Post
A calm Gmail client for Windows that opens on your whole day: inbox, calendar and the emails you can't forget.
Post is a desktop Gmail client for Windows 11. It opens on a home screen that shows your whole day at once: the inbox on the left, your week's meetings across the top and the emails you've pinned underneath.
Under the hood it keeps your mail in a local SQLite index with full-text search, so it's fast everywhere. An optional AI assistant answers questions about your mail and acts on it, but only after you confirm.
Why you'll like it
Your day in one place
Mail, meetings and the emails you need to act on share one screen, so you don't bounce between a mail app and a calendar tab.
Nothing slips
Pin an email and it stays on your home screen as a card until you mark it done, instead of sinking under new mail.
Fast, everywhere
Every message lives in a local, compressed index, so search and scrolling never wait on the network.
AI on your terms
Bring your own Anthropic key. The assistant asks before it changes anything, and a monthly spending cap keeps costs predictable.
What it does
Your whole day on one screen
Post opens on a home screen instead of a bare inbox. Your mail sits on the left; the right side holds your calendar and your pinned emails, so the first thing you see is everything you need to act on today.
The home screen is yours to arrange. Make a card wide or narrow, reorder them, or add cards for replies you're waiting on, packages on the way, upcoming trips and recent attachments.
Your calendar, right beside your mail
Your Google Calendar runs across the top of the home screen, from yesterday through the next five days. Events are colour-coded by calendar, a line marks where you are in today, and clashes are flagged so double-bookings stand out.
Video meetings get a Join button, so Zoom or Meet is one click from your inbox. Busy days fold into a "+3 more" you can open, and one click flips the strip into the whole month.
Plans in your mail land on your calendar
Most of what you need to show up for never arrives as a calendar invite. Flight confirmations, dentist appointments, dinner reservations and webinar sign-ups are just emails with a date in them.
With the AI assistant on, Post spots them. A card above the email shows the title, time and place it found, and Add to calendar puts it straight onto your Google Calendar. Dismiss the card if it guessed wrong. Events that are already over, and emails you sent, are left alone.
Pin the emails you can't forget
Pin any email and it becomes a card on your home screen, with the sender, subject and the first lines of the message. It stays there until you mark it done, no matter how much new mail arrives.
It's a to-do list made from the mail itself: the invoice to pay, the draft to review, the intro to answer. Click a card to open the thread.
Ask your inbox anything
Ask a question ("What do I still need to reply to?") or tell it what to do ("Archive the shipping notifications"). Post searches your mail locally, answers with numbered sources you can click, and shows exactly what it's about to change before it does it.
It also drafts replies, summarizes long threads and sorts mail into AI sections you describe in plain words. Most requests cost about a cent, and a monthly cap pauses AI features once you hit it.
Search that doesn't make you wait
Press / and search spreads across the window. Local results appear as you type while Gmail's own search runs alongside, grouped by when they arrived, with the matching words highlighted.
Filters sit right under the field: Unread, Starred and Has attachment, where to look, how far back, and From, To and Subject. Each one writes its Gmail operator into the search, like has:attachment or after:, so you pick them up as you go. Typing them yourself works too, and your recent searches wait as one-click pills.
Threads that read like conversations
Earlier messages collapse to one line each until you open them. Attachments show as previews and only download when you open them.
Emails render in a sandboxed, script-free frame. Your newest 2,000 messages keep their full HTML, and older ones are fetched when you open them.
Never squint at an email again
Plenty of email is set in tiny type: receipts, newsletters, anything sent through a bulk mail service. Post measures the size most of an email's words are set in, and when it's too small to read comfortably, it enlarges the whole email before you see it. Oversized text gets brought down the same way.
A one-line note says when Post has changed an email, with a button to see the original. You can also nudge any email larger or smaller from its ⋯ menu, and Post remembers your choice for that email.
Compose your way
Rich text with a signature, contact autocomplete, undo send, schedule send and drafts that sync to Gmail. Compose opens inline, as a floating panel, full screen or in its own window.
Pasted images go into the message itself, and Post can be your default mailto: handler.
Everything is one shortcut away
Gmail's shortcuts work as you'd expect (j/k, r, a, f, #, /, c, g i…). Ctrl+K opens a palette of every action with its shortcut alongside, so you learn the keys as you go.
Post lives in the system tray, starts with Windows, shows a notification for each new email with a Mark as read button, and keeps an unread count on the taskbar icon.
Make it feel like yours
Set the window background to a colour or a gradient, and choose how the inbox card sits on it: white, tinted, frosted or clear. Add a seasonal pattern if you like, then save the whole look to come back to later.
Every other screenshot on this page uses my own look, a teal-to-slate gradient with frosted cards. Here's the same home screen in a few others.
White
Forest
Sand
Rose
Dawn gradient
Dusk, dark
Midnight, dark
Aurora gradient, dark
Mono, dark
Or start from a mood
Moods set the colours, tints and headings for the whole app in one click: Classic, Paper, Slate, Forest, Sand, Dusk, Rose, Mono and Midnight. Each works in light and dark, and Auto shifts through the day on its own.
Getting started
You'll needWindows 11A Gmail accountYour own Google OAuth clientOptional: an Anthropic API key
Build or install Post
Clone the repo and run npm run tauri build to produce the Windows installer, then run it.
Create a Google OAuth client
A one-time, roughly ten-minute setup. Post walks you through it on first launch.
Sign in and let it index
Post backfills newest-first, so recent mail is ready right away while older mail fills in.
Optionally add an Anthropic key
Turn on the assistant, drafted replies, summaries and AI sections from Settings → AI.
Full setup instructions are in the README on GitHub.
Why I built it
I wanted an email client that felt like a calm room rather than a control panel, and I wanted search that never made me wait.
Post was also an exercise in designing for trust with AI. Nothing happens to your mail without a confirmation, every answer cites its sources, and spending is visible and capped.
Try Post
It's free and open source. Download it, read the code, or open an issue if something doesn't work.
