Inbox Zero Your AI Email Assistant

What is Inbox Zero?

Inbox Zero is an innovative open-source application designed to help users manage their emails efficiently and achieve a state of "inbox zero." This concept refers to the practice of keeping the inbox empty or as close to empty as possible, allowing users to focus on important tasks without the distraction of unread emails. The app provides tools and features that streamline email management, making it easier for users to prioritize and respond to messages promptly.

Features of Inbox Zero

• User-Friendly Interface: The application boasts a clean and intuitive design that simplifies navigation and enhances user experience.
• Email Categorization: Automatically categorize emails into different folders based on priority, sender, or subject, helping users quickly identify important messages.
• Task Management Integration: Seamlessly integrate with task management tools to convert emails into actionable tasks, ensuring nothing falls through the cracks.
• Customizable Notifications: Set personalized notification preferences to stay updated on important emails without being overwhelmed by constant alerts.
• Search Functionality: Advanced search options allow users to find specific emails quickly, saving time and effort.
• Open Source: Being an open-source project, users can contribute to its development, customize features, and ensure the app evolves to meet their needs.

How to Use Inbox Zero

1. Download and Install: Visit getinboxzero.com to download the application and follow the installation instructions.
2. Connect Your Email: Once installed, connect your email account(s) to the app for seamless integration.
3. Set Up Categories: Customize your email categories based on your preferences, such as work, personal, or urgent.
4. Manage Notifications: Adjust notification settings to receive alerts for important emails while minimizing distractions.
5. Start Organizing: Begin sorting through your emails, categorizing them, and converting important messages into tasks.
6. Maintain Inbox Zero: Regularly check your inbox, respond to emails promptly, and keep your inbox organized to achieve and maintain inbox zero.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Is Inbox Zero free to use?

A: Yes, Inbox Zero is an open-source application, which means it is free to download and use.

Q: Can I customize the features of Inbox Zero?

A: Absolutely! Being open-source, users can modify the application to suit their specific needs and preferences.

Q: Does Inbox Zero support multiple email accounts?

A: Yes, you can connect multiple email accounts to Inbox Zero, allowing you to manage all your emails in one place.

Q: How does Inbox Zero help with productivity?

A: By organizing emails and converting them into tasks, Inbox Zero helps users focus on what matters most, reducing stress and increasing productivity.

Q: Where can I find support for Inbox Zero?

A: You can find support and community discussions on the official GitHub repository or the app's website.

<p align="center"> <a href="https://www.getinboxzero.com"> <h1 align="center">Inbox Zero - Your AI Email Assistant</h1> </a> <p align="center"> Open source email app to reach inbox zero fast. <br /> <a href="https://www.getinboxzero.com">Website</a> · <a href="https://www.getinboxzero.com/discord">Discord</a> · <a href="https://github.com/elie222/inbox-zero/issues">Issues</a> </p> </p>

About

There are two parts to Inbox Zero:

1. An AI email assistant that helps you spend less time on email.
2. Open source AI email client.

If you're looking to contribute to the project, the email client is the best place to do this.

Thanks to Vercel for sponsoring Inbox Zero in support of open-source software.

Features

• AI Personal Assistant: Manages your email for you based on a plain text prompt file. It can take any action a human assistant can take on your behalf (Draft reply, Label, Archive, Reply, Forward, Mark Spam, and even call a webhook).
• Reply Zero: Track emails that need your reply and those awaiting responses.
• Smart Categories: Categorize everyone that's ever emailed you.
• Bulk Unsubscriber: Quickly unsubscribe from emails you never read in one-click.
• Cold Email Blocker: Automatically block cold emails.
• Email Analytics: Track your email activity with daily, weekly, and monthly stats.

Learn more in our docs.

Feature Screenshots

| | | | :: | :-: | | AI Assistant | Reply Zero | | | | | Gmail client | Bulk Unsubscriber |

Demo Video

Built with

• Next.js
• Tailwind CSS
• shadcn/ui
• Prisma
• Upstash
• Turborepo

Star History

Feature Requests

To request a feature open a GitHub issue, or join our Discord.

Getting Started for Developers

We offer a hosted version of Inbox Zero at https://getinboxzero.com. To self-host follow the steps below.

Setup

Here's a video on how to set up the project. It covers the same steps mentioned in this document. But goes into greater detail on setting up the external services.

Requirements

• Node.js >= 18.0.0
• pnpm >= 8.6.12
• Docker desktop (recommended but optional)

Make sure you have the above installed before starting.

The external services that are required are (detailed setup instructions below):

• Google OAuth
• Google PubSub

Updating .env file: secrets

Create your own .env file from the example supplied:

cp apps/web/.env.example apps/web/.env
cd apps/web
pnpm install

Set the environment variables in the newly created .env. You can see a list of required variables in: apps/web/env.ts.

The required environment variables:

Secrets:

• NEXTAUTH_SECRET -- can be any random string (try using openssl rand -hex 32 for a quick secure random string)
• GOOGLE_ENCRYPT_SECRET -- Secret key for encrypting OAuth tokens (try using openssl rand -hex 32 for a secure key)
• GOOGLE_ENCRYPT_SALT -- Salt for encrypting OAuth tokens (try using openssl rand -hex 16 for a secure salt)

Redis:

• UPSTASH_REDIS_URL -- Redis URL from Upstash. (can be empty if you are using Docker Compose)
• UPSTASH_REDIS_TOKEN -- Redis token from Upstash. (or specify your own random string if you are using Docker Compose)

When using Vercel with Fluid Compute turned off, you should set MAX_DURATION=300 or lower. See Vercel limits for different plans here.

