Getting Started
Here's how to connect your first email account, what happens during the first sync, and how to work with more than one account at a time.
Connecting an account
Connect an account in Settings → Accounts. WonderMail supports Google, Microsoft, and IMAP accounts (including presets for common providers, plus Manual entry).
First-time setup must be completed on a desktop computer. WonderMail guides new users through connecting an account, choosing up to 10 Snooze times, and learning the essential keyboard controls.
Google beta testers may see a warning during connection. Click Advanced, then Continue to WonderMail to finish connecting.
Next, Google shows 'nylas.com wants access to your Google Account'. nylas.com is the secure mail service WonderMail uses to talk to Gmail — tick every box, including Send email on your behalf, then click Continue. Your mail always stays on Google's servers, and you can revoke access anytime in your Google Account.
After connecting, the first sync pulls your recent mail in batches. Large mailboxes can take a few minutes; you can keep working while it runs.
Pro Tip: press U at any time to check the server for new mail instead of waiting for the next automatic sync.
When you press U, accounts update one at a time starting with your Main account, and the list refreshes as each account finishes — you don't have to wait for all of them before new mail appears.
Pressing U again while a check is running doesn't start a second check — the current one simply continues.
All email remains on your Gmail, Outlook, or IMAP server while WonderMail fills in older mail in the background.
When you refresh WonderMail, the email list shows a progress bar with the current step — finding conversations, loading messages, or organizing the inbox — until the first usable page is ready.
Using several accounts
- You can connect more than one account.
- The account selector sits to the left of the mailbox menu in the top-left of the header: choose All Accounts to see everything together, or pick a single account to see only its mail and labels.
- In All Accounts, identical copies delivered to different connected mailboxes are shown once with a copies badge. Actions on that row apply to every copy; single-account views and search results still show each stored copy separately.
- Mark one account as Main in Settings → Accounts. New emails compose from the selected account, or from Main when All Accounts is selected.
Pro Tip: set your busiest address as Main before you start writing. Every new email you compose from All Accounts goes out from Main, so getting this right once saves correcting the From selector all day.
When a connection breaks
If an email provider confirms that an account authorization expired or was revoked, a banner appears with a Reconnect button, on both computers and phones. Other update failures show Retry update instead, so WonderMail will never ask you to reconnect for an internal database or temporary service problem.
A connection attempt stays valid for 10 minutes. If you leave the provider's sign-in page open longer than that, WonderMail shows "connection failed" and you simply click Connect again — nothing is lost.
When mail stops arriving
WonderMail watches its own updates. If an account has not completed a successful update for over an hour, an amber banner appears at the top of the list telling you how long it has been and what to do: press U to update now, and reconnect the account in Settings → Accounts if the notice stays for another hour.
Settings → Accounts shows both the last update attempt and the last successful update for every account, so you can always tell whether new mail is really coming in.
This amber notice never appears while an account is still importing your older history. That first import can run for hours, and Settings → Accounts shows its progress, so there is nothing for you to fix.
If a single email cannot be saved during an update, it is set aside on its own so the rest of your mail keeps arriving on time. WonderMail retries it automatically over the next day. If it still cannot be imported, Settings → Accounts shows how many emails were affected with a Retry button you can press once the problem is fixed.
If the list itself cannot load (for example the mail service is briefly unreachable), WonderMail retries quietly a couple of times, then shows "Can't reach your mail service right now — retrying" with a 60-second "Try again in … seconds" countdown that retries automatically, plus a Retry now button if you don't want to wait.
When you delete or move hundreds of emails at once, the list shows a "Saving changes… X of Y" progress bar until everything is saved. If any part fails to save, a Try again button appears.