Per-account notification control for Apple Mail

Postwart is a small macOS menu bar app that decides which mailbox is allowed to ring the doorbell. Silence newsletters, keep work loud, let VIPs through, on a timer or a working-hours schedule.

Apple Mail gives you one notification switch for everything. Postwart gives you one per account. Set a policy for each mailbox you already have in Apple Mail: notify for the accounts that matter, silent for the ones that do not, VIP only when you still want your key contacts to reach you. Postwart reads the accounts already configured in Apple Mail and watches them through Apple’s own scripting interface. No IMAP client, no passwords, no message bodies leave your Mac.

Per-account notification policies

#

Every mailbox you already have in Apple Mail gets its own policy:

• Notify - every new message shows a banner.
• Silent - nothing gets through, not even VIP or high-priority mail. This is how you quiet a newsletter mailbox or turn off notifications for one Apple Mail account entirely.
• VIP only - only VIP senders break through; everything else stays quiet. Use it for VIP-only Apple Mail alerts on an otherwise silent account.
• !! High priority - only mail the sender flagged as important (Importance: High, X-Priority: 1 / 2) shows a banner.

VIP and high-priority mail is delivered time-sensitive, so it can break through Focus modes.

Time-limited policies: silence Apple Mail on a timer

#

Any non-default policy can be temporary. Silence an account for 15 minutes, a few hours, a custom duration, or permanently. A countdown shows the time left, and the account returns to Notify on its own when the timer ends.

Notification schedule by working hours

#

Define your weekly working hours once, then let each account follow them automatically. Keep your work account silent outside working hours so evenings and weekends stay quiet. The schedule steps aside the moment you set a policy by hand.

Sound, your way

#

Postwart mirrors the new-mail sound you set in Apple Mail, or plays a sound of your own. Turn on override to keep a sound even after you silence Mail’s own chime, so silenced accounts stay truly silent while the ones you care about still make noise. Sound override needs Full Disk Access.

More settings

#

• VIP list pulled from Apple Mail’s own VIP database (with Full Disk Access), or a Postwart-managed list as a standalone fallback
• Actions straight from the notification: Reply, Mark as Read, Delete - each driving Apple Mail
• Mail you sent yourself can be excluded from notifications
• Mute all silences every account at once, on the same timers
• Favorites and ordering in the popover, capped at 10 accounts; the rest stay reachable in Settings
• Configurable polling interval

Privacy and approach

#

No credentials, no OAuth tokens, no IMAP client. Postwart reuses the accounts already in Apple Mail and polls them through Apple’s scripting interface at an interval you choose. It stores no message bodies and talks to no server of its own.

• No mail data leaves your Mac
• No credentials are stored
• No tracking, no telemetry; the only network call of its own is the update check against postwart.de

Download and installation

#

Download Postwart 0.2.0 , unzip it, and drop it into /Applications. The download is notarized by Apple. In-app updates then run through Sparkle against a self-hosted appcast - no server component, and every update is verified against an EdDSA key.

Requirements

#

• macOS 14.6 or later
• Apple Mail set up with at least one account
• Mail Automation permission (Postwart asks once on first launch)
• Optional: Full Disk Access to read Apple Mail’s native VIP list and sound setting, and to use sound override

On first launch a setup wizard walks through automation and notification permission, turning off Mail’s own notifications, launch at login, and optionally Full Disk Access.

Languages

#

Localized in English, German, French, Spanish, and Italian. The French, Spanish, and Italian translations are AI-generated; please report any mistakes as an issue on Codeberg .

License

#

Apache 2.0. The source lives openly on Codeberg; contributions, issues, and forks are welcome. Bundled icon assets are covered by their own licenses.