Privacy Policy

Mail is an open-source AI email client for Gmail, developed as the better-mail project. This policy covers the hosted service you sign into on this site. If you self-host the open-source code, your deployment is governed by your own configuration, not this policy.

When you use the hosted service, we collect:

• Your Google account basics from sign-in: name, email address, and profile image.
• OAuth tokens for your Google account, stored encrypted.
• Gmail mailbox data that we cache to run the app (detailed below).
• Your email address if you join the waitlist.
• Operational logs and metrics about requests to the service.

Mail connects to Gmail through Google OAuth. The requested access lets Mail read your mailbox to display and sync it, manage mailbox state such as labels, read status, and drafts, and send email on your behalf. Sending always requires an explicit action from you — the assistant only prepares drafts; nothing is sent until you choose to send it.

We cache Gmail data so the app can load, sync, search, and power AI features. The cache includes your account email address, sync cursors, labels, thread metadata, and message data: subjects, snippets, text and HTML bodies, sender and recipient addresses, and timestamps.

AI requests happen only when you use an AI feature such as Ask AI. When you do, the selected email, the visible inbox context, and any compose or draft text you provide are sent to a model provider to produce the response. Requests are routed through OpenRouter with provider data collection denied, and we use zero-data-retention routing where available for AI requests involving Gmail content.

Model providers may process prompt data to produce responses, subject to their policies and our routing controls.

Running the hosted service relies on these providers:

• Google — sign-in and the Gmail API.
• Vercel — application hosting.
• Neon — the Postgres database holding the mailbox cache.
• OpenRouter and the model providers it routes to — AI requests, as described above.
• LangSmith — AI observability, with prompt inputs and outputs hidden (see below).
• Ably — realtime notifications that tell your open session the mailbox changed.

• We do not sell your data.
• We do not use your Gmail data for advertising.
• We do not train our own models on your Gmail data.

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

Our observability excludes email content by policy. AI traces hide prompt inputs and outputs; logs and traces carry non-content metadata such as request identifiers, routes, model identifiers, latency, token counts, and error codes. Support debugging uses redacted traces by default; raw content capture requires explicit debug handling.

The synced mailbox cache is retained while your account stays connected, so the app can load without re-syncing everything. You can delete your account yourself from the app sidebar ("Delete account"): this removes your account and all cached mail data, and the app attempts to revoke its own Google access as part of deletion. You can also request deletion by opening an issue at the better-mail issue tracker.

You can also revoke Mail's access to your Google account at any time from your Google account permissions. Revoking stops all further access; delete your account to remove the cached copy as well.

Sign-in uses Google OAuth. OAuth tokens are stored encrypted, and data moves over encrypted connections. No system is perfectly secure, but we keep the surface small: the hosted service stores only what the app needs to run.

• AI features run only when you invoke them; skip them and no AI request is made.
• Disconnect Mail from your Google account permissions at any time.
• Delete your account and cached data from the app sidebar, or request deletion through the issue tracker.
• Self-host the open-source code and keep everything on your own infrastructure.

Questions and requests go through GitHub issues on better-mail.

If this policy changes, we will update this page and its effective date. Meaningful changes will be visible in the project's open-source history.