Product Guide
From install to your first AI summary
Follow along with the screens and you're done.
Download and install
It runs on Mac and Windows.
Press the button and you get the installer that matches your computer.
Owlu
Start your smart email assistant
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Mac macOS 13+
- Press [Download Owlu] and you get Owlu.dmg.
- Double-click the Owlu.dmg you downloaded.
- Drag the Owlu icon into your Applications folder.
Windows Windows 10+
- Press [Download Owlu] and you get Owlu-win-Setup.exe.
- Run the file you downloaded.
- When the install finishes, the sign-in screen opens right away.
Sign in to your account
Press Sign in with Google or Sign in with Microsoft,
and the rest happens safely in your browser.
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Email or phone
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Before using this app, you can review Owlu's privacy policy and terms of service.
Next
See the details
1Pick your mail account
2The browser opens
3Password goes to Google
4Press Continue
5Leave all three on, Continue
Owlu wants access to your Google Account
AABC@owlu.site
Select what Owlu can access
Select all
Read, compose, send, and permanently delete all your email from Gmail. See access details
See, edit, create, and delete only the specific Google Drive files you use with this app. See access details
See, edit, share, and permanently delete all the calendars you can access using Google Calendar. See access details
Make sure you trust Owlu
Review Owlu's Privacy Policy and Terms of Service to understand how Owlu will process and protect your data.
To make changes at any time, go to your Google Account.
Learn how Google helps you share data safely.
CancelContinue
You're all set
You're signed in to Owlu. We're taking you back to the app—or tap below if it doesn't open automatically.
Open OwluTaking you back to Owlu…
First-time setup
This part begins when the browser closes and you land back in the app.
Four screens go by, and you press twice.
See the details
Device checkAuto
When you come back from the browser, the app checks your device. Nothing to press — it passes on its own. On Mac, this one screen always appears in English, whatever language you use.
Connect screen — “Step 1: Connect”NextDone
Press [Next] and the “Connect” window opens with the account you just signed in to at the top. If you have no other mailbox to add, press [Done].
How to add another mailbox See how connecting works →Consent screenContinue
Owlu respects and protects your privacy. Your mail is stored securely on your device and is never stored on our servers.
There is one checkbox — “I agree to usage data collection to improve the app.” You can leave it off, and you can change it later in Settings. Press [Continue] and you're done.
“Initial sync”Auto
You'll see “Downloading mail headers to get you started.”, and the app moves on by itself when it's finished. How long it takes depends on the size of your mailbox, and if it's already done the screen is skipped.
Initializing Sync
Downloading email headers from your accounts
If you sign in with an account you already use on another device, the consent screen comes first and Connect follows. What you press is the same.
Network screen tour
When the sync finishes, the screen where you sort people and organizations opens.
Step through nine cards with [Next].
See the details
1Welcome to Network
This is the Network workspace, where the people and organizations in your mail come together at a glance.
Let's take a quick look at the main features. You can leave any time with 'Skip' or Esc.
2Left: people bubbles
Everyone you exchange mail with is gathered here as bubbles.
Drag a bubble onto an organization card on the right to assign that person to it.
3Change the color mode
Switch what the bubble colors mean with [People · Account · Organization].
See everyone in the same organization, or on the same account, grouped at a glance.
4Right: Mail ↔ Organization tabs
Switch the right panel between the message list and the organization dashboard.
The 'Mail' tab shows the messages exchanged with whoever you selected.
5Click a person for their mail
Click a person's bubble and the 'Mail' tab on the right collects everything you've exchanged with them.
The whole run of a conversation with one person, in one place.
6Organization dashboard
The 'Organization' tab is where you create organization cards and manage their members.
Drag people bubbles from the left onto a card to group them quickly.
7Open an organization
Click an organization card to see insights, relationship flow, and members at a glance.
It lays out who you talk to, how much, and how the exchange has gone.
8AI organization suggestions
AI reads your send and receive patterns and suggests organizations worth grouping.
Accept one you like and it becomes an organization right away.
9You're all set!
Go explore the Network workspace.
You can see this tour again any time from Settings > Touring.
Once you've gone through all nine, the next part follows immediately.
AI organization suggestions
This follows right after the nine cards.
It groups the people you trade mail with into organizations.
See the details
Ready to start AI organization suggestions?
Press [Get Started] and a field appears for the criteria you want to group by.We'll sort your contacts into groups that mean something.
In a moment, tell us on the input sheet how you'd like them grouped.
Candidate organizations come back as cards
Accepted organizations stack up under [My organizations] on the right, each with an AI summary attached.Each card carries the organization name and how many people it groups.
[Accept] if you like it, [Reject] if you don't.
