Save emails by forwarding

Bredbox can give you a personal email address. Anything you forward to it becomes a private save in your Inbox, alongside the links you save from the web.

It is built for newsletters — the ones you want to read properly rather than in your mail app — but anything you can forward works.

Get your address

1. Open Settings → Email.
2. Select Generate email address.

Your address looks like this:

emails+7b4e2a9c8f1d40e6b3a5@inbox.bredbox.app

Nothing is created until you select the button, so an account that never uses this feature never has an address. After that it is shown on the same page whenever you visit, with a button to copy it.

Forward something to it

Forward a message the way you normally would, or set your address as the subscribe address for a newsletter. There is nothing to configure and no subject line convention to remember.

A minute or two later the message appears in your Inbox and under Emails in the sidebar, and Bredbox sends you a short notice saying it arrived.

Who the save says it is from

When you forward a message, Bredbox reads the forwarded header to find who originally sent it — so a newsletter you forward is attributed to the newsletter, not to you. If there is no forwarded header, the save is attributed to whoever sent the message.

Everywhere a saved email is shown in full — the reader, the original view, a printout, a downloaded copy — the sender is written out as From Name <address>, or just the address when the sender gave no name. In the reader and the original view the address is a link you can write to, with a button beside it to copy it. Cards and lists show the name alone, to fit.

Pause and resume capture

Settings → Email has an Active / Disabled switch beside your address.

Turn it off and messages sent to your address are refused: nothing is saved, and Bredbox does not notify you about them. The sender’s mail server gets a bounce, so a person who writes to you will know it did not arrive — but a newsletter sent while capture is off is simply gone, and needs to be sent again once you turn it back on.

Your address does not change while capture is off, so turning it back on is all it takes to start saving again.

Your saved emails are private

Every saved email is private:

• Only you can see it. It never appears in Discover, in Trending, or in anyone’s recommendations.
• Bredbox analyzes it to work out its topic and tags, the same way it does for an article, but those are only ever used for your organization and your search.
• It behaves like any other save: favorite it, archive it, tag it, add it to a collection, highlight it, mark it read, or delete it. Bredbox remembers where you stopped reading, the same way it does for an article, so a long newsletter picks up where you left off and shows up under Reading until you finish it.

Tracking pixels are removed

Most marketing email contains a tracking pixel: an invisible image that tells the sender the moment you open the message. Bredbox removes these before your email is stored, so opening a saved email in Bredbox never tells the sender anything.

That covers both places a tracking pixel can hide — invisible or tiny images, and remote images loaded from the message’s CSS.

One side effect worth knowing: because the CSS rule is a blunt one, background images that a message loads from a remote server do not appear in the original view or on the card thumbnail. These are usually decorative panels behind a heading. Ordinary images in the message body are untouched and display normally.

Two ways to read a saved email

• The reader is the default. Bredbox strips the message down to its text, the same way it does for an article, so it reads comfortably on any screen. The headphones button will also read it aloud.
• View original shows the message as it was sent, with its original layout. Open a saved email and select View original, under the sender at the top of the reader. It opens in a new tab, so the reader stays where it was.

Take it out of Bredbox

Both versions can leave as a file: Download in the reader offers the readable HTML and the Original HTML, the message exactly as it arrived. Print (or P) puts the readable version on paper. See Download, print, and share.

What is not saved

• Attachments. They are discarded on arrival and never stored. If you forward a message that is only an attachment, Bredbox will tell you there was nothing to save.
• Messages over 2 MB. Very long newsletters and messages with large inline images occasionally go over. You will get a notice with the size if that happens.

If something goes wrong

When a message cannot be saved, Bredbox emails you to say so and why. The sender gets a bounce message. Nothing is saved in either case.

The most common reasons are an attachment-only message, a message over the size limit, or a read-only account (see below).

The one exception is an address you have switched off yourself: those messages are refused without telling you, because you already know why.

While your account is read-only

If your subscription lapses, email capture pauses along with everything else that adds content to your account. Your address is unchanged and messages start being saved again as soon as a plan is active — but messages sent while your account is read-only are not saved and not queued, so anything sent during that window needs to be forwarded again.

While capture is paused, Settings → Email still shows your address so you can copy it, and the Active / Disabled switch is hidden, since it would change nothing. If you never generated an address, you cannot generate one while your account is read-only: the button is replaced by a note pointing you to billing, because a new address would not capture anything until a plan is active.

Your address is permanent

An address, once generated, is yours for the life of the account. There is no way to replace it yourself.

Treat it a little like a password: share it only where you would be comfortable receiving mail indefinitely. Anyone who has it can send to it.

If you believe your address has leaked and is being misused, contact support — we can issue you a new one.