It learns your world — and shows you all of it.
EmailOwl builds a picture of your people, projects and priorities and applies it to every run. You can read every entry it holds, see what each one has done for you, correct it, lock it, or take the whole lot away as a plain file.
It gets to know your world — and acts on it
EmailOwl isn’t a filter. It learns your people, projects, priorities — and your family — applies them to every inbox, and gets a little sharper every day.
Learns your projects
Learns what you’re working on, then auto-files and prioritises new mail against the right project — before you even open it.
Learns your people
Learns who matters — advisors, family, clients — and never buries them. The noise gets moved out of the way instead.
Learns your family
Add your children once — year, school, clubs — and their mail is read against who they actually are. The second parent scans a QR code and gets the same prepared items.
Learns the noise — and hands you the dial
Learns what you ignore and block, and suppresses it before you ever see it. Five class switches do the heavy lifting — marketing, newsletters, receipts and spam on by default — with the per-sender list underneath, filterable, prunable in bulk, and exportable as a file. On one real account, 186 of 246 muted senders turned out to be covered by a class switch anyway.
Learns your voice
Studies how you write and drafts replies that sound like you — your tone, your phrasing, ready to send.
Learns your history
Go deep: let it study months of past email to map your people, projects and patterns from day one.
Moves you off old accounts
Forward in an old address with no app of its own — it’s triaged too, then helps your contacts move to your new one.
AI-driven memory updating
You teach it once — “project ACME is now called MissMe - change it”, “Dan Smith’s email has changed to...” — and it remembers. It’s never as dumb tomorrow as it was today.
Clean Up
Even great triage slips now and then — two mails that should have been one task. Clean Up sweeps your board, spots the duplicates where matching missed, and merges them, so nothing’s counted twice.
Teach it once. It remembers what matters — and you decide what it can never forget.
You’re never correcting it — you’re teaching it. One tap, and next time it just knows. Every run carries as much context as it can hold, chosen by what’s actually being used; lock an entry and it’s never deleted, and always near the front.
See what it knows — and what that knowledge is doing.
Every assistant says it remembers you. Almost none will show you what it remembers, what each piece has actually done, how much of it reaches the model, or what it would cost you to forget one. This one does — and you can walk away with the file.
Nothing is deleted to make room
Every run can only carry so much context. EmailOwl works out what fits before the run, chooses by what’s actually being used, and archives the rest — kept, still visible in the app, and restored the moment anything uses one again. Most assistants either grow until they quietly degrade, or silently forget. This does neither, and tells you which it’s doing.
Every remembered thing shows its work
One line under each entry: how many times it has been used, when it was last used, and whether it is in memory or archived. A muted sender reads “nothing hidden since 7 Aug” instead. A hit is one real use — a task citing it, a run re-reading it, you opening it. You can switch the whole line off.
It tells you what you lose before you lose it
Delete a remembered fact and it first shows what that fact is doing for you: which tasks cited it, how often, when — and what triage falls back on without it. Then you decide. No silent loss, no guessing what a line in a list was for.
You can see what actually reaches the AI
Each part of memory says how full it is and how much of it is in use. Behind every one of those numbers is the list itself — what is in memory, what is archived, and which you locked — available any time, not only when something is wrong.
Nothing is held hostage
Your locks, VIPs and family can never fill a section on their own: up to half its places are kept for the ones you have used most recently, and the rest compete by use like everything else. Rules you wrote stay whole. Every protected entry carries the one action that releases it — Unlock, Not a VIP, Clear family, Delete, Turn off — right there on the entry.
When two things disagree, you settle it
If something it has learned contradicts something else, that becomes a card at the top of Review with the two statements side by side and a one-tap resolution: keep either, keep both, neither, or turn it into a task to look into. Settled ones stay one tap from Undo.
All of it exports to a plain, readable file — facts, terms, people, projects, rules, muted senders and corrections, one record a line — and imports straight back. In beta Shipped in the current TestFlight build, not yet general release. [confirm: release status and wording before publishing]
What it keeps, what it sets aside, and what is yours to take
Eight questions from real accounts, answered in the same words the app uses. Nothing is open until you open it.
What it remembers
No — archived means kept, but not in memory for that read. Every read of your mail has a fixed number of places for each kind of memory; the entries your mail is using fill them and the rest wait in the archive. Anything archived comes back the moment your mail uses it or you tap Bring back — unless you archived it yourself, or with a project; then it waits for you. Nothing is deleted to make room.
