Reading mail

Mail is one conversation per row, newest first, with a one-line summary written for you. Everything you do to a conversation is one click or one key away.

Folders #

Inbox

New conversations. A reply to an archived conversation brings it back here. While it is empty it names the addresses that feed it, so a new teammate sees their work address and the shared inbox.

Pinned

Every pinned conversation that is not in Trash. It is a view, not a place: pinning never moves anything.

Drafts

Messages you started and replies drafted for you, newest first.

Scheduled

Letters waiting to go at a time you picked with the arrow beside Send, soonest first. Always listed, even when empty. See Sending later.

Sent

Every conversation you have sent into, wherever it lives now, except Trash. A message you start yourself appears here and in Archive, never in Inbox.

Archive

Conversations you are done with. A new reply moves them back to Inbox, unless they are filed in one of your folders: then the reply lands in that folder.

Spam

Conversations you marked as spam. New replies stay here.

Trash

Deleted conversations. They stay until you delete them for good or empty the trash.

Folders of your own

The eight above are fixed. Under Inbox sit the folders you make yourself — a tree of names over the same mail, up to three deep. Create folder… in the ⋯ of any row, Inbox's included, opens New folder, which asks for a Name and what to Create as a subfolder of — None puts it at the top. Renaming happens in the row itself: Enter saves, Escape gives up, and clicking away keeps what you typed.

The ⋯ at the right of any row. A fixed folder's menu leaves out what cannot apply to it — renaming, showing or hiding, deleting — and ends instead with a way to empty it:

Open in new tab · Copy link

Every folder has a link of its own, including the ones you made. Copy one and it opens that folder for anyone signed in to the workspace.

Refresh

Reloads the list and the folder counts together.

Create folder…

Opens New folder. From one of your folders it starts inside that folder; from a fixed folder, at the top. Either way you can pick any other parent.

Rename…

Your folders only. The row becomes an input.

Color

Any folder, fixed ones included. Twenty colors, Custom… for any other, or Default for none. The folder's outline takes the color and is filled with a light wash of it. The twenty are mid-tone on purpose so they read against the light sidebar and the dark one alike.

Show in sidebar

Always show, Hide if no unread, Hide if empty, or Always hide. The folder you have open always stays listed, with the folders it sits in, and any folded branch it is in unfolds. Hiding a folder hides what is inside it, and a link under Inbox says how many are hidden and brings them back — so hiding one is never a one-way door.

Delete

Your folders only, after a confirmation that says what will happen.

Empty a fixed folder

In Delete's place on the eight fixed folders, after a confirmation: Archive all in Inbox, Unpin all in Pinned, Delete all drafts in Drafts, Cancel all scheduled in Scheduled (each goes back to Drafts), Move all to Trash in Archive (your own folders are left alone), and Empty Spam and Empty Trash, which delete for good. Sent has none: it is every conversation you wrote in, wherever each one is filed.

• Filing a conversation takes it out of the inbox: a conversation in a folder and in the inbox is a conversation filed twice. Where it lands is the folder, and Archive is what is filed nowhere — so Archive never doubles as the folder that contains all the others.
• Trash and Spam still win. Throwing away something filed in a folder puts it in Trash, not in the folder, so nothing can be lost inside one.
• File from Move to in the open conversation, or from Move to… in the bar that appears when rows are selected. Both list your folders under the fixed ones. Every filing says so at the foot of the window and offers Undo.
• A folder's row counts what is filed in it; folded away, it counts its children's unread too.
• Hide if no unread is the setting worth knowing about: a folder that mail is filed into and then forgotten only appears on the days something lands in it.
• Two folders in the same place cannot share a name, and a folder cannot be moved inside itself.
• Deleting a folder never deletes mail. What was in it goes back to Archive, and any folders inside it move up a level. The confirmation says exactly how much of each.
• A reply to a conversation filed in one of your folders arrives in that folder, unread, rather than bringing the conversation back to the inbox. If that folder has since been deleted, the reply brings it back to Inbox as usual.
• A rule can file into one of them as well — see Filters.

• The sidebar shows the unread count next to Inbox, the number of drafts next to Drafts, and the number of letters waiting next to Scheduled, which turns the accent color when one of them failed to go. The rail and the phone's bar carry a dot instead of a number: it means the Inbox has something unread, and the count itself is in the sidebar a tap away. Unread conversations elsewhere are not counted.
• Switch folders in the sidebar or with chords: g then i Inbox, s Pinned, d Drafts, a Archive, t Trash. Folders of your own have no chord; they are a click in the sidebar, and each has a link of its own you can bookmark.

