Reading Mail

Opening a Message

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.

Reading Pane

The reading pane renders HTML messages with WebView2. Links open in your default browser.

Images from remote sources are not loaded — fetching them tells the sender your address is live, which is what a tracking pixel in a newsletter is for. Where the sender wrote a description for a picture, QuickMail shows that description in its place, so a picture that is also a link reads by what it is (“Facebook link”) rather than by its web address. A picture the sender marked as decorative contributes nothing, which is what marking it that way asks for.

Press F6 or Shift+F6 to move between the reading pane and other panes.

Plain Text View

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:

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.”

Message Windows

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:

Deleting a message from its window closes the window and returns focus to the originating position in the message list.

Attachments on a Received Message

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:

• Press Alt+A to jump straight to it from anywhere in the open message. If the message has no attachments, QuickMail announces “No attachments.”
• Press Shift+Tab from the message body to step back into the header area; when the message has attachments, focus lands on the attachment list.

Once focus is on the list, arrow between attachments and use:

Message Properties

Press Alt+Enter on any message to open a properties window showing sender, recipients, date, size, and flags.

Marking as Read

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).

Deleting Messages

Press Delete. Deleted messages go to Trash. Press Ctrl+Shift+E to empty the Trash for the selected account.

Archiving Messages

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.

Tabs

QuickMail can open messages in tabs, keeping multiple messages visible at once.