Apple Mail is Slow: Why Native Rust Apps are the Future

It happens to every power user: your Apple Mail inbox starts to lag, search becomes glacial, and the "Spinning Beachball of Death" appears just as you're trying to send an important attachment.

Apple Mail is a venerable application. It has been a staple of macOS for decades. But as our inboxes have grown from a few dozen messages to hundreds of thousands, and as our security needs have evolved, the legacy architecture of the default mail app is showing its age.

The Legacy Problem

Apple Mail is built on a massive, mature Objective-C and Swift codebase. While Apple has optimized it significantly, it still carries the weight of 20+ years of legacy features and synchronization logic. When you have multiple IMAP accounts and huge local caches, the database index often struggles to keep up with modern search demands.

Enter Rust: Memory Safety and Speed

The software industry is shifting. For performance-critical applications, Rust has become the language of choice. Unlike traditional languages, Rust provides "fearless concurrency" and memory safety without a garbage collector. This makes it perfect for handling the high-concurrency demands of a modern email client—syncing dozens of folders while simultaneously running a local AI model and indexing attachments.

Why Inboxed Feels Different

Inboxed was built from the ground up using Rust and the Tauri framework. This approach offers several advantages over legacy apps like Apple Mail:

1. Instant Startup

Because Inboxed is a compact 10MB native binary, it launches instantly. There's no "rebuilding index" or long synchronization pause when you first open the app.

2. Zero-Lag Search

Our search engine is built on highly optimized Rust libraries that can scan through millions of headers in milliseconds. We use the full power of the Apple Silicon GPU to accelerate semantic searches.

3. Efficient Resource Usage

While Apple Mail can easily climb to 500MB+ of RAM usage, Inboxed typically hovers around 50MB. This efficiency leaves more memory for your actual work—whether that's compiling code, editing video, or running a dozen browser tabs.

The Verdict

Apple Mail will always be the reliable choice for casual users. But if you're a professional who needs speed, privacy, and modern AI intelligence, it's time to move toward a native, performance-first architecture.

The future of macOS software isn't in legacy frameworks. It's in native, efficient code that respects your time and your hardware.