The inbox
Pulse, Columns and views, what "Needs you" means, archive and trash, always-archive rules, and how new mail arrives.
Each business has its own inbox. All inboxes is the overview of all of them.
All inboxes: Pulse, Columns, One business
| View | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Pulse | One ring per business in your rail order. The colour is the state (urgent, attention, cleared); the arc is the share of that inbox's open mail you've already seen. The centre counts what needs you; the card below it is the most urgent conversation, with Open and Snooze (a follow-up for tomorrow). Hover a ring for its summary, click it to open the inbox, or press 1 to 9. |
| Columns | Every inbox side by side. Drag a column by its header to reorder (your phone follows the order). Opening a row shows it in a reading pane at the bottom or top. |
| One business | A single inbox with its thread pane. |
The choice is remembered on this browser.
Views
| View | What's in it |
|---|---|
| Needs you | Open conversations that aren't archived or automated, plus follow-ups that are due. Due follow-ups come first, then anything marked as needing you, then newest. |
| Clients | Every conversation linked to a client. |
| Follow-ups | Every conversation with a follow-up date, soonest first. The count is how many are due. |
| Automated | Mailing lists, auto-generated and bulk mail, auto-replies, notification senders and bots. A known client contact is never treated as automated. |
| Work | Conversations with work in progress, like an invoice draft. |
| Archived | Done or parked conversations. Nothing here is deleted. |
| Trash | Shows only when something is in it. |
Each row shows who it's from (with their client) and the subject, nothing else. Tags, follow-ups and the rest show when you open the conversation.
Move between views with the arrow keys, Home and End.
A business inbox initially loads its most recent 250 stored conversations. Load more stored conversations adds older pages without changing your view or selection. Until everything is loaded, counts and filters describe only the loaded conversations; older follow-ups and work appear as you load them. This control stays available even when a filter has no matches. If loading fails, your current list stays visible with its actions paused; Retry loading conversations restores live updates before actions resume. Once all stored conversations are loaded, the mailbox history control can bring in older mail from your provider.
What needs you
When it's set up on the server, Sydbar scores each new conversation from 0 to 4: No action, FYI, Reply soon, Needs you, Urgent. The list puts Urgent and Needs you first. Without scoring, conversations stay in date order.
Every call Jev makes comes with how sure it is. Settings → Business → Triage sets how sure it must be before its call puts mail at the front (40% to 90%, 60% to start). Below that line a conversation stays in date order with no marker, for you to read. Moving the line re-sorts the mail already scored straight away; the panel shows how many conversations each setting puts at the front, and how often it would have matched your own corrections.
On a wide screen each conversation has a Needs you toggle. Turn it off when Sydbar got it wrong, or on to flag something yourself. Your choice is kept separately from Sydbar's score and always wins. The tooltip says "Marked by you" or "Suggested by Sydbar".
What jumps the queue
Six things come to the front of Needs you (and Pulse), each with its reason on the row:
| Marker | Means | Decided by |
|---|---|---|
| Deadline | A client deadline is at risk or missed | Jev, from the email |
| Bug report | A client reports that something you delivered is broken, erroring or down | Jev, from the email |
| Payment overdue | An invoice you sent is past its due date | Sydbar, from your invoices, checked daily; the thread also gets a follow-up due now |
| Bill due | A bill or payment you owe is due, overdue or failed | Jev, from the email; billing notices from automated senders are read too |
| Waiting on you | A client can't move until you answer: a decision, an approval, access or files | Jev, from the email |
| Opportunity | New work: a brief, a quote request, a referral, more scope | Jev, from the email |
Order: due follow-ups, then deadlines, bug reports, overdue payments, bills, clients waiting on you, opportunities, then anything else Jev rated urgent, then newest. Jev only ever reads the email; it can't act on anything in it. Correct a marker from the conversation's toolbar: turning Needs you off hides it, and your choice wins.
