Have you ever returned from a glorious stretch of PTO to an overflowing inbox that overwhelms your brain? In an attempt to end this kind of email dread, I searched for an artificial intelligence tool to address my digital-turned-mental clutter. 

During my search, I discovered Canary Mail, an AI-fueled email copilot backed by ChatGPT maker OpenAI and enterprise AI company Cohere, in collaboration with the open-source language platform Hugging Face.

What is Canary Mail?

Named after the proverbial canary in a coal mine, Canary Mail can alert users to threats. But it can also write new emails, bring up emails that need attention, silence spam and summarize email threads into list format. (My inbox required all of the above.) 

Founded in 2015 by brothers Sohel Sanghani and Dev Sanghani, and backed by Sequoia Capital, the downloadable email assistant is available on Windows, MacOS, Android and iOS.

How to use AI to keep up with your emails

Step 1: Once Canary Mail is downloaded to your phone or computer, click on the application and make an account. There’s an option to upgrade your subscription to $3/month, $10/month — or to try Canary Mail free “for as long as you like” (with a few less features than the paid options).

Step 2: A tutorial pops up next, with information on navigating the tool and using it to draft email responses with a certain context or tone. 

Step 3: Click on the “write email” button, which will pull up your inbox, now integrated within the Canary Mail app. (A welcome email from the company arrives shortly afterward.) 

Step 4: Your inbox will take on a slightly different look. In response to my MacOS download and integration, my inbox is separated by labels on the left-hand side of the screen: All, For You, Team and Needs Reply. 

Step 5: On the right-hand side, there’s an Alerts area and an AI-powered assistant below it for action-oriented prompts. Regardless of their label, all emails have an AI Summarization option available. I found this helpful for lengthy threads and their equally lengthy processes. The summarization is visible once you navigate to the thread, which serves as a project status reminder without you sifting through your inbox. Any email under Needs Reply will provide AI-generated responses in line with the thread’s context and tone, labeled as Quick Reply.

The organizational style of Canary Mail allows for additional interactions within each thread; you can like or save contacts’ information extracted from the email, use AI to reply to an Alert, or navigate to the top of the app and select Bulk Clean to identify unimportant emails. 

Plus, Canary Mail features its own text formatting editor, for text style, color and alignment customization. Each message thread mimics Apple’s “dark mode,” and you can also snooze or pin emails, similar to iOS’ Messaging interface. 

Is Canary Mail AI worth it?  

Canary Mail is one of the oldest email options offering AI-powered assistants and copilots; it launched in 2016 after competitors Superhuman and Proton Mail. (Its shift toward AI is fairly recent, following a collaboration with OpenAI in 2023.) 

Other competitors for using AI for your inbox include:

Canary Mail is the cheapest, particularly compared to those that don’t offer a free trial. 

Its privacy-minded security commitment may be what makes it particularly appealing. To protect user privacy, Canary Mail contains a multilayered AI-powered threat detection and a threat analysis system designed to block data infiltration and phishing attempts. It also offers end-to-end encryption and control over who can access your email metadata. 

Alongside its ability to integrate with Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, iCloud and AOL, Canary Mail can provide a digital reprieve when you’re navigating that torrent of emails, and the percentage of those that are spam or a potential threat.  

It’s something to consider before you head out on your next much-needed PTO.