Gmail has spent a decade hiding it from you. Tabs, categories, smart replies, summary cards, AI assistants — all built to make the symptom less visible without ever treating the cause. Brev does the opposite. It shows you, in plain text, exactly how much email you actually have, who it's from, and what it wants. Then it gets out of your way so you can deal with it.
Most people don't have an inbox problem. They have an email problem. They are subscribed to too many things. They are cc'd on too many threads. They have agreed, over the years, to receive too many updates from too many systems. The inbox is not the cause. It is the messenger.
Gmail's answer, for fifteen years, has been to shoot the messenger. Promotions tab. Social tab. Updates tab. Priority Inbox. Smart Compose. Smart Reply. Summary cards. AI assistants that read it for you so you don't have to. Each one a clever way to make the pile feel smaller without ever making it smaller.
The pile is still there. You can feel it.
Brev refuses to hide the pile. Every email arrives in plain text. Newsletters look like the bulk mail they are. Marketing emails strip themselves of their disguise. Receipts read like receipts. You see the actual shape of what's coming at you — and most weeks, that shape is the problem.
What happens next is up to you. Unsubscribe. Mute. Reply. Block. Archive. Brev gives you the keyboard, the shortcuts, and a small amount of local intelligence — running on your own machine — to help you sort the pile faster. It will not summarise your emails. It will not suggest replies. It will not optimise your attention. It will, occasionally, help you see what's actually in front of you.
This is uncomfortable, at first. Then it's a relief.
The mainstream answer to too much email is more AI: summaries you can't trust, suggested replies in someone else's voice, sentiment scores, priority predictions. None of it reduces the amount of email you have to deal with. It just lowers the friction of staying inside the problem. Brev takes a narrower view. Two features, both local-only, both designed to help you finish.
Press ⌘T and Brev sorts your inbox by what it actually contains. Newsletters. Receipts. Marketing. Notifications. People you know writing to you.
Then it suggests the obvious moves: archive these 47 receipts in one keystroke, unsubscribe from these 23 dead newsletters, reply to these 4 humans. You stay in control. Nothing happens without your confirmation.
Gmail search needs exact words. Brev's search understands intent. "That handover doc Mark mentioned" or "the apartment in Greece" finds the thread even if those words never appear in it.
Same shortcut as keyword search: ⌘/. Brev decides whether to use literal matching or meaning matching based on how you phrased the query. You don't have to think about it.
Both features run entirely on your machine. Brev uses Apple's on-device foundation models (macOS 15.1 or later, Apple Silicon). Your email is never sent anywhere for processing. No cloud API. No keys to manage. Older Macs run the rest of Brev perfectly — Triage and semantic search are unavailable, and the app tells you so.
Every email is converted to plain text on arrival. HTML is stripped, tracking pixels are removed, fonts are normalised. What you read is what was written.
Cmd+/ from anywhere. Searches your whole Gmail account using Gmail's syntax: from:, has:attachment, before:, label:. Results in milliseconds.
Navigate, open, reply, archive, star, snooze without touching the mouse. Gmail's shortcuts work where they make sense. Help is one tap of ? away.
Latest message expanded, older messages collapsed to a one-line summary. Click to expand. No nesting, no fold-outs, no "show trimmed content" link.
Ten seconds between hitting send and the message leaving your machine. A small grey line at the bottom of the screen, and a z to take it back.
Write your replies in markdown. Toggle to preview to see how the recipient will see it. Sent as well-formed plain text, every time.
The whole app, without lifting your hands.
Built by one person, for people willing to deal with their email instead of being managed by it. The alpha is free — in return, tell me what's broken.
Fair challenge. The argument is about what AI is for. Most email AI is built to keep you engaged with your inbox: summaries that save you from reading, replies that save you from writing, priorities that save you from deciding. Brev's two AI features are built to help you finish: Triage helps you clear the pile faster, semantic search helps you find the one thing you needed and leave. Both run locally on your Mac, neither send anything to a cloud. That's the line.
Brev still works. Reading, writing, search, labels, snooze, everything else. The two AI features (Triage and semantic search) require macOS 15.1 or later on Apple Silicon — they show as unavailable in the UI, with no nagging. The rest of the app works fully — it's an email client first, AI second.
Because doing one backend well is better than doing four backends badly. Gmail covers most of the people who would care about a calm email client. IMAP and Fastmail are on the roadmap if there's enough interest.
Brev converts HTML to plain text on the way in. The conversion is good — links are kept, structure is preserved, images become [image: filename] placeholders. Marketing emails look genuinely better as plain text. The dross has nowhere to hide.
Brev runs on your machine. It talks to Gmail directly using Google's API. Your email never routes through anyone else's server. Your tokens live in the macOS keychain. Your cached messages live in a local SQLite database. Sign out wipes both.
The one exception, and it's off by default: there's a toggle in Settings called "Help improve brev" that sends anonymous feature counts — which views you open, which shortcuts you use, nothing else. No email content, no addresses, no subjects. It exists so I can tell which features people actually use and cut the ones nobody touches. You'd have to turn it on yourself; the default is off.
Maybe. macOS first because that's what I use. If Brev finds an audience, the rest will follow.
You won't, after about a week. But if you do, every message has a "view original" link that opens the Gmail web view in your browser. Brev is the front porch; Gmail is still there if you need the whole house.
Not yet. The core might become source-available once the app finds its feet. For now, a one-off payment from a small number of people is what keeps this maintained and free of any model that depends on your attention.
Hi, I'm Gavin. I'm a digital consultant based near Chamonix. I've spent the last decade building government services that don't waste citizens' time, and I wanted an email client that didn't waste mine. Brev is the result. You can email me at gavin@gavinwye.com — I'll reply in plain text.