Unibox, a new Messages-style email client that was first announced in August of 2012, is now available for download as part of a public beta test.

The app is designed to make email more "personal" by organizing emails into a contact-centric view. Unibox's interface is divided into two main panes, with the left side displaying contacts and the right side displaying all messages that have been received/exchanged with a particular person or website.

uniboxemail1
According to Unibox, this chat-like design significantly reduces email clutter by grouping incoming messages from contacts into a single list.

Composing emails with the app is done in a single window, which eliminates separate compose windows utilized by existing apps like Mail. All attachments sent to and received from contacts are readily available, and attached media is presented in a grid view.

unibox2
Unibox supports all IMAP accounts and works with both Mountain Lion and Mavericks. The full Mac app is expected to be released at the end of September, and ahead of release, users can sign up for the beta on the company's website. Beta will last until the Mac app debuts.

Top Rated Comments

pgiguere1 Avatar
158 months ago
Seems like a weird timing considering personnal email addresses are getting less and less used for human-to-human communication, and more and more for advertising or various automatic notifications from websites.

Of course I can't speak for everyone but it seems to me that social networks and text messages are where most human-to-human communication is done nowadays. This could have been a good concept 10 years ago.
Score: 4 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Michael Goff Avatar
158 months ago
installed and used it for 1 minute. uninstalled and got back to airmail. email shouldn't be listed by contact, but by subject. sparrow died so airmail is the new king.

Am I the only one who just uses the mail.app?

What makes airmail so much better?
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
seamer Avatar
158 months ago
It doesn't support Exchange
Google's IMAP is detected properly

I have two accounts configured in mine, and there's no way to quickly see which mailbox I'm looking at. There's a lack of folders... And I can't drag mail from one box to another
Score: 2 Votes (Like | Disagree)
vanc Avatar
158 months ago
Does it support mail threads? Without that, we cannot really use in a business environment as emails may have multiple people involved.

Anyway, mail.app is the only email client I'm using on Mac. It works fine for me since 2007 when I started using Mac. Just the vanilla app. No plugins.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
curmudgeon32 Avatar
158 months ago
Seems like a weird timing considering personnal email addresses are getting less and less used for human-to-human communication, and more and more for advertising or various automatic notifications from websites.

Of course I can't speak for everyone but it seems to me that social networks and text messages are where most human-to-human communication is done nowadays. This could have been a good concept 10 years ago.

Sometimes email is the right medium, sometimes not. I have conversations with people across various media (email, texts, Facebook messages, the occasional Twitter DM).

What I'd like is a single app or system or something that can work across multiple streams so that you click on a contact and see everything from that person, regardless of how it was sent.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
teejaysplace Avatar
158 months ago
Looks great for those with at most ~10-20 contacts.

It groups things by day first, then by contact. So you'll see all the emails that you received from John The Boss today, then the ones you received from him yesterday, etc. I suppose if you receive 500 emails from 200 different people each day, then this isn't the organizational system for you. But for those who work on small teams, I can definitely see the upside.

When I'm working on a project, I find I'm paying closest attention to the people directly involved, while others remain in the periphery. So I enjoy knowing right off the bat that I've received 5 emails from my boss and 3 emails from the Assistant Director. It's a lot easier than trying to read back over endless threads of text.

But I also need to file emails accordingly, beyond just the sender. Like if something is a receipt, it needs to go under purchasing, regardless of the sender. After using the program this morning, I didn't see an obvious way to do that. I also found I have to right click each time I want to delete a message (pressing the Delete key won't do it.) And if it's one thing busy office workers hate, it's extra clicks.

Overall, the idea has significant upside, but the execution isn't 100% there yet.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

Popular Stories

iOS 26

iOS 26.1 Coming Soon: New Features for Your iPhone and Release Date

Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more. Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1. Release Date Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
iOS 26 Maps Glass

Apple Reportedly Moving Ahead With Ads in Maps App

Sunday October 26, 2025 6:22 am PDT by
Apple Maps could feature integrated ads as soon as next year, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports. In his latest "Power On" newsletter, Gurman said that Apple's plan to bring more ads to iOS is moving "gaining traction," with the Maps app being next in line. The project will apparently give restaurants and other businesses the option to pay to have their details featured more prominently in...
maxresdefault

Apple TV 4K Could Still Launch Before 2025 Ends: All the Rumored Features

Monday October 27, 2025 4:51 pm PDT by
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors. ...
iOS 26 Battery Glass Feature

iOS 26.1 Beta Liquid Glass Battery Drain Test: Tinted vs Clear Mode

Friday October 24, 2025 2:30 pm PDT by
In the fourth iOS 26.1 beta, Apple added a "Tinted" option that reduces the translucency of Liquid Glass for those who prefer a more opaque look. I saw some comments wondering whether the setting might preserve battery life, so I thought I'd do some testing. Test Settings I did four separate tests using the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and I kept the parameters as similar as possible. Here are the...
M6 MacBook Pro Feature 1

M6 MacBook Pro: Release Date, Pricing, and What to Expect

Monday October 27, 2025 9:15 am PDT by
Apple this month refreshed the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, and higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are expected to follow in early 2026. However, these machines will represent the final update to the current design, with Apple reportedly developing a completely new version of the MacBook Pro packed with next-generation hardware...
iOS 26

iOS 26.1 Coming Soon With These 8 New Features for Your iPhone

Wednesday October 22, 2025 6:15 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more. iOS 26.1 is currently in beta testing. The update will likely be released in the first half of November, and it is compatible with the iPhone 11 series and newer, but some...
swift for android

Developers Can Now Make Android Apps With Apple's Swift

Sunday October 26, 2025 4:23 am PDT by
The first preview release of the Swift SDK for Android was published this week, allowing developers to build Android apps in Swift with official tooling and making it easier to share code across iOS and Android. The SDK enables Android apps to be built in Swift using officially supported tooling rather than community workarounds. In June, it was announced that Apple's Swift programming...
ios 26 digital id passport wallet

Apple Says U.S. Passport Feature on iPhone is Coming Soon

Monday October 27, 2025 7:41 am PDT by
You will "soon" be able to add a digital version of your U.S. passport to your iPhone, according to Jennifer Bailey, vice president of Apple Pay and Apple Wallet. Bailey reiterated that the feature is coming soon during her keynote at the Money20/20 USA conference in Las Vegas on Sunday. On its iOS 26 page, Apple says the delayed feature will be "coming later this year." Apple's...
iOS 26

Apple Seeds iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, and macOS Tahoe 26.1 Release Candidates

Tuesday October 28, 2025 1:07 pm PDT by
Apple today provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate versions of upcoming iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, macOS Tahoe 26.1, tvOS 26.1, watchOS 26.1, and visionOS 26.1 updates for testing purposes. The RCs betas come a week after Apple released the fourth betas. The new betas can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software...