The conversation list #

• A row is two lines. The first has who is in the conversation (one sender by their whole name; several as up to three first names, then +N), a count when there is more than one message, and the time on the right — clock time today, the weekday for the last six days, then the date. The second has the subject. Turning Message previews on adds the AI summary in purple italics under that, or the first line of the last message until the summary exists.
• Unread conversations sit on a pale wash of the accent color and are set bolder. Small marks in front of the subject show a pin, an attachment, an AI draft waiting for you, an AI agent when some message in the conversation was written by an agent rather than a person, or a spinner while the AI is working on it.
• Hover a row for quick actions: archive, delete and pin. Hover the avatar at the left and it turns into a tick: click it to select the row.
• On a phone there is nothing to hover, so the rows, avatars and type are larger and a row shows a pin only when it has one. Pin a conversation from inside it — or swipe: a row pulled to the right is archived and one pulled to the left is deleted, the color behind the row saying which, and letting go before a fifth of the way does nothing. Keep going past the middle of the row for the second action of that side, if you have set one under Display. Hold a finger on a row to select it, pull the list down to check for new mail, and swipe in from the left edge to open the folders.
• The list loads 50 conversations at a time and fetches the next 50 as you near the end, or with Load more.
• On a computer the list header carries a Select all box on the left (it takes every conversation in the folder, loading the rest of a long list first, up to 1,000) and, on the right, the magnifier (see Search below), the funnel, the sort arrows and ⋯. The funnel filters the rows already loaded — All mail, Unread, Pinned, AI drafts or With AI agents (load more first if you are looking for something old); while one is on it is named beside the funnel, and it resets when you change folder.
• The arrows beside it hold Sort — newest first, oldest first, by sender or by subject — and Group, which decides whether pinned conversations are kept on top or sorted with the rest. Both are remembered between sessions.
• ⋯ holds everything else: Triage N unread when the Inbox has unread mail (the unread dealt out one card at a time, to keep or archive with a swipe or ← →), Select all, Refresh, Empty trash in the Trash folder, and how the list looks. On a phone the same menu is the ⋯ at the top right, with the filter and the sort in it too. It turns into a spinner while the list is reloading. The list also refreshes itself whenever mail arrives or changes.

The More menu #

The ⋯ in the list header also holds how the list and the reading pane look. These are per-browser and take effect straight away:

Reading pane

Side puts the conversation beside the list, Bottom under it, Off gives the list the whole window and opening a conversation replaces it.

Message previews

Off by default, which is what makes a row two lines. Below puts the first line (or the summary) on its own line, Inline puts it after the subject.

Density

Comfortable is the default. Compact tightens each row, and cuts a preview to one line where Comfortable lets it run to two. The type and the avatars stay the size they are either way. A phone ignores it: there every row is the height a thumb needs, whichever is chosen.

Hover actions

Turns off the archive / delete / pin cluster that appears on a row under the pointer.

Show avatars

Replaces the colored initials with a plain circle. It still turns into a tick for selecting.

Company logos for senders and contacts

Off by default. On, someone writing from a company address gets that company's logo in place of their initials, in the list and in Contacts. See Display for what that fetches.

Show a dividing line between rows

On by default: a hairline starting where the text does. Turning it off separates rows by whitespace instead. It applies to a wide window — on a phone the rows always divide.

The widths are dragged rather than set here. Pull the line between two panes to resize the one on its left, and double-click that line to put it back. The sidebar is one column shared by every app, so a width dragged in Mail is the width Chat, Contacts, Boards, Notes and Settings open with; the conversation list is its own. Both are remembered per browser, and Reset display settings in Display clears them with the rest.

Reading a conversation #

• Click a row, or press j and k, to open a conversation. Opening it marks it read.
• Messages you have not read, and the last message, open expanded; the rest collapse to one line. Click a message header to expand or collapse it.
• An expanded message shows the sender, the recipients and a details link: From, To, Cc, Reply-To, Date, the Message-ID and, for mail you received, Download .eml to save the original file.
• Messages you sent carry a you chip. Bounces, newsletters, notifications and other machine-sent mail carry an automated chip and never get a drafted reply. A message written by an AI agent — Ayoh Agent, or anyone's — carries an AI agent chip; see Agents and people for how that is decided.
• Attachments are listed under the message with their size; click one to download it. Images embedded in the message show inline. An attachment shown struck through in red was blocked — see Spam and dangerous attachments below.
• AI Overview and any Board › Column chips sit under the subject; a chip opens that board.
• Only one message in a conversation carries a security warning — the most recent one that earned it — rather than the same banner repeating down the thread.
• On a phone — and at any width with the reading pane off — the list and the conversation take turns; the back arrow returns to the list, and on a phone so does a swipe in from the left edge, the conversation sliding away under your finger. The list is still where you left it. Reply, Reply all, Forward and Draft with AI sit under the last message at every width. If a draft or a send fails, the message under the reply box scrolls into view.

