Search by words or meaning
Type it the way you remember it.
Search runs on the folder you are reading and forgives case, accents, separators and small typos. Operators like from: and has:pdf narrow it, and search by meaning finds the mail you can only describe.
In short
What is full-text email search?
Full-text search reads the words inside your mail, not just the subject. A good one forgives a half-remembered word and gets strict when you quote a phrase.
How it works
The folder you are in narrows it
A search from Inbox does not reach Archive, Sent or Spam. Name another with in:archive, or use in:anywhere for all of them.
Loose words, strict quotes
Case, accents and separators are ignored and part of a word counts, so min finds Benjamin. When nothing matches exactly, a small typo is forgiven, so benjimin does too. A quoted phrase must appear as written.
Operators read the way they look
OR, parentheses and a leading minus combine, so (from:stripe OR from:paddle) has:pdf -is:read finds unread threads with a PDF from either.
The vocabulary
Unknown operators are searched as plain text.
What you get
In the product today
One key away
Press / from the list, or click the box above it.
Matches are marked
Subject and sender in the list show where your words matched.
Newest first, or best match
Results come best match first. With search by meaning turned off in the privacy settings, they follow the list's own order.
No outside engine
Your query never goes to anybody else's search engine. Searching by meaning sends your words to an embedding model, with the same no-retention routing as the other AI features.
Good practice
Getting the most out of it
- 01
Start with a word
Type what you remember, then add an operator if the list runs long.
- 02
Quote to tighten
When loose words bring back too much, quote the phrase.
- 03
Widen before browsing
Lost a thread? Add in:anywhere rather than opening each folder.
Questions
Asked often
Keep going
Works well with
Pick them with the paperclip or paste them in. A pasted image lands in the body rather than the file list, and a file dragged onto the composer is not attached at all. In a mailbox hosted on Nextmail, incoming files sit in object storage, one object each, and a file is fetched only when you open or download it.
Start
Your domain,
your mail.
Point a domain at Nextmail and read it in a mailbox built around it. The free plan covers one domain.
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