Changelog

+ New

• The message list works like Mail now. The selected message gets a full accent-colour highlight that stays put when the search field has focus, instead of a faint grey that was easy to lose
• Swipe a message left to move it to Trash, or right to flip it between read and unread
• A new button in the list header marks the selected messages read or unread, next to the Trash and Mark All as Read buttons. Select several messages, or everything with ⌘A, and it applies to all of them
• Show only unread mail with the new filter button in the list header. A message you open stays in the list while you read it, rather than vanishing the moment it's marked read

~ Improved

• Shrinking the window, or receiving a very wide email, no longer pushes the sidebar off the left edge. The sidebar and message list keep their width and the email pane is the one that gives way: the view tabs wrap onto a second row, and a phone or tablet preview scrolls sideways when the pane is narrower than the device
• The phone and tablet previews are drawn as a card at the device's width. The white page used to stretch across the whole pane with the email in one corner, between dark bands above and below

× Fixed

• The Trash button in the list header could look enabled and do nothing. It only counted rows highlighted in the list, and switching folders cleared that highlight while leaving the message open. It now deletes the open message when nothing else is selected, the same as Delete in the Message menu, and greys out when there is nothing to delete

+ New

• Preview an email in Light or Dark Mode without switching macOS. A new appearance menu in the toolbar sets the HTML preview to Light, Dark or Auto, and the email's own prefers-color-scheme styles follow it, so you can check both versions of a template one after the other. Auto follows macOS itself. The preview used to follow the app window, which InboxFox always draws dark, so an email with dark styles only ever showed its dark version inside a white frame

× Fixed

• The HTML / Text / Headers / Raw / Checks tabs could start off to the left, under the sidebar, with Checks hidden behind the device-width buttons. They were squeezed into a fixed width that stopped fitting once Checks was added, and toggling the sidebar or relaunching only hid the problem until next time. The tabs now take the width they need
• A licensing server problem no longer looks like a problem with your license. When the licensing service didn't recognise a request, InboxFox reported that your key didn't exist. It now says the problem is on our end, and your license keeps working in the meantime

+ New

• InboxFox speaks Mailpit's API. Every route the existing agent tooling already knows how to call answers here the same way, down to the status codes, so pointing a test harness or a coding agent at InboxFox instead is a change of one URL and nothing else. Listing, reading, searching, headers, attachments, raw source, read status and bulk deletes are all covered
• Connect Claude Code, or any other MCP client, with a single command: claude mcp add --transport http inboxfox http://127.0.0.1:8025/mcp. There is nothing to install and no second process to run, because the MCP server answers on the same port as the API. Thirteen tools cover reading, searching, sending, checking and deleting mail, and each one is described for an agent that has never seen InboxFox before
• Waiting for mail no longer means guessing. Ask InboxFox to wait for a message matching a search and it answers the moment one arrives. Checking that a password reset actually sent used to mean sleeping for a few seconds, looking, sleeping again, and hoping the wait was long enough for a slow machine. Now it is one call that returns as soon as the mail lands
• Attachments can be fetched over the API. Until now they could only be opened inside the app, which meant anything automated could see that a file was attached but never what was in it
• Search understands filters rather than matching plain text in a single folder. You can ask for to:, from:, cc:, subject: or message-id:, narrow by is:read, is:unread, has:attachment or has:inline, bound results with larger:2M, smaller:500K, before:2026/01/01 or after:, and exclude anything by putting ! in front of it. Mailbox folders are searchable too, with mailbox: or tag:
• Messages can be tagged, from the app or over the API, and tags are their own thing rather than a label the folder puts on for you. A message still lives in one folder, named after the SMTP username it arrived as, but it can carry as many tags as you like. Tags appear in the sidebar with a count, click one to gather every message carrying it from across all your inboxes, and add or remove them on a message from the detail pane. An automated run can label everything it sent and clean up after itself in one call
• Messages can be injected straight over HTTP, so a test can seed the mail it expects to find without opening an SMTP connection first. It is filed exactly as if it had been delivered, attachments and inline images included. Nothing is ever relayed anywhere: InboxFox still only receives
• The email quality checks answer over the API now, so an automated run can ask what is wrong with a message instead of waiting for a person to read the report. Link checking makes no outbound requests unless you ask it to, which keeps InboxFox from burning one-time reset tokens, firing tracking pixels, or quietly telling a sender that their mail was opened
• The API can be reached from Docker and devcontainers. It still listens only on 127.0.0.1 by default. Widen it in settings and InboxFox insists on a token before it will start, because something that can read and delete every captured message has no business being reachable from another machine without one

