Mail Storage Location

Can I change where Mailspring stores my mail?

Mailspring stores a cache of your email data on your computer, including all of the headers in your mailboxes and a limited set of email message bodies and attachments. Saving this information is required, and enables great client-side search and a snappy UI.

You can change where Mailspring’s data is kept by creating a symlink on your system, redirecting the settings folder to another location or another drive.

  1. First, quit Mailspring and identify where it is storing it’s data:

    • Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Mailspring
    • Windows: C:\Users\<Your User>\AppData\Roaming\Mailspring
    • Linux: $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Mailspring or ~/.config/Mailspring
  2. Next, move this directory to your desired location.

  3. Finally, create a symlink from the old location to the new location. On Mac and Linux, you do this using the ln command and the paths you used above. For Windows users, the MKLINK command is used to create a symbolic link from the old Mailspring directory to its new location:

    • macOS/Linux: ln -sf "~/Library/Application Support/Mailspring" "/Volumes/Big Disk/Mailspring"

    • Windows: MKLINK /D "C:\Users\<Your User>\AppData\Roaming\Mailspring" "D:\MyData\Mailspring"