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.