Updating .env file with Google OAuth credentials:

• GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID -- Google OAuth client ID. More info here
• GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET -- Google OAuth client secret. More info here

Go to Google Cloud. Create a new project if necessary.

Create new credentials:

1. If the banner shows up, configure consent screen (if not, you can do this later)

   1. Click the banner, then Click Get Started.
   2. Choose a name for your app, and enter your email.
   3. In Audience, choose External
   4. Enter your contact information
   5. Agree to the User Data policy and then click Create.
   6. Return to APIs and Services using the left sidebar.

2. Create new credentials:

   1. Click the +Create Credentials button. Choose OAuth Client ID.
   2. In Application Type, Choose Web application
   3. Choose a name for your web client
   4. In Authorized JavaScript origins, add a URI and enter http://localhost:3000
   5. In Authorized redirect URIs enter http://localhost:3000/api/auth/callback/google
   6. Click Create.
   7. A popup will show up with the new credentials, including the Client ID and secret.

3. Update .env file:

   1. Copy the Client ID to GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID
   2. Copy the Client secret to GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET

4. Update scopes

   1. Go to Data Access in the left sidebar (or click link above)
   2. Click Add or remove scopes
   3. Copy paste the below into the Manually add scopes box:

   https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.profile
   https://www.googleapis.com/auth/userinfo.email
   https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.modify
   https://www.googleapis.com/auth/gmail.settings.basic
   https://www.googleapis.com/auth/contacts
   

   4. Click Update
   5. Click Save in the Data Access page.

5. Add yourself as a test user

   1. Go to Audience
   2. In the Test users section, click +Add users
   3. Enter your email and press Save

Updating .env file with LLM parameters

You need to set an LLM, but you can use a local one too:

• Anthropic
• OpenAI
• AWS Bedrock Anthropic
• Google Gemini
• Groq Llama 3.3 70B
• Ollama (local)

For the LLM, you can use Anthropic, OpenAI, or Anthropic on AWS Bedrock. You can also use Ollama by setting the following enviroment variables:

OLLAMA_BASE_URL=http://localhost:11434/api
NEXT_PUBLIC_OLLAMA_MODEL=phi3

Note: If you need to access Ollama hosted locally and the application is running on Docker setup, you can use http://host.docker.internal:11434/api as the base URL. You might also need to set OLLAMA_HOST to 0.0.0.0 in the Ollama configuration file.

You can select the model you wish to use in the app on the /settings page of the app.

If you are using local ollama, you can set it to be default:

DEFAULT_LLM_PROVIDER=ollama

If this is the case you must also set the ECONOMY_LLM_PROVIDER environment variable.

Redis and Postgres

We use Postgres for the database. For Redis, you can use Upstash Redis or set up your own Redis instance.

You can run Postgres & Redis locally using docker-compose

docker-compose up -d # -d will run the services in the background

Running the app

To run the migrations:

pnpm prisma migrate dev

To run the app locally for development (slower):

pnpm run dev

Or from the project root:

turbo dev

To build and run the app locally in production mode (faster):

pnpm run build
pnpm start

Open http://localhost:3000 to view the app in your browser.

Premium

Many features are available only to premium users. To upgrade yourself, make yourself an admin in the .env: ADMINS=hello@gmail.com Then upgrade yourself at: http://localhost:3000/admin.

Set up push notifications via Google PubSub to handle emails in real time

Follow instructions here.

1. Create a topic
2. Create a subscription
3. Grant publish rights on your topic

Set env var GOOGLE_PUBSUB_TOPIC_NAME. When creating the subscription select Push and the url should look something like: https://www.getinboxzero.com/api/google/webhook?token=TOKEN or https://abc.ngrok-free.app/api/google/webhook?token=TOKEN where the domain is your domain. Set GOOGLE_PUBSUB_VERIFICATION_TOKEN in your .env file to be the value of TOKEN.

To run in development ngrok can be helpful:

ngrok http 3000
### or with an ngrok domain to keep your endpoint stable (set `XYZ`):
ngrok http --domain=XYZ.ngrok-free.app 3000

And then update the webhook endpoint in the Google PubSub subscriptions dashboard.

To start watching emails visit: /api/google/watch/all

Watching for email updates

Set a cron job to run these: The Google watch is necessary. Others are optional.

  "crons": [
    {
      "path": "/api/google/watch/all",
      "schedule": "0 1 * * *"
    },
    {
      "path": "/api/resend/summary/all",
      "schedule": "0 16 * * 1"
    },
    {
      "path": "/api/reply-tracker/disable-unused-auto-draft",
      "schedule": "0 3 * * *"
    }
  ]

Here are some easy ways to run cron jobs. Upstash is a free, easy option. I could never get the Vercel vercel.json. Open to PRs if you find a fix for that.

Contributing to the project

You can view open tasks in our GitHub Issues. Join our Discord to discuss tasks and check what's being worked on.

ARCHITECTURE.md explains the architecture of the project (LLM generated).