AI Overview

• AI Overview under the subject folds out into a few bullets: what the conversation is about, what has been decided and what is being asked of you. It is written when you first open it, not before, and kept.
• When a new message arrives in the conversation, opening the overview writes it again to take it in.

Earlier messages in a reply

Most replies carry the whole conversation under them again. Ayoh folds that quoted history away behind a ••• button (Show trimmed content), so each message shows only what is new in it. Press it to see the rest; press it again to fold it back.

Reactions

• The emoji button beside Draft with AI reacts to the last message with one of 👍 ❤️ 😂 😮 😢 🙏 🎉 😀.
• A reaction goes out the way Gmail sends them: Gmail shows it on the message itself, and any other mail program shows a short email saying you reacted.
• Reactions people send you show as chips under the message they reacted to — with a count, and who, on hover — rather than as messages of their own. Tap one to add the same reaction.

Remote images #

Pictures that a message loads from the internet are blocked, because fetching them tells the sender that you opened the mail and when. The message shows Remote images are blocked to stop tracking; press Load images to fetch them for that message only, this time only. Invisible tracking pixels are removed outright, and a message's scripts, forms and styles never run.

Spam and dangerous attachments #

Cloudflare only accepts mail for your domain that passes SPF or is signed with DKIM, and records what it found. Ayoh reads that record and scores every message as it arrives.

• A message that fails those checks outright — the domain in the From line says it did not send it — starts a conversation in Spam, with the reasons written out in plain English.
• A message that only looks a bit off lands in your Inbox with a yellow warning above it that says, in plain words, the first reasons it earned it — a sender nobody vouched for, replies going to another domain. Press The checks (or more) for the rest, and the SPF / DKIM / DMARC result underneath.
• In the list, a conversation with a warned message carries a small yellow triangle before its subject, so you can see it before you open it.
• Borderline messages also get a second opinion from the AI, and so does the first mail from someone nobody in the workspace has written to — most spam passes the checks above, and almost all of it comes from a stranger. The AI can move one to Spam but never moves anything out of it. It is skipped when you turn AI off in an address's settings.
• Mail from someone you have written to, or who is in Contacts, is given more benefit of the doubt — but only when the checks prove it really came from them.
• The score also looks for a well-known brand in the sender's name on a domain that isn't the brand's, look-alike characters in a domain, links that show one address and go to another, link shorteners, and messages that are only a picture.
• Report spam teaches Ayoh the sender, the address replies would go to, and — unless it is a webmail domain like gmail.com, or one you write to — the sender's domain, so their next message goes to Spam whichever address it comes from. Not spam takes all of it back. The list is under Settings → Filters → Reported as spam.
• An established conversation is never moved to Spam because one new message scored badly — that message carries its own warning instead.
• Opening a conversation in Spam shows a Not spam button that moves it back to the Inbox.

Attachments are identified by what is actually inside them, not by the name or the type the sender claims. A file that can run code — a .exe, .js, .lnk, .jar and around fifty others, including ones hiding behind a double extension like invoice.pdf.exe — is blocked. It still arrives and is still kept, but the chip is struck through and downloading it takes a confirmation first. Everything else downloads rather than opening in the browser; only images, PDFs and plain text are shown in place.

What this does not do: Ayoh does not scan inside files for viruses. A macro in a Word document, a booby-trapped PDF or a payload inside a zip will reach you. Blocking the file types malware usually arrives as, and making sure nothing an email contains can run in your browser, is not the same as antivirus — treat attachments from people you do not know accordingly.

Acting on a conversation #

The toolbar above an open conversation offers, left to right:

Archive

Moves it to Archive. Hidden when it is already there. e

Delete

Moves it to Trash. # In Trash the button turns red, reads Delete forever, and deletes permanently after asking Delete permanently?. # does the same there.

