Mail

Mail is the comprehensive service in icloud today. You can use it as an everyday terminal mail client, as a toolbox inside scripts, or as a stable interface for an agent.

Pick a task

I want to…	Start here
Get recent mail onto this machine	Sync mail
Browse Inbox or another folder	Read mail
Find a message or conversation	Search mail
Read a whole conversation	Conversations and threads
Save files from mail	Attachments
Send, reply, or forward	Send, reply, and forward
Prepare mail without sending	Drafts
Send from an alias	Sender identities
Add reusable signatures	Signatures
Create or choose folders	Folders
Archive, move, trash, or flag mail	Organize mail
Act on a reviewed search result set	Reviewed bulk actions
Empty Trash or Junk	Empty Trash, Junk, or a folder
Import or export mail	Import and export mail
Unsubscribe or triage senders	Mailing lists and sender preferences
Sign, encrypt, or decrypt mail	S/MIME
Recover after a send problem	Outbox and send recovery

The everyday loop

Most Mail work follows a simple pattern:

icloud mail sync
icloud mail search invoice
icloud mail message show msg_… --full

Then take the action you actually want:

icloud mail reply msg_… --body-file reply.txt --dry-run
icloud mail archive msg_… --from inbox --dry-run

Local when it helps, fresh when you ask

Normal reading and search use the Mail you have synchronized, which keeps repeated inspection fast and predictable.

When you specifically need a fresh provider-side search:

icloud mail search invoice --remote

You can cache a chosen result into the normal local Mail view afterward.

Small output by default

Lists and search results give you identifiers and enough context to choose the next step rather than dumping every full body or attachment.

icloud mail messages list
icloud mail message show msg_…
icloud mail message show msg_… --full

That makes the same commands comfortable for a person and efficient for an agent.

Preview important writes

For outbound mail, moves, deletion, and other location-changing actions, preview the resolved request with --dry-run before a non-interactive --yes execution.

icloud mail send \
  --to teammate@example.com \
  --subject 'Update' \
  --body-file update.txt \
  --dry-run

For automation, stable idempotency keys make retries safer when a supported write is repeated.

Need exact syntax?

Every Mail command has built-in help:

icloud mail --help
icloud mail search --help
icloud mail send --help

The Command reference contains the complete generated command tree.