Open-source Canary Mail alternatives

Mailspring is a desktop email client for Mac, Windows and Linux, built as a new version of Nylas Mail by one of its original authors. The interface is written in TypeScript with Electron and React, and the mail sync engine is written in C++ and runs locally on your computer. Both parts are open source under GPLv3.

Features include a unified inbox, snooze, send later, mail rules and templates, and a plugin architecture makes the app easy to extend. The README states that these features run in the client and that email credentials are not sent to the cloud. The IMAP-based sync engine replaces the earlier JavaScript sync code used by Nylas Mail.

A paid Mailspring Pro subscription unlocks extra features for people who send a lot of email, such as link tracking, read receipts, mailbox analytics and contact and company profiles. Compiled downloads are offered for Windows, macOS and Linux, including deb, rpm and snap packages.

Thunderbird for Android is an open-source email app for Android that manages multiple email accounts from one place, with an optional Unified Inbox. It is the Android edition of Thunderbird, developed by a team of developers with help from a community of volunteers, and it is based on K-9 Mail, formerly the project's name. It is written in Kotlin.

The project states that Thunderbird never treats private data as a product. The app can be installed from Google Play or F-Droid, in stable or beta versions, from GitHub releases, through FFUpdater, or with Obtainium. The beta channel gives early access to features still under development, and signing certificate fingerprints are published in the security document.

Help comes from a knowledge base, a support forum and a GitHub issue tracker, and feature ideas are discussed on connect.mozilla.org. Release notes describe what changed in each version. The app is released under the Apache 2.0 license and runs on the phone itself, connecting to the email providers you configure.

FairEmail is an open-source email app for Android that is designed around privacy and a deliberately minimal interface. It is an email client only, so you bring your own address, and it works with virtually all providers, including Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo, using standard protocols such as IMAP, POP3 and SMTP.

The app supports unlimited accounts and addresses, a unified inbox, conversation threading, two-way synchronization, push notifications and offline storage and operations. Privacy features include OpenPGP and S/MIME encryption, a safe message view that strips unsafe HTML and scripting, confirmation before showing images or opening links, detection of tracking images, and warnings when a message cannot be authenticated.

FairEmail is written in Java, licensed under GPL-3.0 and provided by FairCode B.V. It does not store data on third-party servers. Non-standard protocols such as Microsoft Exchange Web Services and ActiveSync are not supported, and the app runs a foreground service with a low-priority notification so new mail is not missed.

Zero is an open-source email application presented as a Gmail alternative that applies AI to the inbox. Its authors argue that most email services are closed source, data-hungry or too complex to host yourself, and they position Zero as transparent and privacy-first. It can be self-hosted while also connecting to external services such as Gmail and other email providers.

Listed strengths include a unified inbox that combines multiple providers such as Gmail and Outlook, AI agents and language models that help with email tasks, a customizable interface and an extensible design for developers. The project states that it does not track, collect or sell your data, while noting that data passed to connected external services falls under those services' own privacy terms.

The stack is Next.js, React, TypeScript, Tailwind CSS and shadcn UI on the front end, Node.js with Drizzle ORM on the back end, PostgreSQL for the database, and Better Auth with Google OAuth for sign-in. Running it locally requires recent Node.js, pnpm and Docker, plus environment variable configuration. The code is MIT licensed and the latest release listed is v0.1.

This repository is an experimental copy of Mozilla's comm-central tree, set up so it can be forked on GitHub. Its README is the Thunderbird project README: Thunderbird is an open-source, customizable email client built on the same Mozilla platform that Firefox uses.

To build Thunderbird you need the Firefox repository as well, because the Thunderbird code lives in a comm subdirectory inside the Firefox source tree and the two share a lot of platform code. The README points to a Getting Started guide, a Building Thunderbird guide, a developer website and rendered source tree documentation.

Contributors can join the project's mailing lists, including a moderated planning list for higher-level topics such as future features, and follow the contributing pages on the Thunderbird site. The code is mostly JavaScript, and this repository holds the source rather than the packaged email application.