AI organization suggestions are done
Picking [Keep exploring] doesn't end the tour. You have to press [Move on] to reach the next part.Stay on the canvas a while longer, or move on to the next tour.
You don't have to do this now — [AI suggestions] at the top right of the organization screen brings it back any time.
Meet the agent
Press [Move on] and you land on the workflow screen.
This is where the first-run tour ends.
See the details
Press [Ask AI to build it] and…
Pick one of the six, or just type what you want in the box below.
The agent asks follow-up questions as it goes — which account to use, that sort of thing.
Mail screen tour
Move to Mail at the top of the left rail and a second tour starts, this one for the mail screen.
Sixteen cards point out one part of the screen at a time.
See the details
During the tour, sample messages starting with “[Demo]” slip into the list. The sender is “Owlu Demo”, and they are removed when the tour ends.
A tour of the mail screen
1Welcome to Owlu Mail
Let's take a quick look at the main areas before you start.
You can leave any time with 'Skip' or Esc.
2The Owlu Mail layout at a glance
Owlu Mail is built around one flow: clear incoming mail fast, with AI summarizing and sorting ahead of you.
Pick a mailbox on the left, select a message in the middle list, and the body, the AI summary, and the thread analysis gather on the right.
Now let's take the areas one at a time.
3Left: the mailbox navigator
Switch between connected accounts, mailboxes (Inbox, Sent, Trash, and so on), and your own labels here.
↑↓ moves through items, Enter selects. The ＋ beside a label creates a new one and sets its color; right-click to rename or delete.
Each account can carry its own color, and that color shows on the read/unread dot in the list.
4Middle: the message list
The threads in the mailbox you picked.
The dot at the left of each row is read/unread (filled = unread), and its color is that message's account color, so mixed accounts stay easy to tell apart.
Columns: checkbox · dot · sender/star · subject and snippet · time and labels.
↑↓ moves between messages, ←→ switches mailboxes, Enter opens the workspace, Space expands, and D delete · A archive · V label act right away.
5Right: the reading pane
Read the selected message and its thread on one screen.
The AI summary, the overall status, and related threads open up in stages at the top.
The three arrows in the header — ↩ reply · ⇇ reply all · ↪ forward — open the workspace; double-click or Enter does the same.
Drag the divider in the middle to change the widths.
6AI summary — look at this card
This card is the AI summary. It fills in on its own whenever new mail arrives.
You can switch automatic analysis off in Settings, and even then the ‘✨ AI Summary’ button beside the subject requests one for an older message.
7AI thread summary (history)
When several messages belong to the same conversation, AI pulls the whole arc together in the card above.
The ‘Overview’ area gives you the through-line, and the timeline below shows where each message left things.
8Reply · Reply all · Forward
The three bent arrows at the top of the message card.
↩ Reply — to the sender only / ⇇ Reply all — to every recipient / ↪ Forward — send it to someone else.
Press one and the workspace opens in that mode.
9Open mail
The ‘Open mail’ button at the bottom of the card expands this message into the full workspace.
Replies, attachments, and your business card are easier to handle on the bigger screen.
Press Next and we'll step into the workspace.
Workspace — where you write the reply
10The mail workspace
You've just stepped into the workspace — the screen where you shape a reply and send it.
Three columns: the persona sidebar on the left (reply templates), the message body in the middle, the composer on the right — plus the action toolbar on top (move · delete · share · label · remind · archive).
Let's take each part in turn.
11Workspace — the ▲▼ arrows on top
Use ▲▼ at the top right to move to the previous or next message in the same mailbox.
← on the left, or Esc, takes you back to the list.
12Personas — reply templates
Save the tones and phrases you reply with most as templates in the left sidebar, then apply one in a single click.
Create a new one with ‘+’, and click it to drop it straight into the composer.
13The composer
Shape the reply or forward right in the composer on the right.
Recipients, subject, body, and attachments all live in one card, with attachments and your business card sitting under the body.
14Business card (signature)
The business card section under the body sends your name, contact details, and logo as a card.
Give each account its own card and the right one is applied for you every time you write.
Press ‘Next’ and we'll head back to the main screen for one last look at the top bar.
Back on the main screen
15Top: new mail · search · sync
You've come back from the workspace to the main screen.
The ✎ icon on the left starts a new message. The search box in the middle of the title bar searches across every account and mailbox, and keeps your recent searches.
The navigation toggle and the sync status live here too.
16You're all set
You can replay this any time from Settings > General > 'Replay onboarding'.
Settings > Touring holds replays for “Mail UI guide”, “Calendar guide”, and “Network guide”.
See your first AI summary
Once the tours are behind you, it's your real mail from here.
The card above the body fills itself in.
