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GitHubdcarrero/mboxshell

mboxshell

mboxShell. Fast terminal viewer for MBOX files of any size. Open, search and export emails from Gmail Takeout backups (50GB+) without loading them into memory. Built in Rust.

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mboxShell

Fast terminal viewer for MBOX files of any size. Open, search and export emails from Gmail Takeout backups (50 GB+) without loading them into memory.

License: MIT Rust

Leer en Espanol / Spanish


Why this project exists

When you export your email from Gmail using Google Takeout, you get one or more .mbox files that can weigh tens of gigabytes — plus one more mailbox per Google Group you own, which is easy to miss and can be larger than the Gmail export itself. There is no cross-platform terminal tool that lets you open, search and browse those files efficiently without loading them entirely into memory.

mboxShell was built to solve that problem: open a 50 GB MBOX in seconds, navigate hundreds of thousands of messages smoothly, search by sender, date or content, and export whatever you need. All from the terminal, with no GUI, no server, no external dependencies.

Use cases

  • Browse Gmail backups (Google Takeout) with their original labels
  • Read the groups you own, exported by Takeout as their own mailboxes — often the largest files in the archive
  • Analyze mail archives on servers, during migrations or audits
  • Search messages in MBOX files from any source (Thunderbird, Unix servers, etc.)
  • Export messages to EML, CSV or plain text for further processing
  • Extract attachments individually or in bulk
  • Merge multiple MBOX files into one, removing duplicates

Also on Mac: mboxViewer

If you prefer a native graphical experience on macOS, check out mboxViewer — a native Mac app built by the same team. It provides a familiar mailbox-style interface to open, browse and search MBOX files without ever importing them into a mail client. Drag and drop your .mbox file, and you get instant access to all your messages, attachments and labels in a clean macOS-native window. Ideal for users who want the power of mboxShell's parsing engine with the comfort of a desktop GUI.

Also in your browser: Online Mbox Viewer

Need to peek at an MBOX file without installing anything? Try Online Mbox Viewer — a free, MIT-licensed web app by the same author. It opens and renders .mbox files entirely in your browser: nothing is uploaded to any server, so your email stays on your machine. Perfect for a quick look from any device. Source code at github.com/dcarrero/online-mbox-viewer.

Features

  • Never loads the file into memory. Uses streaming I/O with a 1 MB buffer. A 100 GB MBOX uses roughly the same ~500 MB of RAM as a 1 GB one (only the metadata index lives in memory).
  • Persistent indexing. The first open creates a binary index (.mboxshell.idx) so subsequent opens take less than a second.
  • Full Gmail support. Detects and displays X-Gmail-Labels as virtual folders in a sidebar panel, letting you filter by Inbox, Sent, Starred, custom labels, etc.
  • Google Groups mailboxes. Reads the topics.mbox files a Takeout archive ships for every group you own, names them after the group instead of the meaningless file name, shows the group as a virtual label, and threads conversations by the exact X-GM-THRID id.
  • Correct encodings. Decodes RFC 2047 encoded-words, supports UTF-8, ISO-8859-1, Windows-1252, KOI8-R, and any charset recognized by encoding_rs.
  • Conversation threading. Groups messages into threads using the JWZ algorithm (the same one used by Netscape/Mozilla), or the mailbox's own conversation id when it has one.
  • Advanced search. Field-specific filtering (from:, subject:, date:, body:, , , etc.), date ranges, size filters, AND/OR operators, and negation.

Installation

Pre-built binaries (recommended)

Download the latest release for your platform from the Releases page:

After downloading, make it executable and move it to your PATH:

root@kitploit:~
# Linux / macOS
chmod +x mboxshell-*
sudo mv mboxshell-* /usr/local/bin/mboxshell

# Or place it in a user-local directory
mv mboxshell-* ~/.local/bin/mboxshell

On Windows, move mboxshell-windows-x86_64.exe to a folder in your PATH, or run it directly.

Build from source

Requirements: Rust 1.85 or later.

root@kitploit:~
# Clone and build
git clone https://github.com/dcarrero/mboxshell.git
cd mboxshell
cargo build --release

# The binary is at target/release/mboxshell
# Install it system-wide:
sudo cp target/release/mboxshell /usr/local/bin/

# Or for the current user only:
cp target/release/mboxshell ~/.local/bin/

Cross-compiling for other platforms

root@kitploit:~
# Add the target you need
rustup target add aarch64-apple-darwin      # macOS Apple Silicon
rustup target add x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu  # Linux x86_64
rustup target add aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu # Linux ARM64

# Build for a specific target
cargo build --release --target aarch64-apple-darwin

Install via Cargo

root@kitploit:~
cargo install --git https://github.com/dcarrero/mboxshell.git

Quick start

root@kitploit:~
# Open an MBOX file in the terminal UI
mboxshell mail.mbox

# Index and show statistics
mboxshell index mail.mbox
mboxshell stats mail.mbox

# Search from the command line
mboxshell search mail.mbox "from:[email protected] date:2024"
mboxshell search mail.mbox "has:attachment subject:invoice" --json

