What works in the alpha
- Accounts
- As many as you have, each with its own inbox, and All inboxes for all of them at once.
- IMAP and SMTP: read, write, search, folders, and older mail fetched as you scroll.
- Calendar
- CalDAV: agenda, day, three-day and month views; events created, edited and deleted on your server. You can also subscribe to a published calendar (an ICS link, webcal: too), shown beside your own.
- Invitations
- Respond to invitations directly from the message, and the meeting appears in your calendar. Meeting invitations are sent to your guests, by mail when your server does not send them.
- Contacts
- CardDAV: your address books, edited on your server, and suggestions as you write.
- New mail
- Notifications on Stalwart, if you turn them on; on Dovecot later.
Why Outwright exists
Outlook always goes through Microsoft. Outwright goes straight to your server.
Even when you add an account on your own mail server, Outlook for iOS does not talk to that server itself: it hands the account to Microsoft's cloud, which logs in to your server with your password and keeps a copy of your mail on Microsoft's servers. If you run your own server to keep your mail to yourself, that defeats the point.
Outwright keeps the familiar workflow and drops the detour: the app logs in to your server itself, and your password stays in the iPhone's keychain.
Who it is for
- Self-hosters, who run their own mail server and want an iPhone app that talks to it directly.
- Anyone with email from their internet provider or a mail host. Most of them offer IMAP, so Outwright talks to their server directly, as it does to your own.
- Anyone who cares about privacy and wants their mail, calendar and contacts kept out of other companies' clouds.
Keep your accounts together in Outwright: your own domain, a work address, an old one or two. Each has its own inbox, All inboxes shows them together, and calendars and contacts stay in sync with each server.
Coming next
Microsoft 365 work accounts and Outlook.com. The app will talk to Microsoft directly, as it does to your own server, without passing through our servers. After that, Gmail.
Servers
Supported today:
- Stalwart 1.1. It has every protocol Outwright uses in one server and sends Web Push, which is how new-mail notifications reach the phone.
- Dovecot 2.4, with Postfix 3.10 and Radicale 3.5, as Debian 13 ships them. Radicale does not send invitations itself, so Outwright mails them to your guests. New-mail notifications for Dovecot come later.
- Any other IMAP server that follows the standards, which is what most internet providers and mail hosts run. IDLE, MOVE, CONDSTORE and SPECIAL-USE are used where the server has them, and not needed where it does not.
Every build is tested against Stalwart and Dovecot before it goes out.
What a server needs
A few things are required, all of them on purpose:
- A certificate the iPhone trusts. For your own CA, install it on the phone as a configuration profile.
- SMTP authentication. A server that relays by IP address, or after an IMAP login, is not used.
- Passwords only inside TLS, with IMAP LOGIN and SMTP AUTH PLAIN or LOGIN. A server that offers only CRAM-MD5 or SCRAM, or refuses LOGIN even over TLS, cannot be signed in to.
- IMAP over TLS: no POP3 and no unencrypted connections.
- IMAP4rev1 announced. Servers that speak IMAP4rev2 announce it too in practice.
- Automatic setup reads DNS SRV records, then tries imap.<domain> and smtp.<domain>. Anything else is entered by hand.
If you try another server, tell us how it goes.
Private by design
Your mail, calendar and contacts never pass through our servers. Passwords live only in the iPhone's keychain, and every connection is encrypted.
Optional new-mail notifications use our push relay. iOS does not let an app keep a connection to your server open in the background; Apple has built it that way. The only way to wake the app is Apple's push service, and only the app's developer can send through it.
Our push relay is that sender. Your server sends it an encrypted ping, and the relay asks Apple to wake your phone. The relay sees none of your mail: no message, sender, recipient, subject or address. The app then fetches the new mail from your server itself. Without the relay, Outwright works the same, except that it cannot tell you about new mail while it is closed.
Mail is treated as hostile: nothing in a message runs, and nothing is fetched from the internet unless you ask for its pictures. Read our privacy policy.
Free and open source
The alpha is free. Outwright will be available in free and paid versions, with different levels of support. Both versions connect directly to your servers. The source is open on GitHub, so you can also build it yourself.
Join the alpha
Leave your address, and tell us which mail server you run. You get a TestFlight invitation by email. Use the app for your real mail, and tell us what breaks, what is missing and whether new mail arrives on time.
It is an alpha: expect rough edges, and keep another way to reach your mail while you try it.