Facts about YOU. Things it could never work out on its own. Good: “Home is 14 Marchmont Road and the boiler is serviced by Hartley Gas.” “I work at Pentland Vale; Priya Raman is my manager.” “Policy HV-88213 is the flat, not the car.” Not worth the space: things any assistant already knows — what an airport code is, what a tax office does, what a piece of accounting software is for. Storing those uses up room that belonged to something only you know. Locking works the same way, just more strongly: a lock means never set aside, no matter what else needs the room. So lock the things it could not rebuild from your mail, and let everything else earn its place by being used.
Because a list of everyone who ever wrote to you is not useful — your inbox already has that. People is for the handful who change how your mail is read: who must never be buried (your VIPs), who someone IS (“the letting agent”, “my sister”), and which of your addresses they write to. Somebody who simply appeared once does none of that, so they are not added. If someone does matter, tell it once: open the task, and choose “Make this sender a VIP”. From then on their mail is read as mail that matters.
It will set aside what nothing has used for a while — and bring it back when your mail brings it up again. What it will not do is forget something you locked, or something you corrected. Those are your decisions and they stick, including the things you asked it to forget: a fact you deleted stays deleted, even if a later read of your mail would have learned it again. If you ever want to see the lot, Memory shows everything it holds, what each thing has done for you, and when it was last useful.
No. A deletion is not just the thing going — it is a decision it keeps. Every time it reads your mail it is handed the list of what you have deleted, so when the same email would teach it the same thing again, it leaves it alone. It is also checked a second time when what it learned is saved, so a deleted fact cannot slip back in even if a read got it wrong. It does not matter how many things you have deleted. The whole list goes along on every read, however long it gets.
They are kept, but the ones nobody needs any more step back. A deletion earns its place by stopping something coming back. If your mail has not tried to bring that thing back for a long while, the deletion is archived — still yours, not deleted — and stops being carried on every read. If your mail ever does try to bring it back, the deletion returns to duty on its own, and the thing stays deleted. You do not have to do anything, and nothing you removed returns because a deletion was archived.
Then it takes it in more than one sitting, and reads all of it before it touches your mail. The first sitting always has what matters most: what you locked, your VIPs, your rules, what you deleted and what is open on your board. If there is more, it goes back for the rest before it starts. There is still a ceiling — a few sittings, not endless ones — so the advice on giving it room still holds. But a busy account no longer has to choose between two things you wanted it to know.
Because everything it knows has to travel with it. Each time EmailOwl reads your mail it takes what it has learned about you along for the read — who your solicitor is, which property an insurer covers, what your shorthand means. It collects that in a few sittings before it starts, and each sitting can only hold so much. If it carried everything, every read would be slower, cost more, and past a certain size simply stop working. So there is a fixed amount it can carry, and it is shared out between the different kinds of thing it remembers — people, facts, your words, projects, muted senders — so that one kind cannot squeeze out the rest. It is not a storage limit. Nothing is thrown away for being over it.
The least recently used entries are archived, and everything keeps working. Nothing is deleted and nothing is lost. When there is no more room, the ones nothing has used lately move to Archived at the bottom of that list — still yours, still there to read — and the moment your mail uses one it comes straight back on its own. You will see it on the card itself: how many are in memory and how many are archived, and the two always add up to the count beside the name. Full is a normal state, not a problem to fix; a card your own locks fill is shown in gold, and red appears only if a read of your mail actually had to leave out something it was asked to carry.
Locked entries first, most recently used first among them. Then, for the places left, the unlocked entries your mail has used most recently. Everything else is archived — kept, and back the moment a read uses it. The app never deletes an entry to make room. Each entry shows how often it has been used and when — that is what tells you whether a lock is earning its place, and Sort → Least-used locks puts the never-used ones at the top.
Three things help, and they are all on the Memory screen. · Clear out what is not earning its place. Muted senders a category already covers are the usual culprit — the Noise screen offers to remove the ones a category would catch anyway. Terms that are ordinary vocabulary rather than your own shorthand are the next. · Unlock anything you locked and no longer need kept. A lock is a promise that it is never set aside, so each one holds a place open for good. · Tell it what matters, so the room it has goes to the right things. The size of the room itself is ours to set, not yours, and we raise it whenever we can do it safely — the space for people went up recently. You do not have to pay for more and there is no setting to turn up.
