FairEmail

Open source, privacy friendly email app for Android

This open source, privacy friendly email app might be for you if your current email app:

• takes long to receive or to show messages
• can manage only one email address
• cannot handle a large number of messages
• cannot show conversations
• cannot work offline
• looks outdated
• is not maintained and supported
• stores your email on their servers
• is closed source, potentially violating your privacy

This app is minimalistic by design, so you can concentrate on reading and writing messages.

This app starts a foreground service with a low priority status bar notification to make sure you'll never miss new email.

Main features

• 100 % open source
• Privacy friendly
• Multiple accounts
• Multiple email addresses
• Unified inbox
• Flat conversation threading
• Two way synchronization
• Offline storage and operations
• Battery friendly
• Low data usage
• Small (< 10 MB)
• Material design (including dark theme)
• Maintained and supported

Privacy features

• Reformat messages to prevent phishing
• Confirm showing images to prevent tracking
• Confirm opening links to prevent tracking and phishing
• Automatically recognize and disable tracking images
• Warning if messages could not be authenticated

Pro features

All pro features are convenience or advanced features.

• Account/identity colors
• Colored stars (instructions)
• Notification settings (sounds) per account/folder/sender (requires Android 8 Oreo)
• Configurable notification actions
• Snooze messages (instructions)
• Send messages after selected time
• Synchronization scheduling (instructions)
• Reply templates
• Accept/decline calendar invitations
• Filter rules (instructions)
• Search on device or server (instructions)
• Keyword management
• Biometric authentication (instructions)
• Encryption/decryption (OpenPGP) (instructions)
• Export settings

Simple

• Quick setup
• Easy navigation
• No bells and whistles
• No distracting "eye candy"

Secure

• No data storage on third party servers
• Safe message view (styling, scripting and unsafe HTML removed)
• Confirm opening links, images and attachments
• No special permissions required
• No advertisements
• No analytics and no tracking
• No Google backup
• FairEmail is an original work, not a fork or a clone

Efficient

• IMAP IDLE (push messages) supported
• Built with latest development tools and libraries

Screenshots

Please see here for screenshots.

Downloads

• GitHub
• Play store
• Play store (test)

The GitHub version is being updated more often than the Play store version. The GitHub release will automatically check for updates on GitHub. You can turn this off in the miscellaneous settings.

Certificate fingerprints:

MD5: 64:90:8E:2C:0D:25:29:B0:D0:26:2D:24:D8:BB:66:56
SHA1: 17:BA:15:C1:AF:55:D9:25:F9:8B:99:CE:A4:37:5D:4C:DF:4C:17:4B
SHA256: E0:20:67:24:9F:5A:35:0E:0E:C7:03:FE:9D:F4:DD:68:2E:02:91:A0:9F:0C:2E:04:10:50:BB:E7:C0:64:F5:C9

One line command to display certificate fingerprints:

unzip -p fairemail.apk META-INF/CERT.RSA | keytool -printcert

• F-Droid (last build status)

Note that F-Droid builds new versions irregularly and you'll need the F-Droid client to get update notifications. To get updates in a timely fashion you are advised to use the GitHub release.

Because F-Droid builds and GitHub releases are signed differently, an F-Droid build needs to be uninstalled first to be able to update to a GitHub release.

Privacy

Please see here for the privacy policy.

Compatibility

FairEmail requires at least Android 5 Lollipop. Individual message notifications are available on Android 7 Nougat and later only because earlier Android versions do not support notification grouping.

FairEmail will work properly on devices without any Google service installed.

See here for known problems.

Support / frequently asked questions

See here for a list of often asked questions and about how to get support.

Contributing

Documentation

Contributions to this document and the frequently asked questions are preferred in the form of pull requests.

Translations

• You can translate the in-app texts of FairEmail on Crowdin
• If your language is not listed, please send a message through this contact form

Source code

Building FairEmail from source code is straightforward with Android Studio. It is expected that you can solve build problems yourself, so there is no support on building.

Source code contributions are preferred in the form of pull requests. Please contact me first to tell me what your plans are.

Please note that you agree to the license below by contributing, including the copyright.

Attribution

FairEmail uses:

• JavaMail. Copyright (c) 1997-2018 Oracle® and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. GPLv2+CE license.
• jsoup. Copyright © 2009 - 2017 Jonathan Hedley. MIT license.
• Android Support Library. Copyright (C) 2011 The Android Open Source Project. Apache license.
• Android Architecture Components. Copyright 2018 The Android Open Source Project, Inc. Apache license.
• colorpicker. Copyright (C) 2013 The Android Open Source Project. Apache license.
• dnsjava. Copyright (c) 1998-2011, Brian Wellington. BSD License.
• OpenPGP API library. Copyright (C) 2014-2015 Dominik Schürmann. Apache License 2.0.
• Android SQLite support library. Copyright (C) 2017 requery.io. Apache License 2.0.
• App shortcut icon generator. Copyright ???. Apache License 2.0.
• Mozilla ISPDB. Free to use for any client.
• ShortcutBadger. Copyright 2014 Leo Lin. Apache license.
• Bugsnag exception reporter for Android. Copyright (c) 2012 Bugsnag. MIT License.
• biweekly. Copyright (c) 2013-2018, Michael Angstadt. BSD 2-Clause.
• PhotoView. Copyright 2018 Chris Banes. Apache License.
• ReLinker. Copyright 2015 - 2016 KeepSafe Software, Inc. Apache License.

Error reporting is sponsored by:

Bugsnag monitors application stability and is used to help improve FairEmail.

License

GNU General Public License version 3

Copyright © 2018-2019 Marcel Bokhorst. All rights reserved

FairEmail is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

FairEmail is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with FairEmail. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/.