MailRescue: restore lost Apple Mail messages from Time Machine

Not released yet. MailRescue is an idea we are testing, not an app you can download or buy. We will only build it if enough people tell us they want it. If you need your mail back today, the free step-by-step guide works without any app.

What MailRescue would do

If a message or a whole mailbox has vanished from Apple Mail, Time Machine usually still has an older copy of your Mail folder. Getting one message out of it by hand means hunting through hidden folders and importing a mailbox. MailRescue would do that part for you, the way NoteRescue does it for Apple Notes:

1. Find your Time Machine backups and read the Mail folder inside them, without changing the backup or your live Mail.
2. Show what is missing today. Compare an older snapshot with the mail in Mail now, and list the messages that were in the backup but are not in Mail any more, with sender, date, subject and mailbox.
3. Restore only what you pick. Put the selected messages into a mailbox file you can import in Mail with File, Import Mailboxes, or save them as .eml files. Your current mail is never overwritten.

Like our other Mac apps, it would be built to run entirely on your Mac: nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and there is no AI inside.

What it could not do

• Mail that was never in a backup. No backup of the lost mail, no recovery.
• Mail that exists only on the mail server and was deleted there. If your provider deleted it and it was never downloaded to your Mac, there is no local copy to restore.
• Messages Mail never fully downloaded (for example attachments that were left on the server) can come back incomplete.

Planned price

USD 29, one payment, no subscription, with a free scan that shows what a backup contains before you pay. Waitlist members would get a launch price of USD 19. This is a plan, not an offer: nothing can be bought today, and joining the waitlist costs nothing and commits you to nothing.

Join the waitlist

Leave your email and we will write to you once, if and when MailRescue is released. That is the only email you will get from this list.

Email

I would pay USD 29 for this when it launches

What happened to your mail? (optional, one line)

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Join the waitlist

We use your email only for the single launch email. We delete the list after the launch email goes out, or when we decide not to build the app, and in any case by 31 March 2027, and earlier if you ask. No third party sees it. Details are in the privacy policy.

Questions

Does Time Machine back up Apple Mail? Yes. Time Machine copies your Mail folder along with the rest of your user Library. What is unreliable on recent versions of macOS is restoring single messages from inside Mail itself, which is why the manual method imports a copied mailbox instead. See the guide.

Is MailRescue available? No. It has not been built. This page is a waitlist to find out whether enough people want it.

How much would it cost? The planned price is USD 29 one time, with USD 19 for people on the waitlist at launch. Nothing is charged now.

Will it work with Gmail, iCloud and other IMAP accounts? Only for messages that were downloaded to your Mac and are in a backup. Mail deleted on the server and never stored on your Mac cannot be recovered by any backup tool.

Would it send my mail anywhere? No. It would read your backup on your Mac and write files on your Mac. There would be no account and no AI.

Mac, macOS, Time Machine and Mail are trademarks of Apple Inc. Kayabyte is not affiliated with or endorsed by Apple Inc.