Meet Melia: A Privacy-First, Modern Desktop Email Client Made Just for Linux
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Meet Melia: A Privacy-First, Modern Desktop Email Client Made Just for Linux
It is not an open source software but ticks a lot of other boxes for anyone looking for an alternative desktop email client on Linux.
Pulkit Chandak
08 Jun 2026<br>6 min read
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Every once in a while, a project comes that is very adamantly heavy on its principles and it is always a breath of fresh air in a world where corporate greed forms the basis of all the services we use.<br>This time it is for a service that is extremely basic and essential, e-mail.<br>There are a few email clients for desktop Linux already. Thunderbird, Evolution, Geary, to name a few.<br>I am not saying that they are not good but there is always scope for improvement and new features. And Melia does just that. It brings some additional features, a privacy enthusiast will appreciate.<br>Non-FOSS Warning! Melia might be awesome but unfortunately it is not an open source software. We covered it here because it is available for Linux.
What Makes Melia Different?<br>Let's see what makes Melia so special.<br>Local and offline<br>All e-mails on the application are stored locally in a SQLite database, which means you don't have to run around with your internet connection, waiting for your data to sync. Even the credentials are stored in the OS keyring (where your OS account passwords are stored), which makes it as safe as it gets from online cyber attacks.<br>Supports 32+ services<br>There are 32 pre-programmed presets for most of the common e-mail providers such as Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, Protonmail, iCould and so on. You need to ensure the allowance of an SMTP connection from the plan that you have on your particular service, however.<br>Contact management<br>If you are particular about managing the contacts, Melia builds the address book automatically from sent and received emails. You can edit it and organize it as you want. It also helps with instant autocomplete when composing a mail. You also get stats on each contact.<br>Rules for a more organized inbox<br>Get statements from your bank, boring but good to keep for the future? Create a rule and send it automatically to a folder. Your inbox remains clean, and the emails are preserved.<br>There are many more ways to use the rules and organize the inbox on Melia.<br>💡<br>There are also Tidy and Trim features that help you consolidates duplicate IMAP folders and delete old messages in bulk (with your manual approval, of course).
Proper HTML email rendering<br>HTML-based emails are everywhere, and they need to be displayed the same way they are intended to. Melia uses Shadow DOM isolation, intelligent dark mode transformation, and post-render quality audits to display your favorite newsletters, like FOSS Weekly, beautifully.<br>Search across accounts<br>🚧<br>Melia is free for one email account. If you want to use more than one email account, you can purchase a perpetual license for a one-time fee of $10. Melia developer, Joshua Richard, says that this will help him with the development of the software.
There's a unified full-text search that can find anything across all the accounts that you've added to the client at blazing fast speeds (especially considering all the e-mails are available offline).<br>Privacy and Security Take Center Stage<br>There are some really great security features, solving some issues, which I admit didn't even know were issues. The entire focus is on security with verifiable zero telemetry , and privacy instead of analytics, such as:<br>Tracking pixels neutralized<br>Some services use tracking pixels to mark e-mails as read back to the sender. The tracking pixels are thus neutralized on Melia, preventing a great deal of invasive telemetry.<br>Automatic suspicious sender flagging<br>The senders whose names don't match with the ones assigned to the address are automatically flagged, preventing a lot of scam/spam e-mails that one might receive.<br>Message authentication<br>All e-mails received are authenticated against SPF, DKIM, and DMARC to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.<br>One-click unsubscribe<br>The worst part of being spammed by a service is getting unrequited e-mails all day annoyingly. Good news is that you an unsubscribe them with just one click, making the whole process much easier.<br>There are still more minor features, all of which you can check out here.<br>Transparency You Don’t Usually Get in Email Clients<br>Apart from the privacy features, Melia prides itself on the transparency it provides to the users. What contributes to that? I'm glad you asked:<br>Trust center<br>There's an inbuilt Trust Center, which allows users to block or restrict the activities of the senders, giving you the option to block out e-mail addresses or entire domains, with a full activity log and statistics of all changes made to block or trust any sender.
Connection monitor<br>The Connection Monitor feature that shows exactly what server the information is...