Privacy policy

Last updated 4 October 2026

Swanmail is a desktop email client. It runs on your computer and has no servers of its own: there is no Swanmail account, and the developers of Swanmail never receive your mail, your contacts, your credentials or information about how you use the app.

What Swanmail stores, and where

• Messages, folders, contacts gathered from your mail, tags, rules and settings are stored in a database in the app's data folder on your computer.
• Passwords and the sign-in tokens issued by Google, Microsoft and other providers are encrypted with your operating system's keychain (Keychain on macOS, the Data Protection API on Windows, the Secret Service on Linux) before they are stored.
• Nothing is stored anywhere else. Removing an account in Swanmail deletes its data from your computer; uninstalling the app and deleting its data folder removes everything.

What Swanmail connects to

Swanmail makes network connections only to do what you ask of it:

• Your mail provider. To sign in, download, search, send and organize mail, Swanmail connects directly to your provider's servers (for example Gmail's IMAP, SMTP and Gmail API, Microsoft's Outlook and Graph services, or your own IMAP, POP3, JMAP or Exchange server).
• Sender images. To show a picture next to a sender, Swanmail asks Google's favicon service for the icon of the sender's domain and may request an icon from the sender's website. Only the domain name is sent, never the message, and a setting turns this off.
• Remote images in messages. These are blocked by default. If you choose to load them, they are downloaded from the servers named in the message, which can tell the sender that the message was opened.
• Encryption keys. When you use OpenPGP, Swanmail may look up a correspondent's public key on keys.openpgp.org or on their own domain.
• Updates. Once a day Swanmail fetches the list of the latest release from swanmail.app, and on macOS and Windows downloads a newer version from there. The request names only the app's version, nothing about you or your mail, and a switch in Settings → About stops the daily check.
• AI features, only if you turn them on. Swanmail can summarize, translate or sort mail using an AI service or tool that you configure yourself (for example the OpenAI or Anthropic API, or a command-line assistant installed on your computer). Nothing is sent unless you set one up. When you do, the messages it works on are sent to that service under its own terms and privacy policy.

Swanmail does not include analytics, advertising or crash-reporting services.

Google user data

When you sign in with Google, Swanmail asks for access to your Gmail mailbox (https://mail.google.com/) and your basic profile (name and email address). It uses this access only to provide the email client features you use: reading, searching, sending and organizing your mail, and noticing new mail quickly. Your Google data is used on your computer only; it is not transferred to the developers of Swanmail, not sold, not used for advertising, and not used to train AI models. It is shared with a third party only when you configure an AI feature as described above, and only for the messages that feature works on.

Swanmail's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

You can remove Swanmail's access at any time from your Google Account (for Microsoft accounts, from account.live.com or your organization's settings).

Children

Swanmail is not directed at children and collects nothing from anyone.

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version will be published on this page with a new date.

Contact

Questions about this policy: hello@swanmail.app.