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Sources

Mail - ONA.UNO Docs

Search and summarize your Apple Mail archive alongside everything else in ONA.UNO.

Mail Icon in 3D. Feel free to contact me through email mariia@shalabaieva.com

What It Does

The Mail source reads emails directly from Apple Mail’s local storage on your Mac. Your messages are indexed, summarized, and become searchable in ONA.UNO’s unified timeline.

Set scope

Sources are configured per Set. If you keep multiple Sets (libraries), add your Mail source to the Set you want it to appear in. See Sets (Libraries).

Privacy-First Design

ONA.UNO doesn’t access the cloud or your mail provider to ingest your mail

Unlike cloud-based email integrations, ONA.UNO reads directly from the local Mail database. There’s no OAuth, no cloud sync, no third-party access to your inbox. The only network traffic is when AI processing sends text to your configured LLM provider — the same as any other content in ONA.UNO.

Key Features

Local-Only Access

ONA.UNO reads the .emlx files that Apple Mail stores on your disk. This means:

  • No login credentials to configure
  • No cloud API access
  • Works even when you’re offline (for already-downloaded emails)

Date Range Filtering

You control how far back ONA.UNO looks:

  • From now on — anchored cutoff. ONA.UNO saves the moment you select this option and only indexes newer emails from that point onward.
  • Last 30 days — rolling window based on the current date.
  • Last year — rolling window based on the current date.
  • All emails — no date cutoff.

Example: if you add Mail on January 1, 2026 with Last 30 days, then on April 1, 2026 ONA.UNO still keeps only the most recent 30 days (roughly March 2 to April 1), not the full January-to-April history.

Changing the range triggers re-indexing and reconciliation. Emails that are outside the newly selected range are removed from indexed Mail items.

Smart Filtering

  • Junk and Trash are excluded — only meaningful messages are indexed
  • Partial downloads are handled — messages still syncing from the server appear as soon as content arrives

Per-Account Selection

If you have multiple email accounts in Apple Mail, you choose which ones to include. Add them individually or select all.

Tip
  • Large mailboxes (thousands of messages) may take several minutes on first scan even in Online Mode. It is best to start with “mails of the last 30 days” first.
  • Keep in mind, that while the LLM usage is quite cost-effective, tens of thousands of emails could incur more significant cost. More details: LLM Cost (OpenRouter)
  • New emails appear automatically as Mail downloads them
  • Use “Open in Mail” to jump directly to any message

Requirements

Full Disk Access is required.

Apple Mail stores its data in a protected location. To read it, ONA.UNO needs Full Disk Access permission.

  1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access
  2. Enable access for ONA.UNO

ONA.UNO will guide you through this when you add a Mail source.

Setup

  1. Grant Full Disk Access (see above)
  2. Go to Settings → Sources
  3. Click Add Source and choose Mail
  4. Select the account(s) you want to index
  5. Choose a date range
  6. ONA.UNO begins indexing