift+I, paste, or drop), and every picture has to
have a description or be marked decorative before it goes in. See Pictures for everything about putting pictures in,
sending them, and how they are kept safe.
Ctrl+T — announces a one-line summary:
“Heading 2. Bold on, Italic off, Underline off.” Inside a quote it says
so (“Quote”, or “Quote, level 2” inside a quote within a quote). In a
link it adds the link’s address, and in inline code it adds “Code
on”.Ctrl+Shift+T — opens a small window
listing the same details one per row. Arrow through them; press Escape
or Enter to close.Press F8 to open a rendered preview in a separate window. The preview is fully focusable, so you can browse the formatted output exactly as a recipient would. Links open in your default browser. Press Escape or Ctrl+W to close the preview.
Press F7 (or choose Tools → Check Spelling) to review the whole message in the classic spelling dialog. The check covers the message body first, then the subject line, and finishes with a confirmation that reports how many words were changed.
For each word that is not in the dictionary, the Spelling window shows the word in the line where it appears, a list of suggestions, and a “Change to” box pre-filled with the top suggestion. A screen reader announces “Not in dictionary:” followed by the word, and focus lands on the suggestions list with the first suggestion selected so it is spoken automatically. Arrow through the list to hear other choices — the highlighted suggestion fills the Change to box — or type your own correction.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Alt+C or Enter |
Change — replace the word with the Change to text |
Alt+L |
Change All — also fix every later occurrence this session |
Alt+I |
Ignore this occurrence |
Alt+G |
Ignore All — skip this word for the rest of the check |
Alt+A |
Add to Dictionary — never flag this word again |
Alt+R |
Read the line containing the word |
Alt+T / Alt+S / Alt+N |
Move to the Change to box / Suggestions list / context |
F6 / Shift+F6 |
Cycle between the context, suggestions, and buttons |
Escape |
Close the dialog and return to the message |
Words you add to the dictionary are stored in custom.lex
in your QuickMail profile folder and apply everywhere spell checking
runs, permanently. To remove a word, edit that file in a text editor
while QuickMail is closed (one word per line). Ignore All lasts only for
the current check.
The message stays visible and editable behind the Spelling window, with the current word selected, so you can always see the correction in place.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl+F7 |
Jump to next misspelling |
Ctrl+Shift+F7 |
Jump to previous misspelling |
Alt+1 / Alt+2 / Alt+3 |
Accept first / second / third spelling suggestion |
Changed keys: inline navigation was previously
F7/Shift+F7.F7now opens the Check Spelling dialog, matching the binding word processors have used for decades. If you had customized these shortcuts, your bindings are unchanged; to restore the old behavior, reassign them in the keyboard customizations dialog.
Inline navigation wraps around the message so it always finds misspellings wherever the cursor starts.
When a screen reader is active, QuickMail announces each misspelling
along with up to three suggestions. By default, each suggestion is
numbered — for example: “Misspelling: teh. 1: the, 2: then, 3: them.”
Press Alt+1, Alt+2, or Alt+3 to
replace the misspelled word with that numbered suggestion without
leaving the compose area.
Control announcement behavior in File → Settings → General → Screen Reader Announcements:
Alt+1/2/3 maps directly to what is spoken, or
Just suggestions to hear “the, then, them” without
numbers.Attach files with Ctrl+Shift+A in the compose window, by
pasting files from the clipboard (Ctrl+V), or by dragging
and dropping them onto the window. A screen reader announces how many
files were attached.
Press Alt+A to move focus to the list of files already attached — the same key that reaches the attachment list of a message you are reading. Arrow through the list and press Delete to remove the selected file. If the message has nothing attached yet, QuickMail announces “No attachments.”
Save a message you write often — a standard reply, a form response — as a reusable template.
Templates can include {sender}, {date}, and
{time} placeholders, which are replaced with your display
name and today’s date and time when the template is inserted. Templates
are plain text; in HTML mode, only the text is inserted.
Press Ctrl+K in the To, Cc, or Bcc field (anywhere
outside the message body, where Ctrl+K inserts a link, as
in Outlook) to check every address in those fields. QuickMail looks up
any bare name against your address book — if exactly one contact
matches, it fills in that contact’s address automatically. Addresses
that are not valid and cannot be resolved are flagged as invalid. A
screen reader announces how many addresses were resolved and how many
are invalid.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Alt+S or Ctrl+Enter |
Send |
QuickMail saves your compose as a draft automatically every 2 minutes (on by default). A quiet status line in the compose window shows “Auto-saved 3:42 PM” after each save — no announcement interrupts your writing. When the server cannot be reached, the status line reads “Kept on this computer 3:42 PM” instead and that is announced once; see Working Offline: Drafts and the Outbox. If a save fails entirely, it is announced once. You can check the last auto-save time from the command palette: Ctrl+Shift+P → Announce Last Auto-Save.
Control auto-save in Settings → General → Composing: turn it off, change the interval (30 seconds to 10 minutes), and set the default compose mode for new messages.
A dropped connection no longer traps your message in the compose window. QuickMail always tries your account first and falls back to this computer only when the server does not answer:
Ctrl+S) and auto-save keep
the draft on this computer when the server cannot be reached. You hear
“Draft saved on this computer. It will upload when you’re online.” The
draft goes to your account’s Drafts folder the next time QuickMail
connects.Alt+S) queues the message when
the server cannot be reached. You hear “Message queued. It will be sent
when you’re online.”, the window closes, and the message leaves the
moment a connection returns. A server that answers and refuses the
message — a bad address, a rejected login — still fails in the window,
where you can fix it.Everything waiting lives in the Outbox, the last entry in the All Mail group of the folder tree. The folder’s count is spoken as “waiting” rather than “unread”. Each row shows the account it will leave from, and its subject starts with its state: “Waiting to send”, “Waiting to upload draft”, “Sending…”, or “Failed” followed by the reason.
| In the Outbox | What happens |
|---|---|
Enter on a row |
Reopens it in the compose window, exactly as it was written — recipients, Bcc, attachments, and compose mode included. Saving or sending from there replaces the queued copy. |
Delete on a row |
Asks first, then removes it from the queue. There is no Trash to recover from: the message has never been anywhere but this computer. |
Send Outbox Now (Message menu, or
Ctrl+Shift+P → Send Outbox Now) |
Tries every queued item right away, including any marked Failed. |
The Outbox drains on its own when QuickMail connects at startup, when
the connection returns, when a shared mailbox connects again, and on
each background sync. A message from a shared mailbox whose account is
signed out is not marked Failed: once the Outbox has tried it, its row
says “Waiting for its account to be signed in”, and it goes out once
that account is signed in again. A drain is announced once as a whole,
for example “Outbox: 2 messages sent, 1 draft uploaded.” A message the
server refused stays in the Outbox marked “Failed” with the reason,
until you reopen and fix it, or remove it. The Outbox is not available
in --online mode, which runs without the local store.
When forwarding a message that has attachments, QuickMail opens an Include Attachments dialog before downloading. All attachments are checked by default. Arrow between files and press Space to toggle individual ones. Press Tab to reach Forward (include checked files) or Cancel.
Pictures reach a message in two ways, and QuickMail treats them differently because they carry very different risks.
| Reading pane, message tabs and message windows | |
|---|---|
| Pictures sent inside the message | Shown (unless you turn them off — see Settings below) |
| Pictures on the web | Not loaded until you ask (see below). Their description is shown in their place, and a note at the top of the message says pictures were left out. |
| Any picture, when reading as plain text | Not shown; the plain text is shown instead. |
A picture is read by its description (alternative text). A picture that is also a link reads by that description, so a row of social icons reads “Facebook”, “LinkedIn” rather than as web addresses. A picture the sender marked as decorative, or gave no description, is passed over, as it always has been.
Pictures sent inside a message appear as the message opens; the text is shown at once and each picture fills in as it arrives, so reading is never interrupted. Showing them from the local copy of a message can mean reading that message again from your mail server. QuickMail does not download a large message again just for its pictures (more than 5 MB of attachments, or 10 MB in all), skips any single picture over 10 MB, and shows at most 40 pictures in one message; descriptions stand in for the rest.
Only ordinary picture formats are shown: PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP and BMP. SVG pictures are never shown, because an SVG file can carry script.
When a message has pictures on the web, the first line of the message reads “Pictures from the web are not shown.” followed by a Load pictures link. To see them:
Ctrl+Shift+U), or
choose View → Load Pictures, or run it from the Command
Palette.This works in the reading pane, message tabs and message windows. The message is shown again with its pictures, and focus stays in the message. QuickMail says “Loading pictures”, or why there is nothing to load: no message is open, you are reading as plain text, the message has no pictures from the web, or they are already shown.
Loading lasts while that message is open. The next message you open, or this one opened again later, starts with its web pictures left out again. To load them in every message, use the setting below.
