Your inbox is a list. It has been a list since the nineties, and a list is a poor way to see what is actually going on. FlowMail is a Kanban email client for Mac, iPhone and iPad that shows it as a board instead.

FlowMail is an email client for Mac, iPhone and iPad that lets you look at the same mail three ways — as a list when that is all you need, as a Kanban board when you are working through it, and as a graph when you need to see how a conversation actually unfolded.

It is the same app on all three, and all of it runs on your device. There is no FlowMail server.

A Kanban email client for Mac: work your inbox like a board

Drag messages between columns — To Do, In Progress, Done — without leaving your mail.
A message keeps its board position as it syncs, so the board is a real working state rather than a view you rebuild each morning.
Kanban is in the free version. It is the whole point of the app, so it is not something you have to pay to try.

See the shape of a conversation

The Graph view lays a thread out as a force-directed graph — who replied to whom, where it forked, who went quiet.
Useful exactly when a long thread has stopped making sense as a stack of quoted replies.
On iPad it takes the whole screen.

Check who really sent it

Ask any message whether it looks like what it claims to be. FlowMail reads what it can see locally — the domains in the thread, whether the message it replies to is one you actually have — and says what it found in plain words.

You can add a lookup server for domain and attachment reputation, and have an on-device model explain the pattern. Both are off until you turn them on, and the lookup sends domains and file hashes, never the message.

Read mail in your own language

Translate a message in place, keeping its formatting and its quoted history. It uses Apple’s on-device translation, so the mail you are reading does not leave your device to be read by a service.

Works with the mail you already have

Microsoft — Outlook, Hotmail, Office 365 — and Google, through their own sign-in pages. Your password is never typed into FlowMail.
iCloud, Yahoo, Fastmail and anything else that speaks IMAP and SMTP.
Server settings are looked up for you, so you are not hunting for port numbers.
As many accounts as you like, including on the free version.

Mail that arrives when it arrives

Live sync holds an open connection to your Inbox, Sent and Archive folders, so new mail appears without waiting for a poll.
On iPhone and iPad, live sync runs while the app is open, and background refresh keeps the mailbox current when it is not.
Notifications for genuinely new Inbox mail, grouped rather than one per message, and clicking one opens that message.
Also free — an email client that does not tell you about email is not much of an email client.

Find it, and act on it

Search runs over your whole mailbox rather than a recent window of it.
Filter the list down to what you have replied to, or what you have not.
Select several messages and archive, flag or delete them in one go.

Automate the parts you repeat

Build workflows from steps: find messages, apply or remove a label, move a card on the board, draft a reply, summarize, classify, transform text, fetch a web page, call a tool on your own MCP server.
Run them from the app, from Siri, from Spotlight, or from a Shortcut — including on a message a Shortcut just found.
Ten Shortcuts actions ship with the app, from Compose Email to Find Emails to Get Email Details.

AI that runs on your device

FlowMail’s AI steps use a language model running locally, on Apple’s MLX. You pick the model — from a 0.7 GB Llama up to a 2.4 GB Qwen — and it is downloaded once and then runs on your own hardware.

That is not a privacy slogan, it is the pricing model: there is no per-message cost to pass on, so there is no metering, no API key to supply, and no usage cap. Your mail is not sent to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, or to us.

Mail files, opened properly

Open .eml and .msg messages, .vcf contacts and .ics invitations directly. A contact or an event can be added to Contacts or Calendar with one click or tap — and until you do, FlowMail never touches either, so opening a file cannot trigger a permission prompt.

Private by design

Your mail is fetched from your provider straight to your device and stored there. red8.io runs no server that receives, stores or processes your messages, and there is no account to create with us. Sign-in tokens and app passwords live in the Keychain. There is no analytics, no advertising and no crash reporting in the app.

Full detail is in the FlowMail privacy policy.

What you need, and what it costs

FlowMail requires macOS 15.6 or later on a Mac, and iOS or iPadOS 18.6 or later on iPhone and iPad. It is available in English and Brazilian Portuguese. On a Mac, the local AI needs Apple Silicon.

Free is a complete email client: unlimited accounts, all your mailboxes, List and Kanban, search, live sync, notifications, every file format, one automation workflow, and the Summarize and Draft Reply AI steps.

Pro adds the Graph view, unlimited workflows, and the Classify step that triages mail automatically. It is a monthly or yearly subscription with a free trial, or a one-time lifetime unlock, handled by Apple; current pricing is in the App Store. One purchase covers iPhone, iPad and Mac.

More about FlowMail

How the local AI works — the four models, the Apple Silicon requirement, and what does still leave your Mac.
How to choose the best email client for Mac — seven questions worth asking, answered for FlowMail, including the four places it does not fit.
FlowMail FAQ — the questions we get most.
FlowMail support — a real inbox, not a form.
All FlowMail posts — write-ups and release notes as they land.
FlowMail 26.3 — the latest release: invitations and contact cards that open in the message.