Every other inbox cleaner makes you upload your whole mailbox to their cloud —
then charges you for it. This one doesn't. Bulk-delete years of promotions and unsubscribe
from the noise in your Gmail (Yahoo & other IMAP: experimental) — running 100% on your own
machine. Your email never leaves it. Free and open source.
🪟 Windows: unzip → double-click, opens in your browser (or the one-file .exe, no Python needed). ·
🍎 Mac:pip3 install inboxsweeper → inboxsweeper serve.
All the ways → · Setup warnings, and what to click →
🔒
Truly private
Runs 100% locally over IMAP with an app password. Your email never touches a third-party server. Ever.
🎁
Free & open
MIT-licensed, no signup, no subscription, no upsell. Read every line of code.
📬
Gmail-first
Full support for Gmail, with experimental support for Yahoo and other IMAP inboxes.
Three modes. You pick the aggression. ⚡
The heart of InboxSweeper: one dial from cautious to ruthless. Banks, security,
payments, receipts and government mail stay protected in every mode — the dial only
changes how far back it reaches and how many senders it clears per run.
SAFEST
🦥
Sloth
Only mail older than 2 years
25senders per run
RECOMMENDED
🧹
Normal
Mail older than 1 year
50senders per run
AGGRESSIVE
🔥
MadMax
All promo mail, incl. recent
100senders per run
Every sweep goes to
Trash (recoverable ~30 days) and previews the count before anything moves. Hit the per-run cap?
It tells you exactly how many senders remain — just run it again.
Why your inbox stays messy — and why the usual fixes are worse
The clutter never stops
Every purchase, signup, and app adds another sender. Mailing lists pile up faster than you can delete them, storage creeps toward full, and "inbox zero" starts to feel impossible.
The popular fixes cost you twice
Most cleaners make you grant a company full access to your mailbox in their cloud — then bill you monthly for it. You hand over your privacy and your money just to get tidy.
You shouldn't have to choose between a clean inbox and a private one.
So we built one that runs on your computer, sees nothing, and costs nothing.
What it does
Everything the paid inbox-cleaners do for the 90% case — minus the cloud and the bill.
🧹 Clean by sender
Ranks your noisiest bulk senders so you clear thousands of emails in a few clicks.
✉️ One-click unsubscribe
Uses the RFC-8058 one-click and mailto standards to actually stop the mail at the source.
🚩 Report spam safely
A separate, deliberate action: flag senders you don't recognize to train your provider's filter — without the risk of confirming your address to a bad actor.
♻️ Safe by design
Deletions move to Trash — recoverable for 30 days. Nothing is ever permanently erased.
🛡️ Protects what matters
Financial, security, government and transactional senders are shielded automatically.
🚫 Block senders
Block a sender once and their mail is swept automatically from then on — set it and forget it.
💾 See storage freed
Watch the gigabytes come back. Every sweep reports exactly how much space you reclaimed.
🔔 Quarterly reminders
Opt in and it nudges you every three months — and auto-sweeps your blocked senders — so your inbox never piles up again.
🖱️ App or terminal
Double-click to open a local browser app — or drive it from the command line. Your call.
🤖 Agent-ready
Works with Claude Code, Codex, Jules, Cursor & any AGENTS.md-aware agent — your AI assistant can clean your inbox for you.
How it works
ConnectCreate a free app password (we show you exactly how) and paste it once. Stored in your OS keychain.
ScanIt analyzes your mailbox locally and shows who's flooding you, with an unsubscribe method for each.
Sweep & unsubscribeTick the junk, preview the count, and clean it to Trash — then unsubscribe so it stays gone.
How we compare
Not against any one product — against how inbox cleaners are usually built.