Move to

A menu of Inbox, Archive, Spam and Trash, and under a rule the folders you made yourself, ticked at where the conversation is now — then New folder… and Add to board…, which files the conversation on a board as a card (b); a column that already holds a card for it says Open card and opens it, rather than filing it twice.

More

Mark as unread (u), mark as spam, move to Inbox when it is somewhere else, Filter messages like this…, Block sender or Block domain, and Redo summary and draft, which runs the AI summary and the drafted reply again.

Reply · Reply all · Forward

Open the reply box. r a f In a narrow pane they are under the last message instead; they are there at every width.

Pin

Beside the subject rather than in the bar: pins the conversation, or unpins it. s

Selecting several #

• Click the avatar on a row — it turns into a tick under the pointer — or press x with a conversation open. The checkbox in the list header selects everything currently shown.
• With a reading pane beside or under the list, the pane shows how many are selected, with a bar over it: Archive (not in Archive), Delete, Spam (Not spam in Spam, nothing in Trash), Move to (Inbox, Archive, Spam, Trash, your folders and New folder…) and More (Mark as read, Mark as unread, Pin, Unpin, and in Trash Report spam). With the pane off, a bar over the list says N selected and has archive, delete, mark read, mark unread, pin and Move to…. The × or Esc clears the selection.
• In Trash, Delete in either bar, #, and a swipe to delete on a phone all ask Delete permanently? and then remove the conversations for good.
• On a phone, hold a finger on a row to select it. A checkbox then appears on every row and a tap on a row ticks it rather than opening it. The bar at the top says how many are selected, with × to finish, and carries Archive, Delete, Mark as read or unread, and More (Pin or Unpin, Mark as spam or Not spam, Move to Inbox, then Move to any folder or New folder…); Select all is the row under it. In Trash, Delete asks first and deletes for good. The tab bar stays where it is.
• The keys e, # and u act on the selection while there is one, and otherwise on the open conversation.

Trash and deleting for good #

• Deleting from anywhere moves the conversation to Trash. Nothing is lost until you delete it again from inside Trash, or press Empty trash in the Trash folder; both ask you to confirm. Inside Trash, every way of deleting asks the same: the button, #, the selection bars and a swipe.
• Deleting for good removes the conversation, its messages, drafts, attachments and copilot history, and the stored original files.
• Pinned and Sent never show conversations that are in Trash.

Search #

• On a computer, the magnifier in the list header opens a search field over the list, and / does the same from anywhere. On a phone it is the magnifier at the top right. Either way the list narrows as you type.
• Esc, or the ✕ in the field, empties it and puts the whole folder back.
• Search looks through the subject, the people in the conversation (names and addresses), the AI summary, the preview line and the plain-text body of every message. It is a plain, case-insensitive substring match: no quotes, operators or from: filters. Type one anyway and the empty list says so and offers a one-tap search for the words left over.
• It searches the folder you are in — the placeholder says which one. To find an archived conversation, search in Archive. In Drafts and Scheduled the field narrows the list you already have, by subject, text and recipients, rather than asking the server. When the AI writes a reply, its own search covers the whole mailbox except Trash.
• A message that arrived as HTML only, with no plain-text version, is found by its subject, people and summary but not by the words in its body.

How messages are grouped #

• Replies are grouped by the headers mail programs add for the purpose (In-Reply-To and References).
• Without them, a message joins a conversation from the last 30 days whose subject matches once Re:, Fwd: and bracketed tags such as [Ticket 12] are ignored, provided the sender already takes part in it. Otherwise it starts a new conversation.
• A message delivered twice to the same mailbox, for example to an address and its catch-all, appears once.
• A message dated more than a day in the future is filed as arriving now.

Several addresses, one inbox #

Every address you read receives into the same inbox — one list across all your domains, the way Gmail and Fastmail work. Folders and drafts are the whole workspace's; contacts and boards are too. Each address keeps its own AI settings (Settings → Addresses).

• Which address a message goes out as is the composer's From row — it starts as the address a reply came to, and you can change it right up to Send without the letter moving. See Writing and sending.

Live updates #

A small dot in the window's top right corner says how the live connection is: green while it is up (on a computer only), amber while it reconnects, red while there is no connection. With Keep your work on this device for instant opening on (Settings → Display), Mail opens on your folders and the first 50 conversations of each folder as they were last time, while it checks for new ones. Searches are never kept. New mail, summaries and drafts appear on their own; Refresh in the list header's ⋯ reloads it by hand.