Kestrel Mail What is Kestrel Mail?
Kestrel is a native Mac email client for people whose mail lives in more than one place. It gives Gmail, Microsoft 365, iCloud, Fastmail, corporate, self-hosted, and other IMAP accounts one consistent Mac experience. Kestrel connects directly to each provider, runs message and conversation summaries on your Mac, and collects no telemetry.
How is it different from Apple Mail?
Kestrel is built around provider independence and explicit privacy. Gmail, Microsoft 365, iCloud, Fastmail, corporate, self-hosted, and other IMAP accounts all get the same workflow. Your Mac connects directly to each provider instead of sending mail through a Kestrel sync service.
Message and conversation summaries run on your Mac through Apple Intelligence or an optional enhanced local model. Kestrel blocks known trackers before they load, keeps remote images off by default, and has no analytics, crash reporting, or usage tracking.
Which accounts does it support?
Gmail, Microsoft 365, iCloud, and most other email providers. If your provider supports IMAP (most do), Kestrel can connect to it, including corporate servers and self-hosted setups. Gmail and Microsoft 365 sign in through Google and Microsoft; iCloud uses an app-specific password; everything else connects with your email and password.
Does it support multiple accounts?
Yes. You can add as many accounts as you need, each with its own folders. There's also an All Inboxes view that shows messages from all your accounts in one place.
What version of macOS does it require?
macOS 26 or later.
Does it work offline?
Mostly, yes. Kestrel caches messages and drafts locally, so you can keep reading and writing without a connection. It queues archive, delete, and send actions while you are offline and syncs them when the connection returns.
How do summaries work, and are they private?
Kestrel can summarize individual messages and entire conversation threads. Summaries are bullet lists. A message summary covers its main points. A thread summary uses one bullet per message, in order.
Everything runs on your Mac, and your email never goes to a cloud AI service. Apple Intelligence handles summaries out of the box. You can also install an optional model pack from Settings; it runs locally and is most useful on long threads. The app downloads the model pack once and stores it on your Mac.
Why "Kestrel"?
The name comes from the bird. Kestrels are quick and light, which felt right for a mail app. They're also adorable.
How do I get Kestrel Mail?
Kestrel Mail is in private beta and not yet available for download. You can request one email when the public version launches.