Suzume Mail

Suzume Mail breaks with the nested quoting that turns any long thread in a classic mail client into an excavation project. A thread is drawn as a conversation — your messages on the right, theirs on the left, quoted text collapsed by default. Even when other programs have mangled the headers, Suzume puts the messages back in the right order.

Accounts are direct IMAP and SMTP connections, as many as you like, with credentials in the keychain; there is no vendor account, and no trackers or telemetry. The app is driven mainly from the keyboard: navigate, archive, delete, select several messages at once and clear them in one pass. The AI features — a summary in the reading pane, suggested quick replies, help with phrasing — run on device, with no API key and no round trip through a cloud.

The app is signed and notarised by Apple and ships in five languages. It costs $29 once direct from the developer or $29.99 on the Mac App Store, with no in-app purchases and updates included.

Why no subscription? Email is an open protocol that runs on your own machine — a client has no ongoing costs to cover. The well-known subscription clients still ask between $36 and $240 a year for exactly this job.