Letterblade 1.1.1

Open .msg files straight from your desktop.

What's new

• Open a .msg file from your file manager. On macOS, double-click it in Finder, or choose Open With → Letterblade (where Outlook is installed, Outlook keeps the double-click). On Windows, right-click it and choose Open with → Letterblade (where Outlook is installed, Outlook keeps the double-click). On Linux, once a desktop tool such as AppImageLauncher has added Letterblade to your applications.
• Help → About shows the version you are running. On macOS the About entry had disappeared from the application menu; it now sits in Help on every system.
• The Letterblade icon on every window: in the title bar, the window switcher and the taskbar, sharp at the small sizes too.

Fixed

• Windows: the title bar has the right size on every screen when two screens use different scaling.
• Windows: files named in another alphabet open, a Cyrillic name on an English Windows for example. The app used to receive the name garbled and could not find the file.
• Windows: an update no longer closes Letterblade. It installs while the app runs, and the new version starts the next time you open it. The update from 1.1.0 still closes the app once, because 1.1.0's own updater runs it.
• Linux: Letterblade's windows group under its entry in the dock, once a desktop tool has added it to your applications.

Download

• macOS (Apple Silicon): Letterblade.dmg, signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple.
• Windows 10 / 11 (x64): Letterblade.msix, code-signed.
• Linux (x86_64): Letterblade.AppImage.

The Java runtime is bundled; there is nothing else to install. An installed 1.0.0 or 1.1.0 offers this update by itself.

Verify the download

# macOS
shasum -a 256 Letterblade.dmg
# ff94af5cf0c7f2bfba315a564838f73a69f004a657acfe89dd41069d0dffc535

# Windows (PowerShell)
Get-FileHash Letterblade.msix -Algorithm SHA256
# 0f063ec8be63f27e870fcf50a3db760d29d2bdcc554417fbaf3c97cab5398c7c

# Linux
sha256sum Letterblade.AppImage
# 8308ea530045c00f00b49fb8f3360ceb8f00d641c0c4becb2ada0214928488dc

Letterblade 1.1.0

Links you can trust, and mail that keeps its layout.

What's new

• Links open in your browser, after you have seen where they lead. A click shows the link's real address, and the text it was shown as when that differs, then waits for your Open. Enter cancels. The viewer itself never loads a page, so a tracking link sends nothing until you decide.
• Newsletters and Word-made mail keep their layout. Centred columns stay centred, the message's own fonts and spacing apply, and struck-through text stays struck through.
• A clearer envelope. Subject, From, To, Cc and Date sit in a header band; a long recipient list folds to one line, with a toggle to show everyone.
• Copy what you selected. Copy takes the selection when there is one and the whole message otherwise; Select all works in the formatted view too.
• Emoji show up instead of empty boxes.
• The window always reopens within reach, even after the display it was on has been unplugged.
• New icons, and the drop area lights up while you drag a file over the window.

Fixed

• Notifications could turn invisible after the first one had faded, or sit behind the taskbar.

Download

• macOS (Apple Silicon): Letterblade.dmg, signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarized by Apple.
• Windows 10 / 11 (x64): Letterblade.msix, code-signed.
• Linux (x86_64): Letterblade.AppImage.

The Java runtime is bundled; there is nothing else to install. An installed 1.0.0 offers this update by itself.

Verify the download

# macOS
shasum -a 256 Letterblade.dmg
# ee9653078d9ac4fc818b7e1443c5d57ecffc84481c8c34d03d777f23bd97530a

# Windows (PowerShell)
Get-FileHash Letterblade.msix -Algorithm SHA256
# a524b8cd5dd2ccd7a023579c5adff41880228c2531a72bb44c2991bfc16a0303

# Linux
sha256sum Letterblade.AppImage
# cbe31f5fe5ebd78164863af0937736aa1d0b378e68b1b9868ba26ea77a8047a8

Letterblade 1.0.0

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 .msg onto 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 .msg attachment 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.

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Letterblade is a druvu product, built on outlook-message-parser and jsoup. Installed copies check this repository's releases for updates.