v3.1 · zero telemetry · open source core

Email that reads you.
Now it just works for you.

Sift is a privacy-first desktop email client that connects directly to your provider over IMAP & SMTP. No middleman servers, no content scanning, no ad profiling — your mail stays on your machine, fully encrypted at rest.

↓ Download Sift See the spec macOS · Windows · Linux · 38 MB
01 — Three principles. No exceptions. These aren't marketing lines. They're constraints baked into the architecture.
PRINCIPLE_01

We never read your mail

Zero content scanning. No keyword indexing on our servers — because there are no servers in the path. Sift talks to your provider directly.

PRINCIPLE_02

Your data stays local

Messages, attachments, and search indexes live in an encrypted store on your device. We collect no telemetry, no crash pings, no analytics — nothing.

PRINCIPLE_03

Verifiable, not promised

The core sync engine is open source and reproducibly built. Audit the network traffic yourself — what we say is exactly what the binary does.

02 — Built for people who live in their inbox. Fast, keyboard-driven, and private by default — without giving up the features you actually use.
⌨️

Keyboard-first workflow

Vim-style bindings, fuzzy command palette, and snippets. Triage a thousand messages without touching the mouse.

🔍

Instant local search

A full-text index built on your machine returns results in milliseconds — across millions of messages, fully offline.

🛡️

Tracker & pixel blocking

Remote images are proxied or stripped, tracking pixels neutralized, and link rewrites flagged before you click.

on by default
🔐

PGP & S/MIME

Sign and encrypt with your own keys. Web Key Directory support means encryption that's actually usable day to day.

📥

Unified, multi-account

Gmail, Fastmail, Proton Bridge, self-hosted IMAP — one window, infinite accounts, no per-account upsell.

Native & lightweight

Written in Rust, not a browser shell. Cold start under 400 ms and a memory footprint a fraction of the usual.

🌙

Offline-complete

Read, write, search, and queue sends on a plane. Everything syncs cleanly the moment you reconnect.

🎛️

Rules that run locally

Filter, label, and auto-archive with rules evaluated entirely on-device — your logic never leaves your laptop.

03 — Pay once. Own it. No subscriptions, no seat counts, no "pro tier" holding features hostage.
// one-time purchase
$39
Sift Desktop · lifetime license · all platforms
No recurring fee. $8/mo forever isn't our model.
Buy & Download
30-day no-questions refund · use offline
  • One license, every device you own. Personal use, no activation servers.
  • Free updates for two years. Then keep the version you have, forever.
  • Unlimited mail accounts. We don't count your inboxes.
  • No data resale — ever. You're the customer, not the product.
  • Source-available core. Verify the privacy claims line by line.

Take your inbox back.

Download Sift and connect any IMAP account in under a minute. Nothing you don't approve ever leaves your machine.

SHA-256 · 9f3c1a 7e2b40 d8c91f 6a05be 4413dd 0c87aa f2e198 3b6c52