How new mail arrives
When you connect a mailbox, Sydbar brings in your latest conversations (you pick how many: 25, 50, 100 or 250) and the inbox fills in as they arrive. After that it checks for new mail about every five minutes, whether or not Sydbar is open. Press Refresh at the top of the inbox to check right away (it shows on wider screens).
- Each check brings in up to 25 conversations with new mail since the last one. If more were waiting, Sydbar says so.
- To bring in more of your history later, open Settings → Connections, pick a number and press Bring in. What's already in Sydbar counts toward it.
What comes in
People in, machines out. Sydbar brings in the mail that matters and leaves the rest in your mailbox:
- Mail from people, from any Gmail tab except Promotions and Social.
- Anything involving a client: from them, to them, or with them copied.
- New messages in conversations with people Sydbar already has, including replies you send from Gmail or another app such as Superhuman.
- Newsletters, marketing, notifications, sign-in alerts and bots stay out. Sydbar tells them apart by how they're sent (mailing-list and bulk-mail headers, no-reply and notification senders), not by reading them. A client's automated mail still comes in, under Automated.
Mail you've already archived still comes in when it matters (for example, marked Done in Superhuman before Sydbar's next check). It arrives archived, so the client's history is complete without filling your inbox. Spam, Trash and drafts never come in.
Mailboxes connected with an app password follow the same rules (outside Gmail there are no tabs to skip).
Select several
Tick the checkbox on a row, or Shift-click to select a range (up to 200 at a time). From the keyboard: open a conversation, then press Shift ↓ (or Shift ↑) to add the next ones, or ⌘A for every conversation in the view. The bar shows Archive (or Restore), Delete, Always archive this sender, Tag and Clear. Press Delete to move the selection to Trash (you can restore it from Trash) and Esc to clear it.
Open Automated, press ⌘A, then Delete. Or select a few from the same sender and choose Always archive this sender so they skip the inbox from now on.
Archive and Trash
- Archive removes the conversation from the inbox. With Gmail connected through Google, it also archives in Gmail. Restore to inbox brings it back in both.
- Move to Trash uses Gmail's Trash, which Gmail empties after 30 days. Nothing is permanently deleted by Sydbar.
- If someone replies to a conversation you archived, it comes back to the inbox.
- With an app-password mailbox, or a Google connection without permission to change mail, archive and Trash apply in Sydbar only. The row says Sydbar only.
Always archive a sender
From the archive menu on a conversation, choose Always archive {sender}, or Always archive @domain for a company domain (not for gmail.com and other public providers). From a selection, Always archive this sender covers each sender picked.
- Matching open conversations are archived right away (from the most recent 500), and new mail from that sender is archived when it arrives.
- Client conversations are skipped when you create a rule: Sydbar tells you how many to archive directly.
- A domain rule also matches its subdomains.
- Manage rules in Settings → Connections → Inbox rules. Each shows how many it archived, with Remove. Removing a rule stops future archiving; already archived conversations stay in Archived until you restore them.
Copy an email, or send it to Linear
The share icon in a conversation's toolbar takes it somewhere else:
| Choice | What you get |
|---|---|
| Copy as Markdown | The conversation as Markdown: subject, client, a link back to Sydbar, then each message with who sent it and when. History quoted under a reply is left out. |
| Copy for a coding agent | The same, under a short brief: list every change the client asks for, make them, ask before guessing. Paste it into Claude Code, Codex or Cursor. |
| Send to Linear | Files it as a Linear issue, in the client's linked Linear project when there is one. You pick the team, project and title; the email goes in the description. The conversation keeps a link to the issue. Needs Linear connected in Settings → Connections. |
An agent connected over MCP can also read the conversation itself (see Connect an AI agent).
Sample conversations
New workspaces can show sample conversations so you can try everything safely. They're labelled Sample, nothing in Gmail is touched, and a reply to a sample goes to a controlled address instead of a real person. Show or hide them in Settings → Connections → Sample threads.