Apple Mail
🐍 🏠 🍎 - Fast MCP server for Apple Mail — 87x faster email fetching via batch JXA and FTS5 search
What is Apple Mail?
Apple Mail is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that allows AI assistants like Claude, Cursor, and VS Code to 🐍 🏠 🍎 - fast mcp server for apple mail — 87x faster email fetching via batch jxa and fts5 search
🐍 🏠 🍎 - Fast MCP server for Apple Mail — 87x faster email fetching via batch JXA and FTS5 search
This server falls under the Communication category on MCPgee, the world's largest MCP server directory with 33,000+ servers.
Features
- MCP protocol support
Use Cases
Maintainer
Works with
Installation
PIP
pip install apple-mail-mcpManual Installation
pip install apple-mail-mcpConfiguration
Configuration Details
claude_desktop_config.json
Performance
Response Metrics
Resource Usage
How to Set Up and Use Apple Mail
Apple Mail MCP is a fast MCP server for reading and searching Apple Mail on macOS, achieving up to 87x faster email fetching compared to naive AppleScript approaches by using batch JXA (JavaScript for Automation) execution and an FTS5 full-text search index built from your local mail database. It exposes eight tools covering account listing, mailbox enumeration, email retrieval with filters, full-text search across subject/sender/body/attachments, link extraction, and attachment reading — all without requiring any external email API credentials. Developers and power users on macOS use it to give Claude deep access to their local email archive for research, summarization, and triage.
Prerequisites
- macOS with Apple Mail application installed and configured
- Python 3.10 or later installed
- pipx recommended for isolated installation
- Full Disk Access granted to Terminal (or your MCP client) in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access — required to build the search index
Install apple-mail-mcp
Install using pipx for an isolated environment (recommended), or pip.
pipx install apple-mail-mcp
# or:
pip install apple-mail-mcpGrant Full Disk Access
Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access and add your Terminal application (or the application running your MCP client). This is required for the FTS5 index builder to access the Mail database.
Build the search index
Run the index build command to create the FTS5 full-text search index from your Apple Mail database. This may take a few minutes on first run depending on mailbox size.
apple-mail-mcp index --verboseAdd to Claude Desktop configuration
Add the server to your Claude Desktop config file at ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json.
{
"mcpServers": {
"apple-mail": {
"command": "apple-mail-mcp",
"args": []
}
}
}Restart Claude Desktop and test
Restart Claude Desktop to load the server, then ask Claude to list your email accounts or search for a recent email.
Apple Mail Examples
Client configuration
Example claude_desktop_config.json for Apple Mail MCP. The command is the installed apple-mail-mcp binary from pipx/pip.
{
"mcpServers": {
"apple-mail": {
"command": "apple-mail-mcp",
"args": [],
"env": {
"APPLE_MAIL_DEFAULT_ACCOUNT": "[email protected]"
}
}
}
}Prompts to try
Example prompts to use with Claude once Apple Mail MCP is connected.
- "List all my email accounts configured in Apple Mail."
- "Show me my 10 most recent unread emails."
- "Search my email for messages about the quarterly budget report."
- "Find all emails from [email protected] in the last 7 days."
- "Get the full content of email ID 12345 including attachments."
- "Extract all links from my most recent email from the newsletter."
- "Search my email body for mentions of the project Prometheus."Troubleshooting Apple Mail
Index build fails with permission denied errors
Full Disk Access must be granted to the Terminal app (or whichever app runs apple-mail-mcp index). Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access, click the + button, and add your terminal application. Then re-run apple-mail-mcp index --verbose.
Search returns no results despite emails existing
The FTS5 index must be built before search works. Run apple-mail-mcp index to create or refresh the index. If the index is stale (new emails not appearing), re-run the index command to update it.
apple-mail-mcp command not found after installation
If installed with pipx, ensure the pipx bin directory is in your PATH: run pipx ensurepath and restart your terminal. If installed with pip, check that the pip scripts directory is in your PATH. You can find the binary location with: python -m site --user-scripts
Frequently Asked Questions about Apple Mail
What is Apple Mail?
Apple Mail is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that 🐍 🏠 🍎 - fast mcp server for apple mail — 87x faster email fetching via batch jxa and fts5 search It connects AI assistants to external tools and data sources through a standardized interface.
How do I install Apple Mail?
Install via pip with: pip install apple-mail-mcp. Then configure your AI client to connect to this MCP server.
Which AI clients work with Apple Mail?
Apple Mail works with all major MCP-compatible AI clients including Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code (GitHub Copilot), Windsurf, and Cline.
Is Apple Mail free to use?
Yes, Apple Mail is open source and available under the GPL 3.0 license. You can use it freely in both personal and commercial projects.
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Browse More Communication MCP Servers
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