InboxSweeper
Cloud cleaners
Browser add-ons
Cost
Always free, everything
Subscription
Free tier, pay to act in bulk
No "Sign in with Google"
✓ app password
✕ OAuth
✕ OAuth
Your mail stays on your machine
✓
✕ their servers
Varies
Nothing installs into your browser
✓
✓
✕
Works beyond Gmail
✓ Yahoo & IMAP
Often
✕ usually Gmail only
No account / signup
✓
✕
✕
Bulk delete & real unsubscribe
✓
✓
✓
Block senders (stop future mail)
✓
✓
Sometimes
Runs without a browser at all
✓ terminal & AI agents
✕
✕
Some tools get parts of this right — a few are open source, a few process locally. What none of them
ask you to skip is the "Sign in with Google" consent screen. That's the line this tool won't cross: an app password you can revoke in one click,
and no company holding standing access to your mailbox.
How this one is different
There are a lot of "inbox" cleaners — browser extensions, Gmail-only add-ons, cloud
services. Most ask you to sign in with Google and hand a company ongoing access to your
mailbox. This one is built the opposite way.
No "Sign in with Google", no OAuth
There's no consent screen granting a third party access to your account. You create a Gmail app password and paste it once — it lives in your OS keychain, on your machine. Revoke it anytime and the tool dies instantly.
Not a browser extension
Nothing installs into your browser. Extensions can change hands or silently update what they do; this is open-source code you run yourself and can read line by line.
Nothing is uploaded — not even a token
Your mail, credentials and tokens never leave your computer. No cloud inbox copy, no server holding your access. The only thing sent is an anonymous, opt-out sweep counter (counts + app version, never addresses or content).
Works beyond Gmail
Gmail is fully supported, plus experimental Yahoo and any IMAP inbox — not locked to a single provider.
Focused, not bloated
It does the three things that matter — clean by sender, real unsubscribe, deliberate report-spam — and stops there. No gimmicks bolted on.
Free, forever, open source
MIT-licensed, no signup, no OTP, no phone number, no subscription. If it ever isn't enough, fork it.
So why isn't it just a website?
Because a browser physically can't talk to your mailbox. IMAP is a raw socket connection; JavaScript on a page can only do HTTP. A pure web version would need either a server holding your password and reading your mail, or "Sign in with Google". Those are the two things this exists to avoid — so it runs a tiny local program instead, and that's what your browser connects to.
Get started — four ways
Pick whichever fits you. All four run 100% on your own machine.
🖱️ Web app · Windows · recommended
Download the app (green Code → Download ZIP on GitHub), unzip, and double-click
InboxSweeper.bat. It opens in your browser. No Python? The launcher walks
you through the free one-time install. Windows warns once — what to click.
🍎 Web app · Mac · two lines, once
Macs refuse to open apps unless the maker pays Apple $99/year. This one is free and doesn't —
so you install it a different way and never see a warning. About a minute:
1. Hold ⌘ and press Space, type Terminal, press Return. 2. Paste pip3 install inboxsweeper → Return. Wait ~30s. 3. Paste inboxsweeper serve → Return.
Your browser opens with InboxSweeper in it — all clicking from there. Next time, just steps 1 and 3.
Downloaded the ZIP instead? One command clears the warning.
📦 Windows .exe
Want zero setup on Windows? Download the one-file InboxSweeper.exe,
double-click, done — nothing else to install. Your browser and SmartScreen will both warn you first —
here's what to click.
🤖 AI coding agents
Claude Code, Codex, Jules, Cursor & more — install the skill or point them at AGENTS.md, then just ask them to tidy your inbox. Nothing to learn: you describe it, the agent runs it.
⌨️ Terminal
For coders — pipx install inboxsweeper, then one command and you're cleaning.
pipx install inboxsweeper # or: pip install inboxsweeper
inboxsweeper serve # web app in your browser
inboxsweeper wizard # or the guided terminal version
Needs Python 3.9+ and a free app password (the tool shows you exactly how to make one).
On a Mac this is also the smoothest route — a pip install carries no download flag, so there's no Gatekeeper unlock.
On the roadmap
Archive / mark-as-read as alternatives to Trash
A signed Mac app and .exe — drag-to-Applications, no warnings, no Terminal.
