BrandBox

Ditch the generic sender initials, add some branding to your inbox.

Microsoft Setup  ·  Google Setup  ·  Report Bugs  ·  Request Features

Why It Exists

Every version of Outlook and Gmail shows a colored circle with the sender's initials next to their name. When your inbox is full of "JD", "AS", and "MT", you're left squinting at colored circles trying to remember who's who.

BrandBox fixes that. It fetches each sender's company logo and uploads it as their contact photo via the Microsoft Graph API and Google People API. It works at the account backend level, so logos propagate everywhere automatically — desktop Outlook, Outlook on the web, Gmail mobile, Google Contacts, and all other connected clients.

No more colored circles. Just recognizable brand logos in your inbox.

Features

Feature	Description
Logo Injection	Replaces generic initials with real company logos in Outlook and Gmail
Cross-Client Sync	Logos appear on desktop, web, and mobile — set once at the API level
Smart Logo Pipeline	SVG-first with 7 sources: SimpleIcons → VectorLogo.Zone → Wikimedia Commons → Hunter → DeBounce → LogoKit → Brandfetch. SVGs provide inherent transparency — no white backgrounds in dark-mode Outlook/Gmail. Rasterized at 400×400px via cairosvg for crisp, high-resolution logos
Smart Image Processing	Auto-crops transparency, scales to fill 200×200 preserving aspect ratio, centers on transparent canvas
Multi-Provider	Microsoft 365, Outlook.com, Hotmail, Gmail, Google Workspace — all at once
Local Privacy	All data stays on your machine; nothing leaves except API calls for photos
Incremental Runs	Logo cache and contact state tracking make repeat runs near-instant
Inbox Scan	Optionally creates contacts for recent senders (only when a logo is found)
Logo Provider Label	Optional --logo-provider flag shows the logo source (e.g. [hunter], [simpleicons]) next to each logo in the progress output
Scan-Inbox Progress	Real-time progress bar with per-sender status, MofN counters, and elapsed time during inbox scan — no more silent waiting

Compatibility

Provider	Supported account types
Microsoft	Microsoft 365 work/school, Personal/Family, Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live
Google	Gmail (personal), Google Workspace (business)

Note

On-premises Exchange (non-hybrid) and IMAP/POP3 accounts are not supported. If you have Gmail connected inside Outlook, add it separately as a Google provider account — see the Google setup guide.

Both providers can run simultaneously. brandbox processes all authenticated accounts in a single --run.

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• A free Azure App Registration for Microsoft 365 accounts → full setup guide
• A free Google Cloud project for Gmail / Workspace accounts → full setup guide

Installation

With uv (recommended)

uv tool install brandbox

With pip

pip install brandbox

From source

git clone https://github.com/divisionseven/brandbox
cd brandbox
uv sync
uv run brandbox --help

Verify

brandbox --version
# Output: brandbox <version>

Setup

Microsoft 365 Setup — Azure App Registration

1. Follow the Microsoft setup guide to create an Azure App Registration
2. Copy the client ID from the Azure portal
3. Set the environment variable:

export BRANDBOX_CLIENT_ID="your-client-id-here"

Add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.zshenv to persist across shell sessions. See the Microsoft setup guide for the recommended macOS Keychain approach.

Google / Gmail Setup — Google Cloud Project

1. Follow the Google setup guide to create a Google Cloud project and download OAuth credentials
2. Set the path to your credentials JSON file:

export BRANDBOX_GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS="$HOME/.config/brandbox/google_credentials.json"

Add to ~/.zshrc or ~/.zshenv to persist across shell sessions.

Usage

Add an account

Authenticate your first account. You'll be prompted to choose a provider:

brandbox --add-account

Or specify the provider directly:

brandbox --add-account --provider microsoft
brandbox --add-account --provider google

A browser window (Google) or device code prompt (Microsoft) will guide you through sign-in. Repeat for each account across both providers.

List accounts

brandbox --list-accounts

Run logo injection

Process all authenticated accounts and inject logos:

brandbox --run

Expected output:

  ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
  │ brandbox  v0.1.0                                 │
  │ Inject company logos into Outlook and Gmail      │
  └──────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

  ── you@company.com  ·  Microsoft 365  ·  1 of 1 ──

  Contacts   147 found

  Processing contacts ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 147/147 15s
  ✓  Alice Johnson         company.com
  ✓  Bob Smith             acmecorp.com
  ·  Charlie Davis         gmail.com          (personal domain)
  ✓  Eve Williams          example.io
  ...

  ✓  118 set  ·  22 already processed  ·  4 no logo  ·  2 personal domain  ·  1 failed

Also create contacts for recent senders

Logos only show for people already in your contacts. This flag scans recent inbox senders and creates a contact for each one — but only if a logo can be found first. No logo = no contact created.

brandbox --run --scan-inbox

Note

A full --run with --scan-inbox can take 10+ minutes depending on inbox size and number of contacts. So if you are processing a large number of contacts, or a full inbox, please be patient as brandbox works its magic.