Even when you load pictures, a picture the message says is 2 pixels wide or high or smaller is never fetched. That is the usual size of a tracking pixel, and there is nothing to see. A tracker can still be disguised as an ordinary picture, so this is a courtesy, not a guarantee: once you load a message’s pictures, assume the sender can tell you opened it.
Loading a picture from the web tells its server that the message was opened, when, and your computer’s internet (IP) address. That is unavoidable, and the reason they are not loaded unless you ask. QuickMail keeps what it tells the server to that:
Save and Print show the pictures the reading pane shows:
| Format | Pictures included in the message | Pictures from the web |
|---|---|---|
| Original (.eml) | Kept, as sent | Kept as links; nothing is fetched |
| Text | Descriptions only | Descriptions only |
| Web page, PDF, and Print | Written into the file, unless Show pictures included in messages is off | Written into the file only if QuickMail already loaded them this session |
Saving and printing never fetch a picture from the web. To include web pictures, choose Load Pictures first, then save or print. A saved web page holds its pictures inside the file, so it opens anywhere without contacting anything.
A picture can go in the body of a message in Markdown or HTML mode, and every picture has to have a description (alternative text) or be marked decorative before it goes in. The people you write to then always get one or the other: a screen reader reads the description, and skips a decorative picture.
Ctrl+Shift+I, or
Insert → Image) lets you choose one or more picture
files. For each one, the Image Description window opens
with the file name and size shown for reference. Type a description in
Alternative text, or check Decorative image (no
description). OK is not available until you
have done one or the other. The file name is never used as the
description.Alt+Enter, or
Insert → Image Properties) with the cursor on a picture
opens the same window to change its description, mark it decorative, or
remove the picture. With no picture at the cursor, QuickMail says
so.Shift+Arrow selects it like a
character. Ctrl+T includes the picture at the cursor.
Pictures cannot be copied or cut yet; QuickMail says so rather than
losing the picture. To move one, remove it and insert it again., and you can edit the description in
the brackets directly. A picture that arrived with no description is
written  so that it is not
mistaken for a decorative one.Sending. Pictures travel inside the message, so the people you write to see them without their mail program fetching anything. A picture you deleted from the body is not sent. A described picture is sent with its description, a decorative one with an empty description, and one nobody described with none. In HTML mode, the plain text version of the message shows a described picture as “[Image: description]” and leaves decorative pictures out; in Markdown mode the plain text version is your Markdown, as it always has been.
Size. QuickMail warns you once if the message grows past 10 MB, which some mail servers refuse, and pictures count toward the 25 MB limit along with attachments.
Drafts, the Outbox, replies and forwards. Pictures stay with the message when you save it as a draft, when it waits in the Outbox, and when you reopen it. Forwarding a message with pictures, or replying to one in HTML mode, brings its pictures along: they appear as grey placeholders first and fill in as they are read from the original message. F8 preview shows the pictures.
Press Ctrl+Shift+B to open the address book.
The address book lists everyone you have sent mail to or explicitly added, plus — if you turn on contact sync — the contacts stored in your Microsoft and Google accounts. You can search by name or address, edit contact details, and organize contacts into groups. An Account column shows where each contact came from: Local address book for the ones you added yourself, or the account name for synced ones.
When several accounts sync contacts into QuickMail, the list can get long. The Filter button, just to the right of the search box, narrows the list to one account at a time.
The filter and the search box work together: with a filter applied, searching looks only inside that account. The filter stays in effect while the address book is open, including across a contact sync, and resets to All accounts the next time you open the window.
Filter Addresses by Account is also in the address book’s Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P).
With focus on the contact list, type the first letter of a contact’s name to jump straight to it. Type more letters quickly to match a longer beginning (“br” goes to Brenda rather than Bob), or press the same letter again to move to the next contact starting with that letter. Contacts stored without a name are matched on their address instead. The same typing shortcut works in the Groups list and the Group members list.
From the contact list, you can pull up everything a person sent you, or everything you addressed to them.
Both actions are also in the address book’s Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) as Find Mail From Contact and Find Mail To Contact. Commands that live inside the address book are not listed in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts, which covers the main window’s commands; reach them from the palette.
Press Escape with focus in the message list to close the results and go back to the folder you started from; the folder name and its message count are announced. A Close button at the top of the results does the same, and Close Contact Mail Results is in the Command Palette. Selecting any folder in the folder tree also leaves the results.
The search covers every account and folder QuickMail has cached — not just the folder you were in. Mail older than your sync range is not stored locally, so it is not included. Find mail to this contact matches the To line, so a message where the person was only in Cc does not appear.
QuickMail can fill the address book from the contacts already stored in your Microsoft, Google, and iCloud accounts, so the people your account knows are available for autocomplete when you address a message.
Contact sync is one-directional and read-only in this release: no changes are written back. For Microsoft and Google it also pulls the people you’ve recently emailed; iCloud brings in your saved contacts (its CardDAV service has no separate “recent recipients” list).
Because sync only runs one way, the address book is not the place to change or remove a contact that came from an account. With a synced contact selected, the Edit and Delete buttons are unavailable, and the matching Command Palette entries do nothing. This is deliberate: a deletion made here could not be sent to your account, so the contact would simply reappear the next time QuickMail refreshed — the change would look like it worked and then quietly undo itself.
To change or remove a synced contact for good, edit it where it actually lives, then bring the change back:
Without step 2 the address book keeps the old copy until the next background refresh, which happens about twice a day.
“Other contacts” from Google. Google keeps two separate lists: the contacts you saved, and Other contacts — addresses Google collected automatically from people you have emailed. QuickMail pulls both, which is why the address book can hold far more people than you ever saved. Removing one of these is the same two-step job as above, but do it in the Other contacts section of Google Contacts specifically; deleting from your saved contacts does not touch it. Google also re-collects an address if you email that person again.
If you only want them out of QuickMail, and not out of the account, clear Sync contacts from this account for that account in File → Manage Accounts…. That drops every contact synced from it, leaving the ones you added yourself alone. Nothing on the account is changed.
Groups let you write to multiple people with a single address. Select a group in the address book and press Enter to expand it and see its members. To compose to a group, type the group name in the To or Cc field and select it from autocomplete.
Open the address book and use the Groups pane to create, rename, and delete groups, and to add or remove members.
Group names must be unique, regardless of letter case (“Team” and “team” count as the same name). If you try to create or rename a group to a name that already exists, QuickMail tells you the name is already in use and leaves your text in place so you can choose a different one. Groups are never merged.
When reading a message with many recipients, you can save all of them to your address book — and optionally add them to a group — in one step.
If you choose Create new group and type a name that already exists, QuickMail will not create a second group with that name. It tells you the group already exists and keeps the window open so you can enter a different name, or pick the existing group from the list instead.
Tab moves through the address list (one Tab stop for the whole list — arrow keys move between individual checkboxes), then to Add to group, then to the group combo, then to the name field, then to Save and Cancel.
Flags mark messages for follow-up.
The built-in flag is the standard one your mail server already understands, so setting or clearing it in QuickMail shows up in every other mail program you use, and a message flagged elsewhere arrives in QuickMail already flagged. Named flags you create yourself are stored on this computer only — the name and color mean nothing to the server, so another program will not see them, and neither will QuickMail on a second computer. See What Syncs and What Doesn’t.
Press K to toggle the default flag on the selected message. Press K again to clear it. A screen reader announces the result: “Flagged: Urgent.” or “Unflagged.”
In Conversations, From, or To view, pressing K on a group row flags every message in the group.
Press Ctrl+Shift+K to open the flag picker. Arrow to a flag and press Enter to apply it. A Clear flag option at the bottom removes the current flag.
Open the Flag Manager from the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P → Manage Flags). You can create up to 20 named flags, each with an optional color. Use Set as K default to make any flag the one that K applies.
Open the View menu or the filter combo box and choose Flagged to see only flagged messages in the current folder.
The All Flagged Mail virtual folder in the folder tree aggregates flagged messages across all accounts.
By default the flag name comes first when you navigate to a flagged message — for example, “Urgent. Unread. Kelly Ford. Budget deadline.” This makes it immediately clear a message needs attention.
The flag is one of the pieces a row speaks, so where it falls — and whether it is spoken at all — is yours to set in View → Message List Fields…. Turn the Flag field off to leave it out, or move it later in the line to hear the sender first. See Message List Fields. (There was previously an Announce flag status checkbox in Settings; it has been replaced by the Flag field in that window. If you had it turned off, the Flag field starts out turned off to match.)
A mail rule watches your Inbox and acts on messages that match what you describe — filing newsletters into a folder, marking a mailing list as read, deleting something you never want to see.
Open the Rules Manager from the
Tools menu (Ctrl+Shift+L) or the command
palette. A message open in its own window has the same Tools →
Rules… and key; from there the Rules Manager opens on that
message’s account, and closing it returns you to the message. It lists
the selected account’s rules, and beside the list a Rule
detail pane reads out the selected rule in full: what it
applies to, and what it does. Rules are written in a separate editor
window. New (Ctrl+N) opens it for a new
rule, and Edit — or Enter on a rule in
the list — opens it for the selected one. It is the same window whatever
kind of account you have; it shows what the selected account
supports.
