Short version: your mail stays on your Mac. Roost has no server and no Roost account. It doesn’t collect analytics or usage data, and it never uploads your mail.
What stays on your Mac
- Your mail. Roost connects straight to your mail providers (Google, Apple, Yahoo, Yandex, Zoho or your own server) and stores what it downloads in a folder on your Mac. We never see it.
- Your sign-ins. Passwords and sign-in tokens are kept in your Mac’s Keychain. When a provider offers its own sign-in, you do it on their page in your browser; Roost only receives a token from them.
- Search and settings. The search index, your signatures, colours and other settings are stored on your Mac. Removing an inbox in Settings deletes its local mail and its Keychain entries.
- Contacts photos. If you allow it, Roost reads photos from the Contacts app to show who wrote. It reads them on your Mac and sends nothing.
- Remote images. Images that load from the web are blocked until you choose to load them, so senders can’t tell when you open a letter.
What Roost sends over the network
- To your mail providers. Roost reads and sends mail with your providers over IMAP and SMTP, using encrypted connections. What they do with your mail is covered by their own privacy policies.
- Finding server settings. When you add an address Roost doesn’t know, it looks up the domain’s mail servers (a DNS lookup) and may ask the domain or Mozilla’s public Thunderbird settings service for that domain’s settings. Only the domain is sent, never your full address or password.
- Signing in. For Yahoo, Zoho and Yandex, the sign-in page sends you back through a small page on this website, which passes the result straight to Roost. That page stores and sends nothing.
- Update check. About once a day Roost downloads a small update feed from this website to see whether a new version is out. The request carries the app’s version and only what every web request does (such as your IP address).
- Licence check. When you enter a licence key, Roost sends it to Polar with your Mac’s name, then checks it about once a week. The trial sends nothing.
- Company icons. When a sign-in code or a company’s mail drops out of the notch, Roost asks that company’s own website for its icon, once a month at most. The request carries nothing about you or the letter, only what every web request does (such as your IP address). You can turn this off in Settings › Notch.
The full list of hosts, and how to watch the connections yourself, is on Where your mail goes.
Gmail and Google Workspace
Roost talks to Gmail over IMAP and SMTP, like any other mail app. If you sign in with Google, Google asks you to let Roost “read, compose, send, and permanently delete all your email from Gmail”. Gmail asks that of every app that uses IMAP and SMTP. Roost also asks for your email address, to name the inbox.
- What Roost does with your Gmail data. It downloads your mail to your Mac and shows it to you. It sends, archives, flags or deletes mail only when you ask. Suggested replies are written by Apple Intelligence on your Mac.
- Where it’s kept. Only on your Mac: your mail in a folder there, your app password or Google sign-in token in the Keychain. Roost has no server, so we never receive your Gmail data and no one at Roost can read it. We don’t sell it or share it with anyone.
- No ads, no AI training. Your Gmail data is never used for advertising, and never used to train or improve any AI model.
- Taking it back. Removing the inbox in Roost’s Settings deletes its mail and saved sign-in from your Mac. You can also revoke Roost’s access in your Google Account.
Roost’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.
Purchases
Payments are processed by Polar, our merchant of record. Polar collects your name, email and payment details to complete the sale, calculate tax and send your receipt. We receive your email and order details from Polar to provide support and licence keys. See Polar’s privacy policy.
This website
The site is hosted on Cloudflare, which keeps standard server logs (such as IP addresses) for security.
If you write to us, we use your message only to answer it. We never sell or share your information.
Questions
Write to hello@roostmail.app.