Compose
See the details
This card is the AI summary. It fills in on its own whenever new mail arrives. You can switch automatic analysis off in Settings, and even then the ‘✨ AI Summary’ button beside the subject requests one for an older message.
- Summaries attach themselves as mail arrives — “Generate AI summaries automatically” in Settings is on from the start.
- The mailbox list on the left shows the folders and labels your mail already has. There's nothing for you to create.
You only did four things yourself
✓Downloaded and installed✓Signed in✓Pressed [Next] and [Continue]✓Followed the tour
See everything mail can doWorkflow guide
Build it in chat, build it on the canvas, leave it running
Go there →Troubleshooting guide
What to do when sign-in or a connection fails
Go there →Security guide
Where your mail data is stored
Go there →Workflow guide
This is the screen you get from “Agent” in the left rail. It's where you hand off the mail work you keep repeating — build it in chat, or build it yourself on the canvas.
A tour of the screen
- 1The far-left rail moves you between Mail, Agent, Calendar, and Network.
- 2Next to it sit two tabs, “Chat” and “Workflows”. Past conversations and the flows you've built collect here, and [New conversation] starts a fresh one.
- 3The middle is the “AI assistant” — the place you ask in words. The ✕ at its top right folds it away.
- 4The wide area on the right is “Workflow home”. Open a workflow and this area turns into the canvas.
Build it in chat
Just type what you want in the box below — for example, “Build me a workflow that pulls the details out of meeting invitations and adds them to my calendar.” Pressing one of the six example cards you saw earlier drops in the very same sentence.
- Pick a mode above the box — “Agent” builds and edits workflows, “Ask” only answers questions and builds nothing.
- Enter sends; Shift+Enter starts a new line.
- When the AI has a flow ready, a “Needs your confirmation” card appears — it only reaches the canvas after you press [Accept].
Build it on the canvas
- Press a row in the “Nodes” drawer on the left and that node lands in the middle of the canvas. Dragging it from the drawer onto the canvas works too.
- Drag from one node's connector to the next node and the line is drawn. A flow always starts from the start (trigger) node.
- Press a node to open its settings panel. Type / in a text field and the “Insert data node” list appears, so you can drop in values like the subject, the body, or the attachment list.
- “Debug run” on the start node is a preview — one pass with a single representative message.
Press “Mail summary” and that node lands in the middle of the canvas.
Drag from the right dot of one node to the left dot of the next, and they're connected.
How nodes connect
Nodes don't attach just anywhere. Which sides can take a line is what sorts them into three kinds.
Receive by email addressOutput
InputMail summaryOutput
InputEnd
Splitting on a condition
- The “Condition & repeat” node makes the fork — on any one run it takes either “True” or “False”, never both.
- You can also pull two lines out of one node and run them side by side. When you do, a later node such as “Compose email” merges them back.
Opening a node's settings
Most of the time the canvas shows only a small card — a round icon, the name under it, and the sockets on its sides. Double-click the card and it grows right where it is.
- One click — the border darkens. That only means “this is the one I'm holding”; nothing has opened yet. Drag it around in this state.
- Two clicks — the card unfolds in place and its insides open. Anything a node needs changed, you change here.
- Click empty space — it folds back. Only one card is open at a time, so double-clicking another folds the first one for you.
Turning workflows on and off
There's nothing to save — edits save themselves as you make them. All that's left is switching them on and off, and that happens in two places.
The workflow list on the far left
One workflow at a timeActive
Every flow you build stays here as a row. Click the name to expand it, then click “Inactive” to make it “Active”. Click once more and it's off again.
Settings > AI
Generate AI summaries automatically
Summaries are written for you as new mail arrives. With it off, the button beside the subject still requests one whenever you want.
Organization suggestion banner
When a sender you haven't seen before looks like a fit for an organization you already have, a banner at the top asks whether to add them. Turn it off and the banner stops appearing — and any banner already up disappears at once.
When it won't switch to “Active”
If a field is still empty, it won't flip to “Active”. It won't tell you why on the spot, so head to the canvas, find the node wearing a red exclamation mark, and hover over it.
Which mail gets handled
Workflows run while the app is open. Here's what they catch.
- Only mail that arrives after you switch the workflow on. Whatever had already piled up is left untouched.
- Quit the app and open it again, and the mail that arrived while it was closed gets handled then.
- If the connection drops, the work queues up and runs once you're back online.
- If one message matches several workflows, every one of them runs.
Choosing when it runs
The start node decides. Pick one of three.
When mail arrives
“Receive by email address” · “Receive by organization” — it runs the moment matching mail lands.
At a set time
“Scheduled run” — hourly, daily, weekly, custom, or by the minute. Note that “it only runs while the app is open.”
Only when you press it
“Manual run” — “runs only as a 'run once'; it does not fire on its own when new mail arrives.”