Nothing breaks. A lock is a promise that an entry is never deleted, merged or pruned, and it is kept. Half of each store's places are kept for your locks — the ones you have used most recently always go. Lock more than that and the rest compete for the other half by use, so the store never stops managing itself on what your mail actually needs. When that happens you will see a notice that says the count, and it names the locks nothing has used. Those are the ones to look at: unlock any you no longer need, or drop a VIP mark, and the place goes to whatever has been used most recently. Review also offers each unused lock as a card, with “Keep locked” if you would rather it stayed.
Each bar is one kind of memory, as a ledger: the in-memory part first — locked by you, then unlocked — and then the archived part, nearest the front first. The two numbers beside it — N in memory · M archived — always add up to the count beside the name; the places each read can carry are on the line underneath. A store your own locks fill is shown in gold: not a fault, a choice to look at. It keeps about one place in twenty free for what the next read learns, so the bar sits a little under full on purpose.
Every app has an archive you can search. This one searches itself. Each read of your mail has a fixed number of places for each kind of memory. The entries your mail is using fill them, and what your mail has stopped mentioning drifts to the archive — kept and listed, not deleted. The dynamic part: when your mail brings an archived entry up again, the next read learns it afresh and it is back in memory on its own. You never go and fetch it. You can also bring one back yourself: open it, or tap Bring back. It works the way your own memory does — the things you deal with are at the front, the rest is a mention away.
Locked and unlocked say how an entry gets a place. Archived says where it is. A locked entry is never deleted, merged or pruned, and the locks you have used most recently are always in memory — up to half the places in that store. Past that, a lock competes for a place by use, like everything else. An unlocked entry gets a place if your mail has been using it. Archived means kept and listed, not deleted, and back the moment your mail uses it or you tap Bring back.
Open it. Every entry in the Memory screen expands to show what it actually says, where it came from, how many times your mail has used it and when, and a one-line verdict — earning its place, or probably not, with the reason. A name on its own that nothing has used since you locked it is a place wasted; a reference or a who-does-what your mail keeps needing is a lock well spent. The decision is yours, but the evidence is on the card.
Yes. Choose Select on the Memory screen (or press and hold an entry), tick the ones you want — or Select all on whatever you are looking at, the whole list or just the archived part — and use the bar at the bottom: Bring back, Lock, Archive or Delete. Delete is the only one that removes anything, and it asks first.
Yes. Open the project and choose Archive project. It shows the facts, terms, people and open tasks tied to it; untick anything you still use, decide whether your locked ones stay in memory or go with it, and confirm. Everything archived this way stays archived until you reopen the project — your mail mentioning it does not bring it back on its own — and Reopen puts it all back as it was. Bring back on one entry wakes just that one; the project stays archived.
Mark the task done — that is the record. Once a task is done its identity is kept and every read of your mail is told, so the same invoice cannot come back as a new task. If the sender might chase, tell EmailOwl under Fix memory, as a standing note — “Invoice 3752 was paid 22 Sep; if they chase it, that's a reply, not a payment” — and the reminder arrives as a reply to send, not a bill to pay. Don't put it in the working-memory note: that is the scan's own scratchpad and is rewritten every time it reads your mail.
No. It is telling you the count. Half of a store's places are kept for your locks — the ones you have used most recently always go to every read of your mail. If you have locked more than that, the rest of your locks compete for the other places by use, like everything else, so the store keeps managing itself on the evidence of your mail. The line stays while you have more locks than kept places, and its button shows you which locks a read has never used, so you can decide with the evidence in front of you. Unlock the ones you no longer need and they are archived — kept, and back the moment your mail uses one. Archiving other things changes nothing here, because nothing unlocked was getting a place. For people the same applies to the VIP mark and a family label: take one off and the place is free.
Often you won't have to: a project learned under a second name for the same subject — “EmailOwl” and “EmailOwl app” — is folded into one on its own, and the other name still finds it. When the names differ more, Review asks “Same project?” with Merge and Not the same, and your answer holds on every device. To merge by hand, open Projects, tap Select, pick as many as are one, tap Merge and choose the name to keep. Every keyword is kept. On a project's page, Also part of this project lists the names it absorbed — Separate takes one back out — and you can add words there, like “cancer treatment”, so any project named with them merges into this one from now on.