Client-side and server-side. A rule QuickMail runs itself is a client-side rule: it is stored on this computer and it acts on your mail while QuickMail is open. A work or school account added with the Microsoft 365 (Graph) connection method can also carry server-side rules, which your mail provider runs for you whether QuickMail is open or not — see Microsoft 365: server-side rules. Every other account has client-side rules only, including a work or school account you added over Standard IMAP/SMTP. Each row in the rules list is marked on client or on server, and the status line says which kinds the selected account can have, so neither is ever a guess.
One account at a time. When you have more than one account, the Rules Manager opens on a single account chosen in an Account list at the top, rather than listing every account’s rules together. Choose the account whose rules you want, and the list below shows just that mailbox’s rules. If you have only one account there is no picker. It opens on the account you were in; see Rules belong to one account. This is the first thing to notice if you are used to seeing every account’s rules in one list: your rules are not gone, they are behind the account picker. The status line just below the picker says how many rules the account has, where they run, and which kinds that account can have — so an empty list is never a mystery. As you move through the Account list, each account also says how many rules it has (a status announcement, so it follows your Announce status setting). F6 cycles the panes — account list, rules, details, status line — so it reaches the status line and reads it back at any time.
The editor has the same parts whichever kind of rule you are writing.
Save stores the rule and closes the editor; Cancel closes it without saving. A Move to folder, Copy to folder or Delete rule needs at least one condition — with none it would act on every message — so QuickMail will not save it until you add one. Mark as read and Mark as unread rules can have none.
What a client-side rule can use. A client-side rule can test From addresses, Subject contains, Sender contains, Sent to addresses, Subject or body contains, Body contains, and Has attachments. From addresses and Sent to addresses each take several addresses, and Sender contains can be used together with From addresses, in which case both have to match. It has a single subject condition, so Subject contains and Subject or body contains cannot both be used in one rule; Save says so if you try. It can Mark as read or Mark as unread, Copy to folder, and Move to folder or Delete, and it can do more than one of them — but not mark a message both read and unread, or both move and delete it. It does them in that order: marking first, then copying, then moving or deleting, since after that the message is no longer in the Inbox. Mark as unread changes only this computer’s copy of the message, so it cannot be combined with moving or deleting, which would throw that copy away and the mark with it. A client-side rule cannot copy into the Inbox either: it runs on the Inbox, so each copy would be copied again on the next check. Everything else in the editor needs a server-side rule: Sent to me, Sent only to me, Importance is, Set importance to, Forward to, and Stop processing more rules. Mark as unread is the reverse — only a client-side rule can do it, which is why its label says so. Editing never changes a rule’s kind, so a client-side rule stays client-side. Where a rule cannot become a server-side one, the editor turns those options off rather than offering them: on an account that has client-side rules only, and while you edit a rule that already runs in QuickMail, since editing never changes a rule’s kind. A line under Enabled says which of the two it is and names the options concerned; it is a Tab stop while it is there, so you meet it on the way through the form. Turned-off options are skipped by Tab, so you will not meet them while moving through the form. On a Microsoft 365 account a new rule still offers them — choosing one there is what makes the rule server-side. Save still refuses the combinations no client-side rule can hold, and names them: Subject contains with Subject or body contains, and Move to folder with Delete. While you edit a server-side rule, Mark as unread is unavailable, because the server has no way to do it.
The order rules run in. Every enabled rule for the account is tried, and each one that matches acts. Server-side rules run on the server as mail is delivered, in the order the list shows; Move Up and Move Down change it, and Stop processing more rules tells the server to skip the server-side rules after it. Client-side rules run when QuickMail sees the mail, in the order they were created, and cannot be reordered. A client-side rule that moves or deletes a message takes it out of the running for the client-side rules after it, both on mail as it arrives and when you use Run on Existing Mail.
Rules run on your Inbox, on mail as it arrives — including mail that arrives while QuickMail is sitting open, not only at a full sync. A rule runs on a message when it arrives, however QuickMail first picks it up: the background check, or opening the Inbox a moment before that check comes round. If the Inbox is open when a matching message lands, the message can appear in the list for a moment before the rule acts on it. Rules only ever run on your Inbox, and this is deliberate: a rule never reaches back into Sent, Archive, Junk, Trash, or a folder you filed something into by hand, so nothing you deliberately put somewhere is moved or deleted behind your back. Mail already in the mailbox before a rule existed is left alone too, and so is older mail QuickMail shows for the first time because you widened the Sync range.
To apply your rules to mail that is already there, use Run on Existing Mail. It runs the selected account’s enabled client-side rules over that account’s Inbox — again, the Inbox only — across the mail QuickMail has stored locally, and tells you how many messages were moved or deleted. (Marking read or unread and copying still happen; they are not counted.) An account whose Inbox QuickMail has not read yet in this session is skipped rather than guessed at, and the skip is noted in the log.
Each rule watches one account: the one chosen in the Rules Manager’s Account list when you create it. The editor has no account field of its own, so to write a rule for another account, choose that account in the list first. Changing the list while the editor is open doesn’t move the rule: when you save, the list goes back to the rule’s account and selects it, and the status line starts by saying so, for example “Rule saved to Home.” The Rules Manager opens on the account you were in. From a view that spans accounts, such as All Inboxes, it opens on your default account — the one marked with Set Default in Account Manager. A rule made with Create Rule from Message belongs to that message’s account. Shared mailboxes are not in the list, because their rules are managed in Outlook; if you open the Rules Manager from one, it shows your default account instead, names that account in its title, and says why on its status line. See Shared mailboxes.
If you had rules from an earlier version that applied to all accounts, QuickMail converts each one into a separate rule for every account that is not connected through Microsoft 365 directly, the first time it starts, so they keep doing what they did there. An old rule is never copied onto a Microsoft 365 mailbox, so it cannot start acting on one without your say-so; in a profile whose only accounts are Microsoft 365, it is dropped and the reason is written to the log.
The list shows one account at a time, so a row does not repeat the account: it says the rule’s name, where it runs, and whether it is enabled. Turn on Show field labels in the rules list in Settings → General → Screen Reader Announcements to hear those pieces named (“Rule … runs … status …”) rather than run together.
In the list, Enter edits the selected rule,
Space turns it on or off, and Delete
deletes it after asking. The buttons below the list are
New, Edit, Delete,
Enable or Disable, Move
Up, Move Down, Test,
Run on Existing Mail, and Close; most
are on the list’s context menu as well, and every one is in the command
palette (Ctrl+Shift+P). Escape closes the
window.
Test runs the selected client-side rule against the messages that were in the message list when you opened the Rules Manager, and says how many of them it would match, so you can check a rule before letting it loose. Only messages in the rule’s own account are counted, because the rule never acts on any others.
Select a message and choose Create Rule from Message
(Ctrl+Shift+T) from the Message menu, the
context menu or the command palette. In a message open in its own window
it is on that window’s Message menu, key and command
palette, and uses the message the window is showing. QuickMail opens a
new rule pre-filled from that message: the sender is filled in and its
condition is checked, so the rule matches everything
from that sender. The subject is filled in too, but its condition starts
unchecked — a rule that has to match one sender
and one exact subject line matches, in practice, only the
conversation you made it from. If you did want the subject as well,
check its box; the text is already there. This does not work on a
message in a shared mailbox, whose rules are managed in Outlook; see Shared mailboxes.
If you have a work or school Microsoft 365 (Exchange) account, the Rules Manager does a little more. Alongside your client-side rules, it shows the server-side rules on your Exchange mailbox — the same rules Outlook calls “Inbox rules.” A server rule runs on Microsoft’s servers, so it acts on your mail even when QuickMail is closed, and it applies wherever you read that mailbox.
Server-side rules are an organization feature, so personal Outlook.com, Hotmail, and Live.com accounts do not have them — even when connected through Microsoft 365 directly. For a personal account the Rules Manager shows only client-side rules, the same as any other non-Exchange account.
One list, marked where each rule runs. For a work or school account, server-side and client-side rules appear together in a single list. Each row says where the rule runs — on server or on client — along with its name and whether it is enabled. Creating, editing, enabling or disabling, and deleting all work the same way whichever kind a rule is; only server-side rules can be reordered. The status line counts them the same way — “4 rules: 3 on server, 1 on client” — so which kinds an account is holding is on screen, and F6 cycles round to read it back. If one kind can’t be loaded, the status line says so and counts only the kind that did.
QuickMail chooses where a new rule lives. When you create a rule, QuickMail saves it as a server rule whenever it can, so it keeps working while QuickMail is closed. A rule that needs something only QuickMail can do — today that is Mark as unread — is saved as a client-side rule instead. On a work or school account, which does also do server rules, QuickMail announces that when it happens; the saved rule’s own row says on client either way, so where it went is there to read whether or not you have announcements turned on.