# Export messages
mboxshell export mail.mbox --format eml --output ./emails/
mboxshell export mail.mbox --format csv --output summary.csv

# Extract attachments
mboxshell attachments mail.mbox --output ./attachments/

# Merge multiple MBOX files (duplicates are removed by default)
mboxshell merge file1.mbox file2.mbox -o merged.mbox

# Merge tagging every message with the mailbox it came from
mboxshell merge Inbox.mbox Sent.mbox -o merged.mbox --source-header

# Generate shell completions
mboxshell completions bash > /etc/bash_completion.d/mboxshell
mboxshell completions zsh > ~/.zfunc/_mboxshell
mboxshell completions fish > ~/.config/fish/completions/mboxshell.fish

CLI commands

Global flags:

Merge flags:

FlagDescription
--no-dedupSkip duplicate-Message-ID detection and concatenate the inputs byte-for-byte (dedup is on by default)
--source-headerInject an X-Mbox-Source: <mailbox name> header into every message, so a merged archive stays traceable to the mailbox each email came from

The source label is the mailbox name you see: for an Apple Mail export — a directory Inbox.mbox containing a file literally called mbox — it reads Inbox.mbox, not mbox. Mailboxes that would end up sharing a label are disambiguated against each other (Work/Inbox.mbox vs Personal/Inbox.mbox).

Terminal UI

mboxShell screenshot

Keyboard shortcuts

Search syntax

root@kitploit:~
from:[email protected]              Search by sender
to:[email protected]         Search by recipient
cc:[email protected]              Search by Cc recipient
subject:invoice                  Search in subject line
body:important text              Search in message body (full-text)
filename:report.pdf              Search by attachment file name
id:<message-id@domain>           Search by Message-ID
has:attachment                   Only messages with attachments
has:no-attachment                Only messages without attachments
label:Inbox                      Filter by Gmail label
date:2024-01                     Messages from January 2024
date:2024-01-01..2024-06-30      Date range
before:2024-06-01                Before a date (that day excluded)
after:2024-01-01                 From a date on (that day included)
after:2024-01-01 before:2025-01-01   All of 2024
size:>1mb                        Messages larger than 1 MB
size:>1mb size:<5mb              Between 1 and 5 MB
-subject:spam                    Exclude messages with "spam" in subject
"exact phrase"                   Search for an exact phrase
from:john subject:budget         Implicit AND (both must match)
term1 OR term2                   Explicit OR
from:a OR from:b subject:budget  OR binds tighter: (a OR b) AND subject

Supported input formats

Performance

Tested with real Google Takeout MBOX files:

Message list navigation is instantaneous thanks to virtual scrolling (only visible rows are rendered).

Configuration

The configuration file is located at ~/.config/mboxshell/config.toml:

root@kitploit:~
[general]
default_sort = "date"
sort_order = "desc"
date_format = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M"
log_level = "warn"

[display]
theme = "dark"
layout = "horizontal"
show_sidebar = false
max_cached_messages = 50

[export]
default_format = "eml"
csv_separator = ","

Architecture

root@kitploit:~
src/
+-- main.rs              # CLI with clap
+-- lib.rs               # Module re-exports
+-- error.rs             # Error types with thiserror
+-- config.rs            # TOML configuration
+-- mailbox_naming.rs    # Human-facing mailbox names (Apple Mail packages)
+-- i18n/                # Internationalization (EN/ES)
+-- parser/
|   +-- mbox.rs          # Streaming parser (never loads the file into memory)
|   +-- eml.rs           # Individual EML file parser
|   +-- mime.rs          # MIME decoding, multipart, charsets
|   +-- header.rs        # RFC 5322 headers, RFC 2047 encoded-words
+-- index/
|   +-- builder.rs       # Binary index construction
|   +-- reader.rs        # Index queries
|   +-- format.rs        # Binary format with SHA-256 integrity check
+-- model/
|   +-- mail.rs          # MailEntry, MailBody
|   +-- attachment.rs    # Attachment metadata
|   +-- address.rs       # RFC 5322 address parsing
+-- store/
|   +-- reader.rs        # Offset-based reading with LRU cache
+-- search/
|   +-- query.rs         # Search query parser
|   +-- metadata.rs      # Fast index search (O(n), < 200ms for 1M messages)
|   +-- fulltext.rs      # Streaming full-text search
+-- export/
|   +-- eml.rs           # Export to .eml
|   +-- csv.rs           # Export summary to CSV (UTF-8 BOM)
|   +-- text.rs          # Export to plain text
|   +-- attachment.rs    # Attachment extraction
|   +-- mbox.rs          # MBOX merge with deduplication and source header
+-- tui/
    +-- app.rs           # Global state (Elm Architecture)
    +-- event.rs         # Keyboard event handling
    +-- ui.rs            # Layout and render dispatch
    +-- threading.rs     # JWZ algorithm for conversation threads
    +-- theme.rs         # Color theme
    +-- widgets/         # Visual components
        +-- mail_list.rs       # List with virtual scrolling
        +-- mail_view.rs       # Message viewer with scroll
        +-- sidebar.rs         # Labels/folders panel
        +-- header_bar.rs      # Top bar
        +-- status_bar.rs      # Status bar
        +-- search_bar.rs      # Search bar
        +-- search_popup.rs    # Search filter popup
        +-- help_popup.rs      # Help popup
        +-- attachment_popup.rs # Attachment popup
        +-- export_popup.rs     # Export popup

Key dependencies

Sponsors

mboxshell is developed in the open and is supported by:

Colorvivo      Stackscale

  • Colorvivo — experts in WordPress, AI and digital media.
  • Stackscale — experts in private cloud infrastructure.