Preview without making changes

brandbox --run --dry-run

Re-process contacts that already have logos

brandbox --run --overwrite

Show logo provider labels

Shows the source provider (e.g. [hunter], [simpleicons]) next to each logo in the progress output:

brandbox --run --logo-provider

Refresh all logos from scratch

Clears the cached logo files and re-fetches everything on the next run:

brandbox --clear-cache --run

Reset processed-contact state

Forces brandbox to re-evaluate every contact on the next run:

brandbox --reset-state --run

Show data directory

brandbox --data-dir

---

Command Reference

Click to expand full command reference

Flag	Description
--add-account	Authenticate a new account
--add-account --provider microsoft	Authenticate a Microsoft 365 account
--add-account --provider google	Authenticate a Google / Workspace account
--list-accounts	List all authenticated accounts
--run	Inject logos for all accounts
--run --dry-run	Preview without making changes
--run --overwrite	Re-process contacts that already have logos
--run --scan-inbox	Also create contacts from recent senders (logo required)
--run --logo-provider	Show logo source label (e.g. [hunter]) next to each logo
--clear-cache	Delete all cached logos (re-fetched on next --run)
--reset-state	Reset processed-contact state (re-evaluate all contacts)
--data-dir	Show the brandbox data directory path
--version / -V	Print version number

Environment variables

Variable	Description
BRANDBOX_CLIENT_ID	Azure App Registration client ID (Microsoft auth)
BRANDBOX_GOOGLE_CREDENTIALS	Path to Google OAuth credentials JSON file

After Running

Outlook and Gmail cache contact photos and won't show updates until they reload:

Client	What to do
Outlook for Mac	Quit fully (⌘Q) and reopen
Outlook for Windows	Close fully and reopen
Outlook on the web	Hard-refresh (⌘+Shift+R / Ctrl+Shift+R)
Outlook mobile	Close and reopen the app
Gmail (web)	Hard-refresh the page
Gmail mobile	Close and reopen the app
Google Contacts	Logos appear immediately after running

Data & Privacy

Logo APIs (no personal data)

When fetching company logos, BrandBox sends only the company domain name (e.g. stripe.com) to these services:

Service	Data sent
SimpleIcons CDN	Domain slug only (stripe)
VectorLogo.Zone	Domain slug only (stripe)
Wikimedia Commons	Domain-based filename lookup. Includes User-Agent: Brandbox/1.0 header.
Hunter.io	Domain in URL (stripe.com)
DeBounce	Domain in URL (stripe.com)
LogoKit	Domain in URL (stripe.com) + public free-tier token
Brandfetch	Domain in URL (stripe.com)

No authentication tokens, no user identifiers, and no personal data are sent to any logo API.

Provider APIs (your data, your account)

All contact operations go through your authenticated provider account (Google or Microsoft 365) under your own OAuth token. No third party has access to this data.

Microsoft Graph API (Mail.Read, Contacts.ReadWrite scopes):

• Contacts: Reads your contact list (id, displayName, emailAddresses). Uploads company logos as contact photos.
• Inbox scan (--scan-inbox): Reads only the from field of recent inbox messages to discover new sender email addresses. Message subjects, bodies, and attachments are never requested or read.
• Contact creation: New contacts are created with a display name and email address, derived from the sender's email (e.g. john.doe@co.com → John Doe).

Google People API (contacts, contacts.other.readonly, gmail.readonly scopes):

• Contacts: Reads your contact list (names, email addresses). Uploads company logos as contact photos.
• Inbox scan (--scan-inbox): Uses the otherContacts endpoint — Google's pre-computed list of people you've interacted with. This is populated from your Gmail activity but accessed via the People API, not by reading individual messages.
• Contact creation: Same as Microsoft — new contacts created with display name and email.

Authentication

• Google: OAuth 2.0 browser flow via InstalledAppFlow. Tokens stored locally in ~/.local/share/brandbox/tokens/ and never shared with third parties.
• Microsoft: MSAL device code flow. Tokens cached locally in the same directory.

Local storage

All data is stored locally on your machine — none of this data is ever transmitted:

File	Contents
cache/*.png	Downloaded company logos (processed as 200×200 PNGs)
cache/*.miss	Empty sentinel files marking domains with no logo (prevents retries)
state.json	Processing state: which contacts have been processed per account (contact IDs + domains only)
tokens/google_*.json	Google OAuth credentials
tokens/microsoft.json	Microsoft MSAL token cache

Platform-specific data directory paths:

Platform	Path
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/brandbox/
Windows	%LOCALAPPDATA%\brandbox\brandbox\
Linux	~/.local/share/brandbox/

Run brandbox --data-dir to see the exact path.

Important

Keep the tokens/ directory private. It contains OAuth refresh tokens. Never share this or commit it to version control.

Telemetry

BrandBox does not collect telemetry, analytics, crash reports, or usage data of any kind. No data is ever sent to services other than the logo APIs and authentication providers listed above. There are no "phone-home" calls, no tracking pixels, and no third-party analytics SDKs.

See our security documentation to report any security issues.

Testing

# Using uv (recommended)
uv run pytest tests/ -v

# Using pip
pytest tests/ -v

Documentation

Document	Description
Microsoft 365 Setup	How to configure Azure App Registration for Outlook contacts
Google Setup	How to configure Google Cloud project for Gmail contacts
How It Works	Technical deep dive into the logo pipeline, contact discovery, and provider architecture

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue before submitting a large PR to discuss your proposed changes.

git clone https://github.com/divisionseven/brandbox
cd brandbox
uv sync
uv run brandbox --help

See our Contributing Guide.

Run the linter and type checker before submitting:

uv run ruff check src/
uv run mypy src/

License

Distributed under the MIT License.