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nylas
nylas-mail
JavaScript2015–2018
nylas / nylas-mail · Archived

nylas-mail

:love_letter: An extensible desktop mail app built on the modern web. Forks welcome!

39Distinct people
79Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
24.7KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

:love_letter: An extensible desktop mail app built on the modern web. Forks welcome!

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

Hey guys — I'm Chris Kirk, the author. It's an nw.js application (formerly known as node-webkit). Nw.js is basically a framework for building native desktop clients with Node.…

chrkirk used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 11:19:25 AM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by month79 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-10-05 17:21:18 UTC to 2018-01-27 13:39:25 UTC.

0510152015-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 2 submissions, 7 commentsOct 20152015-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2015-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2015-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2016-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 9 mentions; 0 submissions, 9 comments2016-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2016-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 0 submissions, 5 comments2016-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2016-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2016-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2016-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2016-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 4 mentions; 0 submissions, 4 comments2016-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2016-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 commentsNov 20162016-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 13 mentions; 1 submissions, 12 comments2017-02-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-03-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2017-03-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-04-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 0 submissions, 2 comments2017-04-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-05-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 0 submissions, 7 comments2017-05-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-06-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 1 submissions, 0 comments2017-06-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-07-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-07-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-08-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-08-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-09-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-09-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-10-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-10-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-11-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-11-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-12-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 0 mentions; 0 submissions, 0 comments2017-12-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-02-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 commentsJan 2018

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
Oct 20152015-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-11-01 00:00:00 UTC927
Nov 20152015-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2015-12-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Dec 20152015-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC707
Jan 20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-02-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Feb 20162016-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-03-01 00:00:00 UTC909
Mar 20162016-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-04-01 00:00:00 UTC404
Apr 20162016-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-05-01 00:00:00 UTC505
May 20162016-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-06-01 00:00:00 UTC303
Jun 20162016-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-07-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Jul 20162016-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-08-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Aug 20162016-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-09-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Sep 20162016-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-10-01 00:00:00 UTC404
Oct 20162016-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-11-01 00:00:00 UTC303
Nov 20162016-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20162016-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Jan 20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-02-01 00:00:00 UTC13112
Feb 20172017-02-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-03-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Mar 20172017-03-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-04-01 00:00:00 UTC202
Apr 20172017-04-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-05-01 00:00:00 UTC707
May 20172017-05-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-06-01 00:00:00 UTC110
Jun 20172017-06-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-07-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Jul 20172017-07-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-08-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Aug 20172017-08-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-09-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Sep 20172017-09-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-10-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Oct 20172017-10-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-11-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Nov 20172017-11-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-12-01 00:00:00 UTC000
Dec 20172017-12-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
Jan 20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-02-01 00:00:00 UTC101

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Caution🛑 This repository is archived and no longer maintained. Nylas Mail (originally N1) was open-sourced in 2015 and maintained by Nylas until 2017. It is preserved here for historical reference. Nylas is now an API platform — see developer.nylas.com. For an actively maintained desktop client, see the community forks listed at the bottom of this README. Nylas Mail - the open-source, extensible mail client Nylas Mail was an open-source mail client built on the modern web with Electron, React, and Flux. It was designed to be easy to extend, and many third-party plugins are available that add functionality to the client. ⚠️ Nylas Mail was initially released and open-sourced in early 2015 and was maintained by Nylas until Spring 2017. While Nylas no longer supports Nylas Mail, you can download the latest release or build it from source. There are also several forks that are being actively developed and maintained. Getting Started Setup your Environment (Mac): Install Homebrew Install NVM & Redis brew install nvm redis Install Node 6 via NVM: nvm install 6 npm install Setup your Environment (Linux - Debian/Ubuntu): Install Node 6+ via NodeSource (trusted): curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo -E bash - sudo apt-get install -y nodejs Install Redis locally sudo apt-get install -y redis-server redis-tools benefit of letting us use subdomains. npm install Running Nylas Mail npm run client: Starts the app npm run test-client: Run the tests npm run lint-client: Lint the source (ESLint + Coffeelint + LESSLint) Exploring the Source This repository contains the full source code to the Nylas Mail client and it's backend services. It is divided into the following packages: Isomorphic Core: Shared code across local client and cloud servers Client App: The main Electron app for Nylas Mail mirrored to open source repo. Client Sync: The local mailsync engine integreated in Nylas Mail Client Private Plugins: Private Nylas Mail plugins (like SFDC) Cloud API: The cloud-based auth and metadata APIs for N1 Cloud Core: Shared code used in all remote cloud services Cloud Workers: Cloud workers for services like send later See /packages for the separate pieces. Each folder in /packages is designed to be its own stand-alone repository. They are all bundled here for the ease of source control management. Digging Deeper In early 2016, the Nylas Mail team wrote extensive documentation for the app that was intended for plugin developers. This documentation lives on GitHub Pages and offers a great overview of the app's architecture and important classes. Here are some good places to get started: Application Architecture Debugging Nylas Mail The team has also given conference talks and published blog posts about the client: ReactEurope: How React & Flux Turn Apps Into Extensible Platforms ForwardJS: Electron, React & Pixel Perfect Experiences Blog: Splitting from Atom Blog: Building Plugins for React Apps Blog: Nylas Mail Build Process Blog: Low level Electron Debugging Blog: A New Search Parser Blog: Developers Guide to Emoji Blog: Nylas Pro Blog: Nylas Mail & PGP Blog: Calendar Events and RRULEs Running the Cloud When you download and build Nylas Mail from source it runs without its cloud components. The concept of a "Nylas ID" / subscription has been removed, and plugins that require server-side processing are disabled by default. (Plugins like Snooze, Send Later, etc.) In order to use these plugins and get the full Nylas Mail experience, you need to deploy the backend infrastructure located in the cloud-* packages. Deploying these services is challenging because they are implemented as microservices and designed to be run at enterprise scale with Redis, Postgres, etc. Because these backend services must access your email account, it is also important to use security best-practices (at the very least, SSL, encryption at rest, and a partitioned VPC). For more information about building and deploying this part of the stack, check out the cloud-core README. Themes The Nylas Mail user interface is styled using CSS, which means it's easy to modify and extend. Nylas Mail comes stock with a few beautiful themes, and there are many more which have been built by community developers Bundled Themes Dark Darkside (designed by Jamie Wilson) Taiga (designed by Noah Buscher) Ubuntu (designed by Ahmed Elhanafy) Less Is More (designed by Alexander Adkins (account removed)) Community Themes ToogaBooga Material Monokai (no longer available) Agapanthus—Inbox-inspired theme Stripe Kleinstein—Hides account sidebar Arc Dark Solarized Dark Darkish Predawn Ido—Polymail-inspired theme Berend ElementaryOS LevelUp Sunrise BoraBora Honeyduke Snow Hull Express DarkSoda Bemind Dracula MouseEatsCat (no longer available) Sublime Dark (no longer available) Firefox Gmail To install community themes: Download and unzip the repo In Nylas Mail, select Developer > Install a Package Manually... Navigate to where you downloaded the theme and select the root folder. The theme is copied into the ~/.nylas-mail folder for your convinence Select Change Theme... from the top level menu, and you'll see the newly installed theme. That's it! Want to dive in more? Try creating your own theme! Plugins Some plugins come pre-installed, and are a great starting points for creating your own: Translate—Works with 10 languages Quick Replies—Send emails faster with templates Emoji Keyboard—Insert emoji by typing a colon (:) followed by the name of an emoji symbol GitHub Sidebar Info View on GitHub Personal Level Indicators Phishing Detection Community Plugins Note these are not tested or officially supported by Nylas, but we still think they are really cool! If you find bugs with them, please open GitHub issues on their individual project pages, not the Nylas Mail (N1) repo page. Thanks! Jiffy (no longer available)—Insert animated GIFs Weather Todoist Unsubscribe Squirt Spe
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