Some server rules cannot be edited here. A rule you built in Outlook may use conditions or actions QuickMail cannot yet represent exactly. Rather than risk turning it into something you did not intend, QuickMail turns Edit off for that rule, and the detail pane says why. You can still read it, turn it on or off, reorder it, and delete it; change the rule itself in Outlook. A rule the server marks read-only is different: it cannot be changed here at all, so Edit, Delete, Enable or Disable, and Move are all turned off.
Testing. Test works on client-side rules only; for a server rule the Test control is turned off, the same way Edit and Delete are for a read-only rule — a server rule runs in Exchange, so there is nothing local to test it against.
Run on Existing Mail. This applies the selected account’s client-side rules to the mail already in its Inbox — matching the one-account-at-a-time layout, so it never acts on rules for an account you are not looking at. It is available only when that account has at least one enabled client-side rule; a Microsoft 365 account whose rules are all server-side has nothing for it to do (server rules run in Exchange and cannot be applied to existing mail from here), so the control is turned off in that case.
What your organization may need to allow. For most work or school accounts, an administrator has to permit QuickMail to read and change your mailbox rules before this works. If that permission is not in place, you will see a message about it rather than your server rules; ask your administrator to grant QuickMail access.
A saved view is a named filter you can return to instantly — for example, “Unread from work” or “Flagged in the last 7 days.”
Open the View Manager from the View menu or the command palette. Create a view by choosing a folder (or All Inboxes), a message filter, and optionally a date limit. Assign a hotkey to jump to it directly.
Press the assigned hotkey from anywhere in the main window to switch to that view immediately.
A view is a temporary overlay, not a change to your settings. Clear View — on the View → Views menu and in the command palette — puts everything back the way the folder was: grouping, filter, sort, and any date limit the view applied. Nothing a view does is kept once you leave it. (If the view spans several folders, clearing it returns you to All Mail, since the folders themselves were the view.)
You can also just change something. Adjusting the view mode, filter, or sort while a view is active leaves the view — the title stops showing its name — and what you chose becomes that folder’s own setting.
Only what you changed comes with you. If you are in “Flagged this week” and you change the sort, you leave the view with your new sort and the folder back to its usual self — you are not left quietly filtered to flagged messages from the last seven days. The saved view itself is never altered; press its hotkey again to go back to it.
By default QuickMail opens to All Mail. You can tell it to open anywhere you like instead — one account’s Inbox, a project folder, or All Inboxes.
The quickest way is from the folder tree itself:
QuickMail confirms the change, and opens there every time it starts from then on.
You can also do it from File → Settings → Startup, where the Opens in field shows your current choice. Select Choose… to pick a different folder from the folder tree, or Clear to go back to All Mail. Clear Startup Folder in the folder context menu does the same thing.
If the folder later disappears — you delete it, rename it, or remove the account — QuickMail opens in All Mail and tells you why. Nothing is lost and nothing needs repairing.
Also under File → Settings → Startup, Startup Sync controls how much mail QuickMail checks while it is starting. This matters most if you have several accounts and a lot of folders.
New mail still arrives in your inboxes straight away whichever you choose, so notifications are unaffected. Other folders are caught up by the background check — the Check for new mail every setting on the General tab. If you have set that to Off, other folders are only checked when you open them.
QuickMail can start by itself each time you sign in to Windows. This is off unless you turn it on.
Start minimized, just below, decides how QuickMail appears when Windows starts it. It is on by default, so QuickMail does not open its window over whatever you have started doing: it starts in the notification area if Keep running in the notification area when I close the window is on (General tab), and otherwise minimized on the taskbar. Mail is checked and notifications arrive as usual; open QuickMail from the taskbar, Alt+Tab, the tray icon, or the Start menu when you want it. Turn Start minimized off to have QuickMail open normally instead.
QuickMail uses the standard Windows startup list, so it also appears in Task Manager under Startup apps and in Windows Settings → Apps → Startup. You can turn it off from either place, and QuickMail respects that: its own check box then reads unchecked, with a note that Windows’ startup settings have it turned off. Checking it in QuickMail and saving turns it back on.
Some things to know:
--profileDir, turning this on starts that profile, and it
has its own entry in the startup list.QuickMail has a full, keyboard-first calendar. You can create and edit your own appointments, keep repeating events, get reminders, respond to meeting invitations, and — if you connect an online account — see and (for some providers) change the events already on your Microsoft, Google, or iCloud calendar. Everything is stored locally so the calendar works offline.
This page is long because the calendar does a lot. If you just want the essentials: press Ctrl+Shift+C to open the calendar, use the Up and Down arrows to move through your events, and on any appointment press Tab once for a details box with everything about it or Enter to open the full appointment. Press N to create a new one. The rest of this page fills in the detail, including a clear list of what the calendar does and does not do.
There are two ways in:
Either way, the message list is replaced by your list of events, and a small toolbar appears above it with buttons for the views, date navigation, and creating or editing appointments. Everything on that toolbar has a keyboard shortcut too, listed at the end of this page.
The calendar needs QuickMail’s local cache, so it is not available when you run QuickMail in online mode (
--online). In that mode the calendar announces that it is unavailable.
Expand the Calendar node in the folder tree to choose which events you are looking at:
Selecting a source filters the list to it. “All Calendars” is the usual choice for day-to-day use.
Calendar is the first thing in the folder tree. If you reach your mail by arrowing down from the top of the tree, that puts the calendar in your way every time, so you can move it to the bottom instead.
Both are checkable, so opening the menu also tells you where the calendar is now. At the bottom it sits after your accounts — the last root in the tree. The choice is remembered between sessions, and both are in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) if you would rather not go through the menu.
If most of your appointments belong on one calendar, tell QuickMail which one and it will open the appointment editor on that calendar every time.
QuickMail confirms the choice in the status bar and announces it, and the calendar is marked (default) in the folder tree — its name is announced as “…, default calendar” — so you can always tell which one is set. The choice is remembered between sessions.
To go back to saving new appointments on your local calendar, choose Clear Default Calendar from the same menu.
Two things this does not do. It does not change which events you are looking at — that is still whatever source you have selected in the tree. And it is only a starting point: the Calendar picker in the appointment editor still lets you send any individual appointment somewhere else.
All Calendars cannot be the default, because it is several calendars at once and so names no single place to save to. If you choose it, QuickMail says so and leaves your existing default alone.
Both commands are also in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) — as Use as Default Calendar for New Appointments and Clear Default Calendar — and you can assign them keys in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.
Your events can be shown four ways. Switch between them with the toolbar buttons or these keys while the event list has focus:
The header above the list always tells you which view and which period you are looking at (for example, “Week of March 9 to March 15”).
In Day, Week, and Month views:
(In Agenda view there is no “previous/next period” — the list is already continuous — so Ctrl+Left/Right do nothing there, and T toggles the today filter instead of jumping.)
Move through the list with the Up and Down arrows. The list has Subject, When, Status, and Calendar columns; the Calendar column shows which calendar the appointment belongs to — for example Apple: Family, or Local for an appointment you created here. Each row is announced as a short summary that includes the calendar — for example, “Team standup, today 10:00 to 10:30, Accepted. Location: Zoom, calendar Apple: Family.”
From any event you have two quick ways to see more:
If you prefer each row spoken with field labels (“Subject …, when …, location …”) instead of the concise form, turn on Show field labels in the calendar event list in Settings → General. It takes effect immediately.
Invitations you receive by email show in the calendar with a Pending status until you answer them. You can respond without opening the email:
QuickMail sends your reply to the organizer from the account that received the invitation and updates the appointment’s status, so it no longer shows as pending. Accept, Tentative, and Decline are also in the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) when a pending invitation is selected.
You can also answer from the email itself. Open the invitation and the message starts with a short card giving the title, when the meeting is, where, and who organized it, followed by Accept, Tentative, and Decline. The card is worth reading even when you plan to answer elsewhere: for many invitations it is the only place the date and time appear at all — a meeting sent from Outlook for a Zoom call is a body of join links and dial-in numbers, and the when is carried in the attachment rather than written out. The card appears however you have QuickMail set to open messages, and in a message window the three responses are on that window’s Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) as well.
Press N (or the New toolbar button) to open the appointment editor. It is a normal window you can tab through:
Press Enter (or the Save button) to save, or Escape to cancel. If something is wrong, QuickMail puts focus on the field at fault and shows the reason on an error line above the buttons; the message clears itself as soon as you fix it.
Every date and time field in the appointment editor works the same way, and so does the date in Go to date. Each one is an ordinary edit field: you can type into it, and you can change it with the arrow keys without typing anything.
