Open and read Outlook .msg files — no Outlook required. First release.
Someone sends you a .msg file. You don't have Outlook — or you're on a Mac, where Outlook can't help you anyway. Letterblade opens the file and shows you the message the way it was meant to be read: formatting, inline images, attachments, the works.
Download
macOS (Apple Silicon): Letterblade.dmg below — signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple, so it opens without a Gatekeeper warning. Requires macOS 12+. Windows and Linux installers are in preparation; on those platforms, build from source.
What you get
- Open it your way — drop a
.msgonto the window, use Open, or pass a file on the command line. - The message as intended — HTML mail renders with formatting and inline images; a plain-text view is one click away.
- The envelope at a glance — From, To, CC, date and subject above the message.
- Attachments on your terms — each appears as a chip: save it, or hand it to your usual app. Nothing ever opens by itself.
- Messages inside messages — a forwarded
.msgattachment opens in its own window, recursively. - Copy that works — select-all and copy give clean text from the parsed message, not from the renderer.
Private by default
- Remote images are blocked until you ask — tracking pixels stay blind; a bar counts what was held back, one click loads them for that message only.
- Scripts and active content are stripped before rendering (jsoup Cleaner as the enforcer, JavaScript off).
- Attachments never run or open automatically.
- Your mail stays on your machine — files are read locally, nothing is uploaded anywhere.
Verify the download
shasum -a 256 Letterblade.dmg
The checksum is published on the downloads page.
Letterblade is a druvu product, built on outlook-message-parser and jsoup. Installed copies check this repository's releases for updates.