7 sources
chrkirk·Dec 14, 2015Recommendation phrase
Hey guys — I'm Chris Kirk, the author. It's an nw.js application (formerly known as node-webkit). Nw.js is basically a framework for building native desktop clients with Node. Unfortunately I haven't been able to give the client much attention since writing this article. Slate was amazing for giving me a month to work on it and report on that experience, but it's not in the email business. I come back to SlateMail from time to time, but right now the app is not exactly in a usable state. Nylas N1 (https://github.com/nylas/N1) is similar -- an extensible email client based on Web technology. Nylas has a whole team of people on it, and it's in active development. So if SlateMail interests you, I recommend you check Nylas N1 out!
In Email made me miserable, so I decided to build my own email app from scratch
Hey-- I work at Nylas. Would love any feedback you have for the site! There's a bit more info on our "Features" page: https://nylas.com/features/ In particular: > Nylas brings email into the 21st century with modern tools, RESTful developer APIs, and open source code. Integrating with Gmail or Exchange now takes minutes instead of months. Nylas is the easiest way to build an email app. Pretty much this means we talk IMAP/SMTP/ActiveSync/MIME so your app doesn't have to. Plus there are some nice new features, like a transactional "delta" endpoint and webhooks, which makes writing mail processing code a breeze. If you're a developer, the easiest place to dig in might be our docs: https://nylas.com/docs/platform or the open source sync engine: https://github.com/nylas/sync-engine We also shipped a new desktop email app this fall, which start
Read the rest
ed as a fork of Atom. You can see that code here: https://github.com/nylas/n1 Our website is sorely in need of a refresh, but right now our team is busy scaling and fixing bugs like crazy. (Relatedly, if any designers are looking for a job... feel free to email mg@nylas.com !)
In Email made me miserable, so I decided to build my own email app from scratch
Hi-- I work at Nylas. Happy to jump in here :) The sync engine handles all the compatibility or dozens of IMAP and Exchange servers, and uses a variety of heuristics for real-time notifications. It also does the heavy-lifting for the huge amount of data in most people's mailbox. The N1 app can cache your entire archive in about 10% of the disk space required if you also download all unprocessed headers+attachments. Right now our search implementation just sends a proxy request to the IMAP search, so you'll get the same performance as Gmail web, Mac Mail, etc. It's not ideal. We're working on our own faster search system, but it's tough to build a huge distributed search cluster that handles tens of terabytes. (And is growing quickly!) If anyone here wants to work on that, we're also hiring. ;) N1 is built on Electron, which under the hood
Read the rest
is Chromium+NodeJS so that comes with a bit of weight. But the app itself is pretty manageable. You can check out the source here: https://github.com/nylas/n1
In Mozilla Wants To Split Off Its Thunderbird Email/Chat Client

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