If your company finds mboxshell useful and wants to support its continued development, see .github/FUNDING.yml or reach out via carrero.es.

Documentation

The full user manual covers every command, keyboard shortcut, search operator, export option and config key:

  • docs/MANUAL.md — User manual (English)
  • docs/MANUAL-ES.md — Manual de usuario (Español)

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md for the full release history.

License

MIT - Copyright (c) 2026 David Carrero Fernandez-Baillo - https://carrero.es

Source Code: https://github.com/dcarrero/mboxshell

Scarica lo strumento
has:attachment
label:
  • Flexible export. Individual or bulk export to EML, CSV (Excel-compatible), plain text. Decoded attachment extraction.
  • Single binary. No runtime, no dependencies. A ~5 MB executable that runs on Linux, macOS and Windows.
  • Full terminal UI. Keyboard navigation (vi-style), three layout modes, interactive search bar, configurable shortcuts.
  • Bilingual. Interface available in English and Spanish, auto-detected from system locale.
  • PlatformBinary
    Linux x86_64mboxshell-linux-x86_64
    Linux ARM64mboxshell-linux-aarch64
    Linux RISC-V 64mboxshell-linux-riscv64
    FreeBSD x86_64mboxshell-freebsd-x86_64
    macOS Intelmboxshell-macos-x86_64
    macOS Apple Siliconmboxshell-macos-aarch64
    Windows x86_64mboxshell-windows-x86_64.exe
    Windows ARM64mboxshell-windows-arm64.exe
    CommandDescription
    mboxshell [FILE]Open a file in the TUI (default action)
    mboxshell open <path>Open an MBOX file in the TUI
    mboxshell index <path> [-f/--force]Build or rebuild the binary index
    mboxshell stats <path> [--json]Show statistics about an MBOX file
    mboxshell search <path> <query> [--json]Search messages from the command line
    mboxshell export <path> -f <format> -o <output> [--query <q>]Export messages (formats: eml, csv, txt, html)
    mboxshell merge <files...> -o <output> [--no-dedup] [--source-header]Merge multiple MBOX files into one
    mboxshell attachments <path> -o <output>Extract all attachments
    mboxshell completions <shell>Generate shell completions (bash, zsh, fish, powershell, elvish)
    mboxshell manpageGenerate a man page
    FlagDescription
    -f, --forceForce rebuild index even if one exists (in export, -f is --format — spell out --force there)
    -v, --verboseIncrease log verbosity (-v info, -vv debug, -vvv trace)
    --lang <en|es>Force interface language (auto-detected by default)
    KeyAction
    j / kNext / previous message
    g / GFirst / last message
    PgDn / PgUpPage down / up
    EnterOpen message / switch to message view
    Shift-↑ / Shift-↓Scroll selected message body (keeps list focus); a position indicator (Top / NN% / Bot) shows in the message border
    Tab / Shift-TabCycle panel focus
    EscBack to list / close popup
    /Open search bar
    fOpen search filter popup
    n / NNext / previous search result
    SpaceMark / unmark message
    *Mark / unmark all
    sCycle sort column (Date, From, Subject, Size)
    SToggle sort direction
    eExport message (EML, TXT, CSV, Attachments)
    aShow attachments (j/k to navigate, Enter to save, A to save all)
    tToggle threaded (conversation) view
    lShow / focus / hide labels sidebar
    hToggle full headers
    rToggle raw message source
    1 / 2 / 3Layout: list only / horizontal split / vertical split
    ?Help
    qQuit
    FormatExtensionDescription
    MBOX (mboxrd/mboxo).mboxStandard format. Google Takeout, Thunderbird, Unix servers
    Google Groups exporttopics.mboxInside a Takeout archive, at <group>@googlegroups.com/. The file name is localised (temas.mbox, …), so the mailbox is named after the group — see docs/GOOGLE-GROUPS.md
    Apple Mail packageName.mbox/mboxThe inner file is what gets read; the mailbox is named after the package
    File sizeMessagesIndexingRe-open
    500 MB~5,000~3 s< 1 s
    5 GB~50,000~30 s< 1 s
    50 GB~500,000~5 min< 1 s
    CratePurpose
    ratatui + crosstermTerminal UI
    mail-parserMIME/RFC 5322 parsing
    encoding_rsCharset decoding
    chronoDates and time zones
    clapCLI argument parsing
    serde + bincodeIndex serialization
    sha2Index integrity verification
    lruDecoded message cache
    tracingStructured logging