In a date field:
| Key | Moves by |
|---|---|
| Up / Down arrow | One day |
| Shift+Up / Shift+Down | One week |
| Page Up / Page Down | One month |
| Ctrl+Page Up / Ctrl+Page Down | One year |
In a time field:
| Key | Moves by |
|---|---|
| Up / Down arrow | 15 minutes, landing on the quarter hour |
| Ctrl+Up / Ctrl+Down | One minute |
| Shift+Up / Shift+Down | One hour |
| Page Up / Page Down | One hour |
| Ctrl+Page Up / Ctrl+Page Down | One day |
Stepping a time past midnight moves the date with it, so 11:50 PM stepped up becomes 12:00 AM the next day.
You can also just type. Moving to one of these fields with the keyboard selects the value it is holding, so the first thing you type replaces it rather than being added on to the end of it. If you leave the field part-way through typing and come back to it, what you had typed is still there and still where you left it. Dates accept “8/3”, “August 3”, “2026-08-03”, “today”, “tomorrow”, “friday”, “next tuesday”, a bare day number like “3” for that day of the month shown, and offsets like “+7”, “-3”, “+2w”, “+1m”, “+1y”. Times accept “9”, “930”, “9:30”, “9:30 AM”, “9p”, “14:30”, “noon”, “midnight”, and offsets like “+30” or “-15”. Press Enter or move to another field to apply what you typed; if it isn’t something QuickMail can read as a date or a time, the field puts its previous value back.
The end follows the start. When you change the start date or start time, the end moves by the same amount, so a 30-minute appointment stays 30 minutes long and you are never sent back to fix an end you didn’t touch. Changing the end directly sets a new length, which the start then preserves from that point on.
In the editor’s Repeat field choose Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly. You can then set:
When you later edit or delete one occurrence of a repeating appointment, QuickMail asks whether you mean this event only or all events in the series:
What you can change depends on where the appointment lives:
If saving a change to an online account ever fails, QuickMail saves your appointment to the Local Calendar instead so your work is never lost, and tells you it did.
Some events on a connected calendar are managed by the provider itself, not by you, and the provider refuses to let any outside mail or calendar program edit or delete them. Google is the one you are most likely to meet. Its protected events are:
Pressing Delete or saving an edit on one of these fails, and QuickMail currently reports it only as “Could not update your online calendar.” The event is not damaged and nothing is lost — Google simply declined the change. A clearer message naming the reason is planned.
What to do instead, depending on the event:
After making the change on the provider’s side, press F5 in the calendar (or run Sync Calendars Now) to pull the corrected events down.
Repeating events from a connected calendar, and meeting invitations, are read-only in QuickMail for a different reason — QuickMail does not write those back yet. In those cases QuickMail tells you so before anything is attempted.
Reminders are off by default. To turn them on, open Settings → General, check Remind me before appointments, and set the Minutes before value (10 by default). When a reminder is due, QuickMail shows a Windows notification and announces it, telling you how long until the appointment and where it is. Each reminder fires once per session.
There is a single reminder lead time for all appointments; per-appointment reminder times and snoozing are not offered.
To share an appointment as a standard calendar file, select it and
choose Export Appointment as .ics from the command
palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) or the toolbar/menu. QuickMail
writes a .ics file you can send to someone or import
elsewhere. (Exporting one occurrence of a repeating appointment exports
the whole series.) This action has no default keyboard shortcut, but you
can assign one in File → Settings → Keyboard
Shortcuts.
To bring appointments from a .ics file into QuickMail —
a booking confirmation, a conference or school schedule, or an export
from another calendar program — choose File → Import Calendar
File (.ics)…, the same item on the Calendar node’s context menu
in the folder tree, or Import Calendar File (.ics)…
from the command palette (Ctrl+Shift+P). Choose one or
more files in the Open dialog and press Enter.
The appointments go into the Local Calendar, where you can edit and delete them like any appointment you created. When the import finishes, QuickMail shows the calendar with the first imported appointment selected and tells you how many were imported, for example “Imported 12 appointments to Local Calendar. 1 skipped.”
Import is a one-time copy: later changes to the original calendar do not follow. Reminders use your usual reminder setting, not any alarms in the file. This action has no default keyboard shortcut, but you can assign one in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.
Press Ctrl+Shift+S while the calendar is open to search. Type to filter the list by title, location, or notes; the count of matches is announced as you type. Press Escape to clear the search and return to the full list.
When you open an email that contains a meeting invitation, QuickMail adds an event card to the top of the message with three buttons: Accept, Tentative, and Decline. Choosing one sends your reply to the organizer and updates your calendar right away — no restart or refresh needed. If the invitation has been cancelled by the organizer, the card says so instead of offering buttons, and the matching calendar entry is removed. From the calendar list, pressing Enter on an invitation-based event opens the original email it came from.
Calendars connect per account, the same way contact sync does. When you add an email account — or later, in Manage Accounts — check Sync calendar from this account and QuickMail shows that account’s calendar in the Calendar view. Nothing is synced until you check the box, and unchecking it removes that account’s events again. The checkbox is offered for the providers QuickMail can read:
| Provider | See your events | Create / edit / delete from QuickMail | Setup |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local Calendar | — (they live here) | Full | Nothing to set up; it is always there. |
| Microsoft (Outlook.com, Microsoft 365) | Yes | Yes, for single (non-repeating) events | Check Sync calendar from this account. Microsoft asks once for calendar permission. |
| Yes | Yes, for single (non-repeating) events | Check Sync calendar from this account. Permission was granted when you signed in for mail. | |
| iCloud | Yes | Yes, for single (non-repeating) events | Check Sync calendar from this account. QuickMail uses the app-specific password you already entered for the account — no separate setup. |
When you create an appointment you can choose which of an account’s calendars it goes on — see the Calendar picker under Creating an appointment. This works for Microsoft, Google and iCloud alike; Microsoft and Google additionally let you say “this account’s usual calendar” without naming one.
Turning it on for an account you already have: open Manage Accounts, select the account, and check Sync calendar from this account. It applies immediately — a Calendar → [account] node appears in the folder tree and the events sync in the background. Unchecking it removes them.
Connected calendars refresh automatically in the background (roughly every 15 minutes, and once shortly after startup), and again whenever you open the calendar, so an appointment you added somewhere else is there when you look. The list opens straight away from what QuickMail already has and folds in anything new when the account answers; opening the calendar again within half a minute reuses what it just fetched rather than asking again. Press F5 to refresh on demand, or use Sync Calendars Now from the command palette. Syncing is a one-directional download plus, for Microsoft and Google, the single-event write-back described above; it never opens a sign-in prompt on its own — if an account needs you to sign in again for calendar access, QuickMail tells you.
To set expectations clearly:
It does:
.ics file..ics files into the Local Calendar.It does not (yet):
.ics calendar feeds (holidays,
sports schedules, and the like).By default, invitations you have declined are
hidden. Showing them is an advanced option set in the configuration file
(ShowDeclinedEvents) and takes effect after a restart.
Repeating appointments are expanded for browsing from about a week ago through the next twelve months; events far outside that window may not appear in the continuous Agenda list until you navigate to their date.
These work while the calendar list (or, where noted, the Month grid) has focus:
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl+Shift+C |
Open the Calendar |
A / D / W /
M |
Agenda / Day / Week / Month view |
T |
Today (filter to today in Agenda; jump to today in Day/Week/Month) |
Ctrl+Left / Ctrl+Right |
Previous / next day, week, or month |
Ctrl+G |
Go to Date |
Enter |
Respond to a pending invitation (Accept / Tentative / Decline menu); or edit your own appointment; or open an answered invitation’s source email; or (in Month view) open the selected day |
N |
New appointment |
E |
Edit appointment |
Delete |
Delete appointment |
Ctrl+Shift+S |
Search appointments |
Escape |
Clear search / leave the calendar |
F5 |
Refresh |
F6 |
Move to the next pane |
Export as .ics, the invitation responses (Accept,
Tentative, Decline), and the two default-calendar
commands are available from the command palette
(Ctrl+Shift+P) and have no default key until you assign
one.
QuickMail talks to your accounts for three kinds of information — mail, contacts, and calendar — and it treats each one differently. Everything else QuickMail knows about is stored on this computer and never leaves it.