~ Improved

• Large mailboxes are much faster. Every API request used to re-read every stored message from disk before answering. InboxFox now keeps the store in memory and updates it as mail arrives and leaves, which matters most when an agent is checking repeatedly for something that has not turned up yet
• Message headers are reported in full. A message that passed through five servers only ever kept one of its Received lines, so anything tracing a delivery was reading an incomplete record. Every header is now available, in the order it was written, including the repeated ones
• Sender and recipient names are read from the message itself rather than the delivery envelope, so a display name like "Miller, Andy" arrives intact instead of being split in half at the comma

× Fixed

• Moving InboxFox to Applications failed when an App Store copy was already there. It reported that macOS wouldn't allow the replacement and never offered a way through. macOS installs App Store apps in a way that only Finder can change, so InboxFox now asks Finder to do it and you get the usual password prompt — the same one you'd see dragging that copy to the Trash yourself. Your App Store purchase is read and applied before anything is moved, and the old copy goes to the Trash rather than being deleted
• Running from the disk image wasn't always recognised. InboxFox only noticed when the download flag was still set, so in some cases it sat quietly on the disk image reporting itself as properly installed. Notifications and updates don't work from there, and nothing survives ejecting it, so it now says so whenever it's running from an image

~ Improved

• InboxFox offers to move itself to your Applications folder, in one click. Opened from a disk image or straight out of Downloads, macOS gives an app a new temporary home every time it launches — so notification permission never sticks, and updates can't install. InboxFox now spots this on launch and offers to move itself and reopen from Applications, where both work normally. You can also just carry on where you are

~ Improved

• The paid features have a name. Settings ▸ License read a bare "Licensed", which never said what the tier was called, so the pricing on the website and the status in the app were using different words for the same thing. It now reads "InboxFox Pro", the trial counts down a "Pro trial", and the buy button and status line name the tier instead of listing the features twice

+ New

• What's New in the app menu: the full changelog in a native window, shown once automatically after each update

~ Improved

• Migrating a Mac App Store purchase now tells you it happened. The unlock used to be completely silent, and the one thing it needs from you, an email address for a permanent license key, was easy to miss in settings
• The disk image explains itself now, including a note for App Store buyers to open InboxFox from the disk image before installing it

× Fixed

• Restoring an App Store purchase when the App Store copy is already gone now spells out the order to follow, including moving InboxFox aside before reinstalling from the App Store so the two don't overwrite each other

~ Improved

• Checks for updates shortly after launch. Previously the first automatic check could be a day away, so a new install would sit on an old version
• A new app icon, matching the one on skulkworks.dev

+ New

• Local SMTP capture server: point your app's mail settings at InboxFox and every message it sends is captured instantly, nothing leaves your Mac
• Native three-column inbox with HTML, plain-text, headers, and raw RFC822 views, plus an email quality report that scores deliverability, compatibility, and accessibility
• Attachment viewing with Quick Look preview, full-text search, soft-delete Trash with restore, new-mail sound and notifications, and unread badge counts
• Mailboxes organized by the SMTP username you connect with
• First direct release, distributed outside the Mac App Store with automatic Sparkle updates
• Automatic migration for Mac App Store customers: InboxFox detects your previous purchase, unlocks instantly, and can email you a permanent license key for your other Macs
• 14-day full-feature trial. After it ends, InboxFox stays free forever and keeps capturing unlimited mail in a single inbox. A one-time license splits captured mail into a separate inbox per SMTP username and unlocks a custom bind address, custom port, and the HTTP API for integration tests