Checking how runs went
Five numbers sit across the top of Workflow home — “All workflows”, “Active”, “Total runs”, “Success rate”, “Failed”. When the success rate drops, start by finding the node where the flow broke.
Troubleshooting guide
Look up the exact line you see on screen.
While signing in
Sign-in did not complete in the browser. Please try again.
You closed the browser window early, or it timed out. Press the sign-in button in the app again and a fresh window opens.
The sign-in link has expired. Please try again.
Same as above. Press it again and it opens with a new link.
Sign-in was canceled. Nothing has changed.
Nothing changed. Just start over.
You are offline. Connect to the internet and sign in.
Check your connection, then press it again.
Partway through, the screens stop looking like Owlu
From 'Sign in to Owlu' onward, Google is drawing those pages, so the layout and the language come from Google, not from us. Nothing is broken — press [Continue] and carry on. The verification screen right after sign-in is Google's too.
Do I have to leave all three boxes on (Gmail · Drive · Calendar)?
All three are on from the start. Leave them as they are and press [Continue]. They cover mail, saving attachments, and calendar; if something turns out to be missing, [Grant permissions] in Settings opens the page again.
While using it
I connected Gmail but I'm missing mail
The app tells you exactly what's wrong — “In your Gmail settings, 'All Mail → Show in IMAP' is turned off. Turn that option on in Gmail and try again.” On the Gmail website, open Settings > Labels, switch on 'Show in IMAP' on the All Mail row, and try again.
Reconnection required
This appears when mail stops arriving for a while. The app's own wording: “This account's authorization has expired and syncing is paused. Sign in again to restore it.” Press [Re-authenticate] in Settings. Nothing was deleted — it only stopped.
My company mail (custom domain) disconnected
This kind of account connects differently: “This account connects with an IMAP password rather than OAuth. Press Reconnect to run the wizard again.” If your company changed the mail password, this is where you enter the new one.
Sync upgrade required
This appears when the sync method for an Outlook account has changed. Press [Resync].
Attachments won't save, or the calendar won't connect
A permission is missing. Press [Grant permissions] in Settings: “Re-grant mail and calendar access for this account. The consent page opens, and the permissions needed for features such as saving attachments are refreshed at the same time.”
Mail handling on hold
“This message was already deleted on another device, or is gone from the server.” It comes up when Owlu tries to touch a message you deleted first on your phone or in webmail. You can leave it alone.
I want to see the tour again
Settings > Touring replays it any time. The app says the same on the last card of the tour: “You can see this tour again any time from Settings > Touring.”
What's the difference between signing out and deleting my account?Can't be undone
The app spells out the difference: “Signing out of this device signs you out here only; your workflows and chats are kept. Deleting your account permanently deletes all your data, workflows and chats included.” If you're switching computers, you want [Sign out of this device]. [Delete account permanently] can't be undone.
Security guide
Where your mail, your passwords, and your history each live.
What lives where
Your mailbox is on this computer. Only two things pass through a server.
What
This computer
Server
Mailbox · bodies · attachments
Every message you've received
Workflows · chat history
So you can pick up where you left off on another device. Turn “Workflow sync” off in Settings and they stay on this device only
The moment AI summarizes or sorts
“To classify more accurately, part of the body is used in AI analysis along with the subject and the sender.”
Passwords
Google and Microsoft finish inside the browser, so Owlu never receives them at all. A company mail password is kept in the Mac system password store (Keychain) and is deleted along with the account
Owlu respects and protects your privacy. Your mail is stored securely on your device and is never stored on our servers.
Usage data
I agree to usage data collection to improve the app
- This is the checkbox from the consent screen during setup — “Error logs and usage statistics. No mail content; includes an account identifier. Can be changed in Settings.” It starts out on.
- Where to turn it off: Settings > General > “Usage data collection”.
Signing out vs. deleting your accountCan't be undone
Signing out of this device signs you out here only; your workflows and chats are kept. Deleting your account permanently deletes all your data, workflows and chats included.
If you're switching computers, [Sign out of this device] is the one you want.
Sign out of this deviceData on this device — erasedWorkflows · chats — keptSign in again and it's all still there
Delete account permanentlyData on this device — erasedWorkflows · chats — erasedThis can't be undone
After deleting, you get a notice that “some app permissions have to be removed by you.” Remove Owlu from your mail provider's list of connected apps and that's the end of it.
Legal Documents
All three are in English. Here's what each one covers.
Terms of Service →
The conditions for using the service — AI features, integrations, pricing and payment, and cancellation.
Privacy Policy →
What we collect and how we use it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask us for.
Acceptable Use →
The list of things you must not do — break these and your account can be suspended.