The direction matters, so it is worth being blunt about it: a two-way item is safe to change in QuickMail, and the change reaches your account and every other program you read mail with. A download only item is a copy — changing it in QuickMail either is not offered, or would be undone the next time QuickMail refreshed. This computer only means exactly that: reinstall Windows or move to a second machine and you start over.
| What | Direction | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Messages | Two-way | Read and unread, moving between folders, deleting, and sending all go to the server. Another program sees the same state. POP3 accounts are the exception — the protocol has nowhere to record any of it, so everything but sending stays on this computer. See POP3 accounts. |
| The built-in flag | Two-way | Set or cleared in QuickMail, it shows up everywhere else, and a message flagged elsewhere arrives here already flagged. |
| Named flags you create | This computer only | The name and color exist in QuickMail alone. Other programs, and QuickMail on another computer, will not see them. |
| Contacts | Download only | QuickMail reads your Microsoft, Google, and iCloud contacts and never writes back. Synced contacts cannot be edited or deleted in the address book — make the change at the account and re-sync. |
| Calendar events | Mostly two-way | Single (non-repeating) events on a connected calendar can be created, edited, and deleted from QuickMail. Repeating events, meeting invitations, and the events your provider manages for you are download only. |
| Meeting responses | Two-way | Accept, Tentative, and Decline are emailed to the organizer and update your calendar. |
| Client-side mail rules | This computer only | They run inside QuickMail as mail arrives. They are not server-side rules — your provider does not know about them, and they do nothing while QuickMail is closed. |
| Server-side mail rules | Two-way | Only on a work or school Microsoft 365 account, and not on a shared mailbox, whose rules are managed in Outlook. They live on your Exchange mailbox, so they run while QuickMail is closed and apply wherever you read that mailbox. Your organization may need to allow QuickMail to manage them, and a rule the server marks read-only cannot be changed here. See Microsoft 365: server-side rules. |
| The Outbox | This computer only, until sent | Messages and drafts queued while the server was unreachable wait in QuickMail’s data folder and go to your account the next time it connects. No other program sees them until then. See Working Offline: Drafts and the Outbox. |
| Everything else in QuickMail | This computer only | Settings, themes, keyboard customizations, signatures, message templates, saved views, message-list field choices, contact groups, and the contacts you typed in yourself. |
That is nearly always a download-only item. QuickMail refreshed from the account, the account still had the old version, and the old version won. The fix is the same in every case: make the change where the item actually lives — your account’s own contacts or calendar on the web — and then refresh QuickMail (Sync Now in the address book, F5 in the calendar).
Your mail, your contacts, and your connected calendars come back on
their own once you add your accounts again, because they live on the
server. The This computer only rows above do not:
client-side rules, flags you named, templates, signatures, saved views,
and your settings are stored in QuickMail’s data folder
(%APPDATA%\QuickMail) and need to be copied across if you
want them.
A POP3 account is the exception
to the first sentence. If it is set to remove mail from the
server once collected, the server has nothing left to give back and
mail.db in that data folder is your mail — copy it across,
or back it up, like any other document.
QuickMail keeps a copy of your recent mail on this computer, and when the connection drops you keep reading it. The status bar’s connection label reads Offline; screen readers hear “Offline. Showing cached messages.” once, and “Back online.” when the connection returns. QuickMail waits a few seconds before saying Offline, so a momentary blip never interrupts you.
When you open a folder offline the status bar reads “Offline — showing 12 cached messages.” or “Offline — no cached messages in Projects.” It never sits on “Loading…”.
By default QuickMail keeps the full text of a message only once you have opened it, or when it fetched a few ahead of time. To have more ready before the connection drops, choose a window under Settings → General → Sync → Download messages for offline reading: Off (the default); the last 7, 30 or 90 days; the last 6 months or year; or All mail.
With a window set, the sync at launch and each background check (Check for new mail every) finish by downloading the text of each Inbox message in that window that QuickMail does not have yet, newest first, a few hundred at a time; new mail arriving in the Inbox gets its text straight away. When a pass completes you hear “Downloaded 120 messages for offline reading.” once. A few things to know:
mail.db in QuickMail’s data folder,
which grows accordingly — roughly tens of megabytes for a month of a
busy Inbox, so a year or all mail can run to hundreds of megabytes or
more.Nothing to press. When Windows reports the network again QuickMail reconnects every account by itself; if the network is up but the server does not answer (a hotel or airport sign-in page, an outage at the provider), it keeps trying on its own, first every half minute and then every five. F5 forces an attempt at any time. Once something answers, the folder you are looking at refreshes and anything waiting in the Outbox goes out.
New-mail notifications and the option to keep QuickMail running in the notification area when you close the window are both off by default. To turn them on, go to Settings → General → Notifications.
When this setting is on, QuickMail shows a Windows notification as new mail arrives in any inbox. The notification is announced by screen readers and appears in the Windows notification center, which you open with Win+N on Windows 11 (or Win+A on Windows 10). Pressing Enter on a notification brings QuickMail to the foreground and opens that message.
If multiple messages arrive together, the notification shows a count (“5 new messages”) and brings QuickMail to the foreground when activated. Single-message notifications show the sender’s name and subject and open that message.
Shared mailboxes are an exception: they do not notify by default, even with this setting on, because a shared mailbox is often a busy team address. To get notifications for a specific shared mailbox, turn on Notify me of new mail in this shared mailbox for it in Account Manager. This setting still has to be on for those notifications to appear. See Shared mailboxes.
Notifications require Windows 10 1809 or later.
When this setting is on, closing the main window hides QuickMail to the notification area (system tray) instead of exiting, so it keeps running and new-mail notifications continue to arrive. To restore the window:
To quit when this setting is on:
The first time you hide the window to the tray, a notification explains that QuickMail is still running — this message appears once only.
The Tools menu is always available from the main window menu bar and groups together the commands used less often than day-to-day mail actions:
Ctrl+Shift+B)Ctrl+Shift+L) — opens the Rules Manager.Ctrl+Shift+P)Choosing how QuickMail looks and reads is on the View menu, not here — Manage Themes… opens the Theme Manager, Density sets message list density, and Message List Fields… opens the field chooser. Next Theme and Previous Theme have no menu items; run them from the Command Palette, or give them a key of your own in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.
Connection Diagnostics records what QuickMail is doing when it talks to your mail servers, so a problem that is hard to describe can be looked at directly instead of guessed at.
It is off by default and most people will never need it. While it is off, nothing is recorded, no log file is created, no connections are made on its behalf, and no Connection Diagnostics item appears in the Help menu.
Turn it on if:
It is a troubleshooting tool, not something to leave on. Turn it off again once you have what you need.
Recording starts immediately — you do not need to restart QuickMail first. That matters when a problem is happening right now, since restarting would clear the very thing you are trying to capture.
Once it is on, Connection Diagnostics appears in the Help menu.
Open it from Help → Connection Diagnostics. Focus starts in the accounts list.
Accounts lists every account with two things: the status QuickMail is currently showing for it, and what its mail server actually said the last time it was checked. When those two disagree, the list says so in plain words — for example that an account shown as disconnected answered normally, which means the status is wrong rather than the connection.
Test this account — press Enter on an account, or use the button, to check it right now. QuickMail opens a brand-new connection that shares nothing with the connections it is already using, signs in, and reads your Inbox. The result is announced and added to the list. This is the question the window exists to answer: whether the problem is your connection or what QuickMail is reporting about it.
Connection events is the running record, newest first. Each line is one event — a connection being opened, reused, or dropped, a sign-in failing, a status changing. The dropdown above the list filters it to a single account.
Copy report puts a complete report on the clipboard. Save report writes it to a text file. Either can be attached to a bug report or pasted into an email.
Keyboard: F6 and Shift+F6 move between the accounts list, the events list, and the buttons. Ctrl+Shift+P opens the command palette. Escape closes the window and returns focus to where you were.
Your account names may be your email addresses, and your mail server names identify your provider, so it is worth knowing that before you share a report. If you would rather not send one, describe what you saw instead — that is still useful.
The record is written to connection.log in your profile
directory (usually %APPDATA%\QuickMail), next to
QuickMail’s other settings. It is capped in size and older entries are
discarded, so it cannot grow without limit — a full session of ordinary
use produces roughly 50 KB.
Recording stops as soon as you turn the setting off. To remove what has already been recorded, use Delete QuickMail logs on the Advanced tab, which deletes the connection log along with the application log.
QuickMail improves because people report problems and suggest changes. There are three ways to do it. They mostly differ in one thing: whether you can be contacted for follow-up. Pick whichever fits.
| Way | Where | Follow-up? | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Report a Bug → Send | Help menu, in QuickMail | No | You want to report a problem but don’t want any follow-up. |
| 2. Report a Bug → Copy report and open GitHub | Help menu, in QuickMail | Yes (via GitHub) | You have a GitHub account and want automatic filing plus direct contact. |
| 3. Email | support@theideaplace.net |
Yes (by email) | You’d rather use email and want a personal reply. |
Choose Report a Bug from the Help menu (it’s also in the command palette). A report window opens with a Summary and — all optional — What happened, What you expected, and Steps to reproduce. A Preview area always shows exactly what will be sent, built fresh from those fields as you type.
Press Send. QuickMail files the report for you and shows a link to the issue it created.
Because a Send report includes no email address or other identifying information, there is no way for anyone to follow up with you about it. Choose this option when you want to report something but don’t want any direct follow-up.
In the same Report a Bug window, choose Copy report and open GitHub instead of Send. QuickMail copies the report to your clipboard and opens a pre-filled new-issue page on GitHub. You submit it there under your own GitHub account, so your GitHub contact information is attached and you’ll be notified as the issue is discussed.
