Switching from another program

Last updated October 2026

The switch is usually faster than you expect: your emails live on the server anyway and are loaded from there. Whatever else should come along, YouniqMail fetches from the old program with a few tools.

What actually needs to move

Before you start, a quick triage helps:

Comes back on its own: emails, folders, read status and flags. All of that lives on your mail server. The moment you set up your account in YouniqMail, it is back. With Gmail, labels come along as tags too.

Brought over by the import assistant: the account settings, filter rules, signatures and tags or categories of your old program.

You read in yourself: mail from local folders without a server counterpart, and your contacts.

Only exists in YouniqMail: notes and smart folders. There is nothing to bring over for these.

The import assistant

YouniqMail ships with an assistant that finds and imports the data of other programs. Supported:

Program	macOS	Windows	Linux
Thunderbird	yes	yes	yes
Mailspring	yes	yes	yes
Outlook	yes	yes	no
eM Client	yes	yes	no
Mailbird	yes	yes	no
Apple Mail	yes	no	no

1. On first launch, choose Import from another client under How would you like to get started?. Later, you reach the assistant under Settings → Import / Export with Start import assistant.
2. Select Client: the program you are coming from.
3. Select Profile: the profile, if there are several.
4. Preview: it shows which accounts, rules, signatures and tags will be imported. This is where you enter the passwords of your accounts or sign in to Google or Microsoft again, and you can test the connections.
5. Start Import. The Result shows what was imported.

Only IMAP accounts are imported. The assistant skips POP accounts and local folders. Filter rules become automation rules; actions that do not exist in YouniqMail, such as forwarding or replying, are dropped, and the result points this out. Outlook stores its rules on the server, so they cannot be imported, and neither can those from Mailspring and from Mailbird on Windows.

Apple Mail needs permission

Apple Mail keeps its data in a protected area. The assistant then shows the notice Full Disk Access required and opens the right place in System Settings. After granting access, restart YouniqMail once, and the import continues. Without that permission the assistant finds nothing.

Reading in local mail

Mail that only lives on your computer, such as in Thunderbird’s local folders, you export as a file in the old program and read in via the menu File → Import…. YouniqMail understands Mailboxes (.mbox), Emails (.eml) and Apple Mail (.emlx) and puts them into local folders.

From one account to another

If you are changing providers, not just programs, use Email Migration in the menu YouniqMail → Email Migration…. It copies emails directly from one IMAP account to another, with folder mapping and a progress display. Source and target can be accounts you have already set up in YouniqMail, or any IMAP servers whose credentials you enter. Read status, flags and the received date are preserved.

If the first pass could not finish everything, Run Delta Migration later copies only the mails that are still missing. It does not sync deleted mails or changed flags.

Importing contacts

Contacts do not come from the mail server, so they need to be read in. To do so, open Contacts in the header bar and choose Import. YouniqMail reads:

• CSV, vCard and LDIF from files
• Exports from Google, Apple, Outlook, LinkedIn, HubSpot, Pipedrive and Thunderbird
• Directly from Microsoft 365 and iCloud (Pro)

Recommended order

1. Import assistant. It sets up the accounts and brings rules, signatures and tags along. Without a matching program, you set up the accounts by hand, see Adding an account.
2. Wait for the first sync to finish. Large mailboxes take a while.
3. Import contacts.
4. Read in local mail, if you have any.
5. Keep the old program until you are sure nothing is missing.

Run both programs side by side

You can use YouniqMail and your previous program at the same time for a while. Both see the same emails and the same read status. That takes the pressure out of switching.

Adopting keyboard shortcuts

If the new key bindings slow you down: YouniqMail can adopt the shortcut layout of Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird, Superhuman or Spark.

Found under Settings → Keyboard Shortcuts. A comparison of the differences lives under All keyboard shortcuts.

What you cannot take with you

Saved searches and notes on messages from the old program do not come along, and neither do the filter rules from Outlook, Mailspring and Mailbird on Windows. Recreate your most important filters in YouniqMail, see Creating your first rule.