Needs a $99/year Apple Developer ID, so it waits until the tool has enough users to justify it.
More free everyday tools under the same roof
First run: what your computer will say
InboxSweeper isn't code-signed — a signing certificate costs $99/year and this is free,
so your browser and OS will treat it as an unknown app. Nothing is wrong; here's each screen and the
one button that gets past it. You can read every line of the source first if you'd rather.
🪟 Windows — the download itself is blocked
Chrome or Edge may say "InboxSweeper.exe isn't commonly downloaded" or
"can't be downloaded securely" and hide the file.
Do this: open the browser's Downloads bar or the ⋮ next to the file →
Keep → Keep anyway. The download then completes normally.
🪟 Windows — SmartScreen on first launch
A blue box: "Windows protected your PC".
Do this: click More info → Run anyway. The button only appears after you click
More info, which is why it's easy to miss.
🔎 Prove it came from here
Unsigned doesn't have to mean unverifiable. Every release is built by a public workflow
that records signed build provenance, so you can check the file yourself:
It confirms this exact binary was built from this source by that workflow — most of what a
$99/year certificate would tell you, for free. Needs the
GitHub CLI.
🍎 Mac — the command that actually works
If you downloaded the ZIP: open Terminal (hold ⌘, press Space, type
Terminal, Return), paste this, press Return:
Then double-click InboxSweeper.command in Finder — it opens normally,
now and every time after.
Got "No such file or directory"? Your folder is elsewhere. Type
xattr -d com.apple.quarantine with a trailing space, then drag the file
from Finder into the Terminal window — it fills in the path — and press Return.
🍎 Mac — "unidentified developer"
Double-clicking InboxSweeper.command gives
"cannot be opened because it is from an unidentified developer", or on newer macOS
"Apple could not verify it is free of malware".
🍎 Skip all of this with one line:pip3 install inboxsweeper
then inboxsweeper serve. A pip install carries no download flag, so Gatekeeper
never gets involved — and you get the same browser app.
On macOS 15 Sequoia and newer (including macOS 26) — Apple removed the old
right-click → Open trick, so ignore that advice wherever you find it. These are
Apple's own steps,
but they're built for .app bundles and are unreliable for launcher files
like ours — the approval button often doesn't appear. If that's you, nothing is broken; use the line above.
1. Double-click InboxSweeper.command → click Done.
Not Move to Trash, which deletes it. 2. menu → System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to Security. 3. Find the line about InboxSweeper.command → click Open Anyway. 4. Enter your login password or Touch ID → OK. 5. Double-click the launcher again → Open. macOS remembers it from now on.
⏱️ Do those steps in one go — Apple shows Open Anyway for only about an hour
after the blocked attempt. If the button isn't there, just double-click the launcher again to bring it back.
On macOS 14 and older: right-click (or Control-click) the file → Open → Open.
Still stuck? Tell me what you saw
— which OS, which browser, and the exact wording — and I'll fix it.
Why I built this
I have a habit of pointing a bit of code
at the everyday annoyances in my life. For the better part of 15 years, my inbox was the one that
never stayed solved. It started as a small IMAP script to nuke the obvious promos, then a cron
job once a month to hold the pile back. But email never sits still —
Google killed "less secure app" access and I moved to app passwords; the special folders behaved
differently on every provider; IMAP search would change what it returned; rate limits tightened.
The cron would break, usually silently, and I'd patch it. Year after year.
The hard part was never
deleting — it was deleting only the junk and never once touching what mattered: a bank
statement, a flight confirmation, a receipt at tax time. So most of the tinkering was plumbing
and careful cleaning — drawing the line so the sweep always stepped around anything critical.
Working with AI, I finally fixed the core instead of the symptoms and built the app I'd
pictured for a decade: cleaning modes, safe-by-default sweeps to Trash, an automatic shield
around financial and security mail, one-click unsubscribe. And I made it open source, so
anyone can clean their inbox the same careful way. Free, and completely private.