Penguin Mail 1.0 Brings Gmail, Microsoft and IMAP Accounts to One Linux Inbox

One inbox for every account

Penguin Mail 1.0.0 is a free and open source mail and calendar application for x86_64 Linux, released under the GPL-3.0-or-later license with source code available on GitHub. The app brings Gmail, Microsoft and any IMAP or POP3 account into a single fast client on the user's own computer, with the calendar and contacts built in.

Users can sign in to Gmail, Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live or Microsoft 365, as well as Fastmail, iCloud, Yahoo or any IMAP, POP3 and SMTP server. Penguin Mail finds the server settings from the email address itself. Every account appears in one inbox, or can be viewed one at a time, and the app keeps syncing from the system tray with an unread count and notifications the user can act on. The interface supports light and dark themes to match the system.

Calendar, contacts and encryption

The calendar sits beside the mail and offers Day, Week, Month and Agenda views of every calendar on every account, including Google, Microsoft and CalDAV where the provider offers it. Invitations can be answered directly from the message they arrived in. Contacts come from Google, Microsoft or CardDAV, with suggestions from people the user writes to as they type a recipient.

For security, Penguin Mail supports OpenPGP and S/MIME signing and encryption through the user's own GnuPG setup. The app never holds keys and never asks for a passphrase.

Rules and an optional assistant

The app lists Gmail filters, Microsoft inbox rules and Sieve rules in plain words, with a form to add a new one. An optional assistant stays off until the user chooses a model, and it can run on the user's own computer through LM Studio or Ollama. It asks before sending mail or changing a setting.

Pressing Ctrl+J lets the user ask questions of their mail, such as which sent messages are still waiting on a reply or what is in the promotions tab. The assistant reads the mailboxes with the app's own tools and shows each tool it ran. Other features include a Gmail style category bar that sorts mail into Primary, Updates, Promotions and Social using Gmail's own categories, scheduled sending that works even from the tray with an Undo button, and Hide My Email style Gmail plus addresses for sign-ups that can be switched off when they start attracting spam.

Local first privacy

Penguin Mail has no server of its own, no tracking and no ads. Gmail and Google Calendar accounts talk to Google directly, and Microsoft accounts talk to Microsoft Graph, so no other server sees the mail. The project publishes a privacy policy and offers a two minute video tour on YouTube.

Sources: penguin-mail.com