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Canary Mail

Canary Mail·Closed source·canarymail.io

Definition maintained by @wes. clients/canary.json

Coordinates checked by snapshot with version 5.26 on macOS 15.4 (October 2026).

Reading its numbers

  • Measured with the Copilot panel closed and the Discover cards dismissed, so its reader had the same room as everyone else's.

Results

Each column is one run. The place is among the clients in that run, lowest first; within one display frame of the fastest counts as a tie. Runs are not comparable with each other.

Test250,000 messagesMac Studio, October 15, 2026version 5.2650,000 messagesMac Studio, October 14, 2026version 5.26
Open a message121 ms3 of 6181 ms6 of 6
Next message171 ms2 of 6181 ms3 of 6
Search524 ms6 of 6519 ms6 of 6
Launch1,737 ms4 of 61,620 ms3 of 6
Quit74 ms3 of 644 ms2 of 6
Scroll328 mstied for best305 mstied for best
Memory318 MB3 of 6407 MB5 of 6
Idle CPU163.0%6 of 62.1%4 of 6

Setting it up

Install

From canarymail.io or the Mac App Store.

Add the benchmark account

Server 127.0.0.1, port 10143 (10144 for the 250k mailbox), no encryption, user bench@example.com, password bench.

  • Add an IMAP account by hand: host 127.0.0.1, the corpus's port, no encryption. Canary stops at a dialog if the server has no Drafts folder; the corpus has one.

So it holds the whole mailbox

  • Close the Copilot panel (the AI button) and dismiss the Discover cards, so the reader has the same room as every other client's.

For a first-sync measurement

  • Remove the Bench account and quit Canary.
  • Press Enter here, then add the account again.

Its window

91pt conversation rows; the reader to the right shows the whole conversation. Search is the toolbar field, as-you-type, across every folder. The magnifier toggles the field, so every run starts from a known state: ‹ Back closes it and returns to the inbox, and the magnifier then opens it empty. No select-all, Backspace or Escape, because Canary has single-key shortcuts in the list (e archives).