Choose this option when you have a GitHub account and want automatic bug reporting plus the ability to be contacted and to follow along.
If you’d rather not use the in-app tool at all, email support@theideaplace.net. Describe the problem in your own words — the more detail (what you did, what happened, what you expected), the better.
Choose this option when you don’t mind sending an email and want a personal follow-up.
Alongside what you type, an in-app report (options 1 and 2) adds a
short Environment section so a problem can be
reproduced in the right context: the QuickMail version, your Windows
version, the .NET runtime version, the active color theme, the current
view, the current sort order, the message open mode (reading pane, tab,
or window), and how many accounts you have set up together with the mail
protocols they connect over — for example
2 (IMAP, Microsoft 365). Any shared mailboxes are counted
separately, as in 2 (Microsoft 365), plus 1 shared mailbox,
since a shared mailbox is not one of your own accounts. That last line
is counts and protocol names only: no address, server name, or account
name is included.
No message content, email addresses, account settings, passwords, or log file content is ever collected or sent. The Preview shows the full report verbatim, so you always see exactly what is included before it leaves your computer.
Press Ctrl+, to open Settings.
Accounts are not part of Settings — they have a window of their own. Open File → Manage Accounts… to add, edit, test, or remove one. See Accounts.
Account Sign-In
Account Types
QuickMail Logging
quickmail.log in your profile directory
(usually %APPDATA%\QuickMail). Uncheck to stop writing the
log file. Changes take effect when you select
Save.quickmail.log), the connection diagnostics log
(connection.log), and any screenshots saved by the debug
capture option below. If logging or connection diagnostics are still on,
new files are created the next time something is recorded.Note: If QuickMail was launched with the
/debugflag, logging always runs regardless of the Enable logging setting. The/debugflag is intended for diagnosing problems and overrides this preference so that nothing is missed.
Log Format
Controls the order of timestamp and message text in each log line. Action first (default) places the message before the timestamp, which is easier to scan since the log is already in chronological order. Time first uses the original format with the timestamp at the start of each line.
Connection Diagnostics
Diagnostics (debug)
Reassign shortcuts for any registered command.
Choose how QuickMail looks and adjust it to your vision needs.
Theme — the color scheme for the whole app:
Theme changes apply immediately — no restart. Open messages re-render in the new colors.
Font — override the app font. (Theme default) uses the theme’s own font.
Text size — a dropdown with fixed stops at 100%, 110%, 125%, 150%, 175%, and 200%, independent of Windows display scaling.
Message List Density — Comfortable (the default) or Compact, changing how much space each message row takes. The same choice is on the View menu under Density; see Message List Density. It changes spacing only, never what a row says.
Vision settings:
Windows High Contrast: when High Contrast is on, QuickMail steps aside entirely — every color comes from your Windows High Contrast palette, and QuickMail’s own styling is withdrawn. Your theme choice is remembered and returns when High Contrast is turned off. Font and text-size settings continue to apply.
See Themes for the Theme Manager and a description of each built-in theme.
Control which categories of announcements QuickMail makes:
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Custom Announcements | Master on/off for all programmatic announcements |
| Announce hints | Instructional tips (“Press Escape to return”) |
| Announce status | Background progress (sync, loading, connection state) |
| Announce results | Action outcomes (messages copied, addresses saved, flag changes) |
| Announce delete, archive and move actions | Delete, archive and move outcomes that are worth saying: a count when you acted on several at once (“3 messages deleted”), and “Folder is now empty”. Deleting, archiving or moving a single message says nothing either way — the row is gone and the next one is read, so there is nothing left to tell you. Failures are announced as results, so they are heard even with this turned off, as long as Announce action results is on |
| Announce formatting while navigating | Block type announced when caret enters a new paragraph type in HTML compose |
| Announce spelling errors when typing | Misspellings called out as you type them |
| Announce spelling errors while navigating | Misspellings called out as you move the cursor through the message |
| Announce spelling suggestions | Suggestions included when a misspelling is announced |
| Spelling Suggestions Verbosity | Numbers with suggestions (default) or just suggestions |
| Show field labels in the contact list | When on, address-book rows speak field names (“Name … email … account …”); when off, they speak concise field data only |
| Show field labels in the calendar event list | When on, calendar rows speak field names (“Subject … when … location …”) |
| Show field labels in the rules list | When on, rules-list rows speak field names (“Rule … runs … status …”) |
All settings default to on except the three Show field labels switches and Announce spelling errors when typing, which are off. Spelling Suggestions Verbosity defaults to Numbers with suggestions. Turn off Custom Announcements to silence everything at once; turn it back on to restore your individual preferences.
Message list rows are set elsewhere. What each row in a message list says, in what order, and whether those pieces are labelled, is set in View → Message List Fields… rather than here. See Message List Fields.
QuickMail’s color scheme is controlled through Settings → Appearance (see Settings) and managed in more detail through the Theme Manager.
Choose Manage Themes… from the View menu, or open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) and choose Manage Themes. The Theme Manager is a separate, non-blocking window, so you can leave it open while you try a theme against real messages. From the theme list, press Tab to reach the actions:
.quickmailtheme file to share or move to another
machine..quickmailtheme file.
If a theme file has a problem, QuickMail tells you exactly what is wrong
(for example, which color value is not a valid hex color).Below the theme list and actions, a read-only Theme description box always shows a plain-language account of the currently selected theme — its overall look, its fonts, and every individual color together with where in the app that color is used. This box is there so you can understand and compare themes by ear or by reading, without needing to see the colors. See Built-in Themes below for the description of each theme that ships with QuickMail.
The Command Palette also offers Next Theme and Previous Theme to cycle through themes, and a Theme: [name] command for each theme. None of these have a default keyboard shortcut — assign one in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts if you want direct access.
Editing a theme by hand: a theme is a plain,
documented JSON text file. Duplicate a built-in theme, choose
Open themes folder, and edit the copy in any text
editor. Colors are hex values like #3D5A80; any color you
leave out is filled in from the built-in Light or Dark theme (whichever
the file’s base names). A typical minimal theme:
{
"formatVersion": 1,
"id": "my-theme",
"name": "My Theme",
"base": "light",
"colors": {
"accent": "#8F4531",
"windowBackground": "#FBF7F2"
},
"typography": { "fontFamily": "Segoe UI", "baseFontSize": 13 }
}The full color token list: windowBackground,
surfaceBackground, chromeBackground,
inputBackground, border,
borderSubtle, inputBorder,
textPrimary, textSecondary,
textDisabled, textOnAccent,
accent, accentSubtle, hyperlink,
selectionBackground, selectionText,
selectionInactive, focusIndicator,
error, errorBackground, warning,
warningBackground, success,
successBackground, info,
infoBackground. Edits take effect the next time the theme
is applied (reopen the Theme Manager and choose Apply, or restart).
QuickMail ships with six themes. System follows Windows; the other five are always available regardless of your Windows setting. Each description below is a shorter version of what the Theme Manager’s Theme description box reads for that theme — open the Theme Manager and select a theme to hear or read the full breakdown, including every individual color and exactly where it is used (message list, links, selection, focus outline, error/warning/success text, and so on).
System — follows the Windows light or dark setting. Whichever it resolves to today, it currently displays the same colors as Parchment (below): an off-white background, very dark cool-gray text, and a dark muted-blue accent.
In every theme, the selected item in a list or tree is a solid band of the theme’s accent color with white text, so the current message is unmistakable; supporting text (previews, timestamps, unread counts) is a step lighter than body text but kept clearly readable; and a thin divider separates message rows.
Parchment (light, default) — an off-white background (Snow) with very dark cool-gray text and a dark muted-blue accent (Dark Slate Blue) used for buttons, the unread marker, and the selected item. Panels and toolbars use warm off-white tones (White Smoke, Linen); links are medium blue. This is QuickMail’s standard light look.
Parchment Dark — the dark counterpart to Parchment: a very dark gray background with light gray text and a light muted-blue accent. The selected item is a medium-blue band with white text. Panels and toolbars use slightly lighter dark-gray tones for depth; links are light blue. Status colors (error, warning, success, information) are lightened versions of Parchment’s, chosen for contrast against the dark background.
Ember — a warm light theme: a warm off-white background (Floral White) with very dark cool-gray text and a dark red accent (Sienna) in place of Parchment’s blue. The selected item is a terracotta band with white text. Links remain medium blue for consistency across themes.
Fjord — a cool light theme: an off-white background with a faint cool cast (Ghost White) and a dark muted-cyan accent (Dark Slate Gray) in place of Parchment’s blue. The selected item is a dark teal band with white text.
Heather — a muted light theme: an off-white background (Ghost White) with a cool gray accent (Dim Gray) instead of a saturated color. The selected item is a plum-gray band with white text. This is the most subdued of the built-in themes.
