Apple Mail Search

VerifiedSafe

Search Apple Mail across all synced accounts using keywords, subject, sender, or time filters. Helps quickly find specific emails without manually browsing through folders. Supports advanced queries like 'from:user@domain.com last 30 days'.

Sby Skills Guide Bot
ProductivityBeginner
1406/2/2026
Claude Code
#email#search#apple-mail#macos#productivity

Recommended for

Our review

Searches Apple Mail across all synced accounts by keyword, subject, sender, or combination, returning recent matching emails.

Strengths

  • Full-text search across all accounts
  • Supports filtering by sender, subject, account, and time
  • Can retrieve full email body content

Limitations

  • Only works with Apple Mail on macOS
  • Requires the mail database to be indexed and accessible
  • Limited to last 50 results without further narrowing
When to use it

Use when you need to quickly locate a specific email across multiple Apple Mail accounts.

When not to use it

Do not use if you are not using Apple Mail or need to search web-based or server-side email services.

Security analysis

Safe
Quality score92/100

The skill only performs read-only local database queries and file parsing using sqlite3 and python3. It does not invoke network operations, destructive commands, or exfiltrate data. User input is limited to search terms and filters, and the skill is user-invocable, so no external attack vector exists.

No concerns found

Examples

Find email by sender and subject
Find an email from alice@example.com about the quarterly report
Search recent emails by keyword
Search for emails containing 'budget' from the last 30 days
Find all emails from a specific person
Find all emails from John Smith

name: mail-search description: >- Search Apple Mail across all synced accounts by keyword, subject, sender, or any combination. Use when user asks to find an email, search for a message, or look for something in their mail. Arguments: search terms, optionally with sender:, subject:, from:, account: prefixes, and time filters like "last 30 days" or "this year". disable-model-invocation: false user-invocable: true allowed-tools: Bash metadata: openclaw: requires: bins: [sqlite3, python3]

Mail Search — Full-Text Search Across All Accounts

Search query: $ARGUMENTS

Argument Parsing

Parse $ARGUMENTS for modifiers:

  • from:name@domain.com or sender: → filter by sender
  • subject:keyword → filter subject only
  • account:gmail or account:work → restrict to account type
  • last N days/weeks → time filter
  • Anything else → search both subject and sender

Query

DB="$HOME/Library/Mail/V10/MailData/Envelope Index"
TERM="<extracted search term>"  # URL-encode % as %% in shell

sqlite3 "$DB" "
SELECT datetime(m.date_received,'unixepoch','localtime') as dt,
       s.subject, a.address as sender, a.comment as name,
       mb.url as mailbox, m.ROWID, m.read,
       CASE WHEN m.size > 0 THEN m.size ELSE 0 END as size
FROM messages m
JOIN subjects  s  ON m.subject  = s.ROWID
JOIN addresses a  ON m.sender   = a.ROWID
JOIN mailboxes mb ON m.mailbox  = mb.ROWID
WHERE m.deleted = 0
  AND mb.url NOT LIKE '%Spam%'
  AND mb.url NOT LIKE '%Trash%'
  AND mb.url NOT LIKE '%Junk%'
  AND (
    s.subject LIKE '%TERM%'
    OR a.address LIKE '%TERM%'
    OR a.comment LIKE '%TERM%'
  )
ORDER BY m.date_received DESC
LIMIT 50;" 2>/dev/null

For sender-only search:

WHERE a.address LIKE '%TERM%' OR a.comment LIKE '%TERM%'

For subject-only search:

WHERE s.subject LIKE '%TERM%'

For recipient search (TO/CC):

JOIN recipients r ON r.message = m.ROWID
JOIN addresses ra ON r.address = ra.ROWID
WHERE ra.address LIKE '%TERM%'

Reading Email Bodies

If user wants to read specific results, find the emlx and parse:

python3 ~/.claude/skills/_mail-shared/parser.py <ROWID>

Output Format

Show results as a table: | Date | From | Subject | Account | Read | |---|---|---|---|---|

If more than 20 results, summarize by sender/thread and ask if they want to narrow down. For each result, note the account it belongs to (extract UUID from mailbox URL to identify account). Offer to read any specific email if user asks.

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