A portable email client that leaves nothing behind

Read and send your email from a USB stick, a shared or borrowed computer, or a locked-down work PC — without installing anything and without leaving your mail on the machine. MailCraft was built for this after a user asked for exactly that.

Run it from a USB stick

1. Download the Windows portable .zip from the download section (x64, ARM64 or 32-bit).
2. Unzip it onto the USB stick, or into any folder. It already contains an empty file named portable.txt — that's what makes it portable.
3. Run mailcraft.exe from there.

With portable.txt beside it, everything MailCraft writes — the account list, settings, logs and any mail it keeps — goes into a MailCraftData folder next to it, not into the computer's user folders. On macOS and Linux, put an empty portable.txt beside the app for the same.

Passwords only while it runs

A portable copy never saves your password to the computer's keychain. It's kept in memory while MailCraft runs, and MailCraft asks for it again the next time it starts.

Online only: no mail on the computer

Tick Online only when you add an account (or later in File › Options › Mail). Its mail stays on the server and is held only in memory while MailCraft runs: each message downloads when you open it, and nothing of it is written to the disk. In a portable copy, new accounts start with Online only ticked.

• Before closing, MailCraft warns you if an online-only account still has mail waiting to be sent or changes not yet on the server.
• Older mail past what's kept can still be shown, and searched, on the server.

What it can and can't promise

In portable mode MailCraft keeps its files in its own folder, and nothing of an online-only account's mail is written at all. An attachment you open in another app passes through the system's temporary folder, and MailCraft clears those files when it closes (one still open in that app stays until the app lets it go). Like any program, the operating system itself may still note that an app ran. For no trace at all, add accounts with Online only ticked from the start: switching it on later removes the old data file, but the disk can still hold remnants until they're overwritten.