The four light themes are close cousins. Ember, Fjord, and Heather each change only four colors from Parchment: the main window background tint, the accent color, the soft accent-fill color, and the selection color (which matches the accent, so selection is where each theme’s personality shows most). Everything else — panels and toolbars, borders, body and secondary text, the medium-blue hyperlink color, the focus outline, and the four status colors (error, warning, success, information) — is inherited unchanged from Parchment. Parchment Dark is the only theme with a fully dark palette.
Each row in a message list is spoken as a single line — sender, subject, date, and so on. View → Message List Fields… lets you decide which of those pieces are spoken and in what order. It is also in the command palette as Message List Fields…. It has no keyboard shortcut of its own; assign one in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts if you want one.
Open it and you get a list of every available field, each one a real check box. Check a field to have it spoken, uncheck it to leave it out, and move it to change where it falls in the line.
| Key | Action |
|---|---|
Up / Down |
Move between fields; stops at the first and last one |
Space |
Turn the focused field on or off |
Alt+Up / Alt+Down |
Move the focused field earlier or later in the spoken order |
Home / End |
First / last field |
| a letter | Jump to the next field starting with that letter; press again to reach the next match |
F6 / Shift+F6 |
Cycle: Row type, Fields, Field options, Spoken preview, buttons |
Ctrl+Shift+P |
This window’s own command palette |
Escape |
Close |
Move Up, Move Down, Reset to Defaults, and Close are buttons as well. Moving a field says where it landed — “Moved down. Position 4 of 13.” — and adds “Not spoken” when the field you moved is switched off, so a move that changes nothing you can hear says so.
The Spoken preview box at the bottom shows the message you had selected when you opened the window, read exactly as the list would read it, updating as you go.
There is no OK or Cancel — changes save as you make them, and take effect immediately. The window is modeless, so you can leave it open, arrow through the message list behind it, and hear the result.
The Row type list at the top chooses which kind of row you are editing. Each keeps its own arrangement:
| Field | Speaks |
|---|---|
| Flag | The flag’s name, when the message is flagged |
| Status (combined) | One word: “replied”, “forwarded”, “unread”, or “read” |
| Attachments | “attachments” |
| From, Subject, Preview, Date, To | The field’s text |
| Source folder | Where the message lives — only in aggregate views such as All Archive, where it is account-qualified when the view spans accounts |
| Unread, Replied, Forwarded | Each state on its own, so you can arrange them separately |
| Mailing list | “mailing list” |
Conversation groups offer Subject, Message count, Sender, Flag, Has unread, Preview, and Date. Sender and recipient groups offer Sender, Message count, Flag, Has unread, Preview, Date, and Newest subject. A message count is spoken as “1 message” or “3 messages”.
Fields such as Unread, Replied, and Attachments are states rather than text, so selecting one offers a choice:
This is how you get “tell me about unread but never say read”: turn Status (combined) off, turn Unread on, and leave it on Speak only when true. Fields with no meaningful opposite — Attachments, for example — stay silent when false in either mode.
Status (combined) and the separate states overlap. Both say the word “unread”, so turning on Unread while Status (combined) is still on says it twice. Whenever that would happen, the About this field note in the options pane says so and tells you which one to turn off. The note is a focusable box, so it is reachable from the keyboard rather than being text only a sighted user would notice.
Speak field labels prefixes each text field with its name, so a row reads “From: Chris Lee. Subject: Budget review.” rather than “Chris Lee. Budget review.” It applies to all three row types. States and counts are never labelled, since “unread” and “3 messages” already say what they are.
Reset to Defaults restores the shipped arrangement for the row type you are currently editing, leaving the other two alone.
Until you change anything, rows read the way they always have. Empty fields are skipped rather than leaving a gap, so a message with no preview or no subject reads without a pause where it would have been.
This window replaces the old Announce flag status checkbox in Settings — the flag is now the Flag field here, which you can turn off, or move anywhere in the line. If you had that checkbox turned off, the Flag field starts out turned off to match; from then on this window owns the choice.
QuickMail uses UIA Notification events (the correct API for desktop screen readers on Windows 10 and later) rather than ARIA live regions, which only work in web browsers.
Every announcement is optional and controlled by the settings above. No custom screen reader scripting is required; the app works out of the box with any screen reader.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
F6 / Shift+F6 |
Cycle panes forward / backward |
Ctrl+1 |
Focus account list |
Ctrl+2 |
Focus folder tree |
Ctrl+3 |
Focus message list |
Ctrl+9 |
Focus status bar |
Ctrl+Shift+P |
Command palette |
Ctrl+N |
New message |
Ctrl+R |
Reply |
Ctrl+Shift+R |
Reply All |
Ctrl+Shift+F |
Forward |
Delete |
Delete |
Ctrl+Shift+M |
Move to Archive (the account’s Archive folder) |
Ctrl+Q |
Mark as Read |
Ctrl+S |
Save the selected messages (default format and folder) |
F12 |
Save As |
Ctrl+P |
|
Ctrl+A |
Select all messages (message list) |
Alt+Enter |
Message properties |
F5 |
Refresh |
Ctrl+Shift+E |
Empty Trash |
Ctrl+Shift+W |
Watch / unwatch the selected message’s conversation |
K |
Toggle flag |
Ctrl+Shift+K |
Pick flag |
Ctrl+Shift+S |
Search messages |
Ctrl+Shift+Y |
Search folders |
Ctrl+Shift+V |
View menu |
Ctrl+Shift+H |
Toggle Plain Text View |
Ctrl+Shift+U |
Load Pictures (from the web, for the open message) |
Ctrl+Shift+G |
Grab Addresses from Message |
Ctrl+Shift+B |
Address Book |
Ctrl+Shift+L |
Rules Manager |
Ctrl+, |
Settings |
F1 |
User Guide |
Alt+Down |
Next unread message |
Alt+Up |
Previous unread message |
Shift+, |
First message in group |
Shift+. |
Last message in group |
Escape |
Close contact mail results (message list focus) |
Move to Folder… and Copy to Folder… are available from the context menu (Shift+F10) or the command palette; they have no default keyboard shortcut. Manage Themes, Next Theme, Previous Theme, Message List Fields…, Density: Comfortable, Density: Compact, Manage Flags…, Expand Folder, Collapse Folder, Expand All Folders, Collapse All Folders, and Report a Bug likewise have no default key — reach them from the menus or the command palette, or assign a shortcut yourself in File → Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts.
Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, and Ctrl+3
jump to a pane when no message tabs are open; with tabs open they select
tab 1, 2, and 3 instead. Ctrl+Alt+1,
Ctrl+Alt+2, and Ctrl+Alt+3 always go
to the account list, folder tree, and message list, whatever else is
open. Ctrl+0 moves to the toolbar.
Calendar (Ctrl+Shift+C to open):
A/D/W/M switch
views, T goes to today,
Ctrl+Left/Ctrl+Right move between periods,
Ctrl+G goes to a date,
N/E/Delete create/edit/delete
appointments, and Ctrl+Shift+S searches. See the Calendar section for the full list.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl+Enter |
Open message in new tab |
Ctrl+Tab |
Next tab |
Ctrl+Shift+Tab |
Previous tab |
Ctrl+W |
Close tab |
Ctrl+Shift+T |
Focus tab strip |
Ctrl+Shift+`` |
Tab list |
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
F6 / Shift+F6 |
Cycle between address fields, subject, and body |
Alt+U |
Focus Subject field |
Alt+M |
Focus From account |
Alt+Y |
Focus message body |
Alt+S or Ctrl+Enter |
Send |
Ctrl+Shift+1/2/3 |
Switch to Plain Text / Markdown / HTML mode |
F7 |
Check Spelling (full dialog) |
Ctrl+F7 / Ctrl+Shift+F7 |
Next / previous misspelling (inline) |
Alt+1 / Alt+2 / Alt+3 |
Accept first / second / third spelling suggestion |
F8 |
Open preview (Markdown and HTML) |
Ctrl+B |
Bold |
Ctrl+I |
Italic |
Ctrl+U |
Underline (HTML only) |
Ctrl+Shift+X |
Strikethrough |
Ctrl+Alt+0 |
Normal text |
Ctrl+Alt+1 to Ctrl+Alt+6 |
Heading 1 to 6 |
Ctrl+Shift+9 |
Quote |
Ctrl+Shift+L |
Bullet list |
Ctrl+Shift+N |
Numbered list |
Ctrl+K / Ctrl+L |
Insert link (Ctrl+K in the message body) |
Ctrl+Shift+I |
Insert image |
Alt+Enter |
Image properties (on a picture) |
Ctrl+Space |
Clear formatting |
Ctrl+T |
Announce formatting at cursor |
Ctrl+Shift+T |
Show formatting in browsable list |
Ctrl+Shift+A |
Add attachment |
Alt+A |
Focus attachment list |
Ctrl+K |
Check addresses (outside the message body) |
Ctrl+Shift+P |
Command palette |
Escape |
Close window (when no menu or dropdown is open) |
Insert Template… and Save as Template are available from the command palette; they have no default keyboard shortcut.