A view EmailOwl engineers use when helping with a support issue. There’s nothing in it you’re missing: memory manages itself for everyone, and everything you can do with memory is in the Memory tab. If support asks you to turn it on, they’ll tell you how.
Your data
It should be, straight away. Your board, your people and everything you have taught it arrive with the restore. There was a spell where the things you had corrected — the facts you fixed, the entries you deleted — only arrived the next time you opened the app, which meant a backup taken immediately after restoring could be missing them. That is fixed: a restore now fetches the lot at once. If you are ever unsure, Memory → “What you’ve taught it” shows the running count.
Yes — and only you keep it. Settings → Backup & restore → Back up now saves one file with your board, your completed tasks, everything EmailOwl remembers and your settings. You choose where it goes: on this device, in your cloud storage, on a USB drive, or sent to your other device. EmailOwl never keeps a copy on its servers, and your restore code and email sign-ins are never in the file. The file is password-protected unless you switch that off. Keep the password somewhere safe: without it the backup can't be opened, by you or anyone else.
Yes. Settings → Backup & restore → Restore from a backup, pick the file, and choose what comes back: everything, just your board and what it currently remembers, or your own mix — the board with or without completed tasks, current memory, archived memory, settings. What you choose replaces what is there now, on every device; anything you don't choose is left alone. A copy of how things were is kept on that device for a week, so Undo last restore puts it back if you change your mind. A backup only restores into the account it came from.
Two ways, and they are different on purpose. In the app: Settings → Danger zone → Delete my data. This is immediate — it removes your board, memory and settings from our server and erases this device. Backup & restore sits just above it if you want a copy first. On the web: emailowl.app/danger-zone, from any browser, without the app. You can download a copy, reset parts of your data, delete your data and keep the account, or delete the account. Deleting the account there waits 7 days: the account is frozen meanwhile, your devices show the date, and you can cancel — restoring the account onto a device cancels it too. On the date it is erased for good, and nothing can bring it back. Either way you prove it is you first: your restore code, a sign-in to one of the account's mailboxes, and (on the web) a link we email to that mailbox. Lost the code? Any one of the account's mailboxes gets it emailed back. Lost both the code and every mailbox on the account? Then nothing can tell us which account is yours, so no one can delete it on request — not even us. Cancel your subscription instead: the account is erased 7 days after the subscription ends. An account with no subscription is deleted after 6 months without activity.
Not on request, and no one can, including us. Proving which account is yours takes the restore code or a sign-in to one of the account’s mailboxes. Without either, anything a person could check by hand is exactly what someone pretending to be you would bring, so there is no manual route. The account still gets deleted, in one of two ways. Cancel your subscription (Apple ID → Subscriptions, or Google Play → Subscriptions): when it ends, the account is frozen and erased 7 days later. An account with no subscription is deleted after 6 months without activity. Still have one of the account’s mailboxes? Then you can get the code back: on emailowl.app/danger-zone, choose Lost your restore code? and sign in to that mailbox.
Getting set up
The app tells you what your own routine found on its last run, rather than guessing. Green means a run actually read that mailbox. Amber means it has not run since you set it up, so there is nothing to report yet. Red names the mailbox it could not read and what to do about it — reconnect it, add it, or sign in as the right account. Connecting a mailbox to EmailOwl and adding its connector in Claude are two different things, and only the second one lets your routine read it. That is why we wait for a real run before showing you a tick.
Forward it into one of your other email accounts. You could forward one Gmail account to another Gmail account, or one Hotmail account to another, and you get the triage benefits for both. You don't lose your source emails. Choose to keep a copy when you set up forwarding (Gmail: Settings → Forwarding; Outlook.com: Settings → Mail → Forwarding), and everything stays in the original account exactly as before. The only difference is that the receiving mailbox's inbox has more emails in it. Then add the forwarded address in EmailOwl as an alias of the mailbox it now arrives in, so its tasks show the address they were really sent to and you can filter them on their own. A reply goes from the receiving mailbox unless you also set it up to send as the other address (Gmail: Settings → Accounts → Send mail as).
Not the question you had? Search every answer or write to support@emailowl.app — and the same eight answers are in the app under ⋯ → Help → FAQ.
Know what needs you.
Before it piles up.
Download EmailOwl, connect your accounts, and wake up to a sorted inbox — with AI help to draft each reply. Run it Connected, or go Private and run it on your own key.