Your app's email,
caught in the act.
Point your dev environment at 127.0.0.1:1025 and every message your app sends lands in your menu bar instead of a real inbox. HTML, plain text, attachments. No Docker, no browser tab, no accidental mail to a live customer.
smtp://127.0.0.1:1025
Press it a few times. That is the whole workflow.
Every test email, nowhere near a customer.
Built for developers and agencies who test order confirmations, password resets and invoices all day, and would rather not wire up a container to read them.
A real SMTP sink
MailBar speaks SMTP on 127.0.0.1, loopback only. Laravel, Symfony, Rails, Django, Node, WordPress: anything that can send mail can send it here.
Notified on arrival
Every captured message pings you and bumps the unread count in the menu bar. Submit the form, glance up, read the mail.
HTML the way the customer sees it
Templates render properly, with a switch to the plain-text alternative. Because half of email bugs are template bugs.
Trackers blocked
Remote images and scripts in a message never load, so a client's tracking pixel cannot phone home from your machine. Links open in your browser when you click them.
Attachments intact
That generated invoice PDF is listed, sized and saved wherever you want it. Nothing is opened automatically.
Kept as .eml
Messages persist across restarts as standard .eml files you can open in any mail client, or delete in one click.
Copy-paste config
One menu item copies a ready .env block. Change the port from the panel whenever 1025 is taken.
Native and tiny
Pure SwiftUI, about a megabyte, no Docker, no Ruby, no daemon to babysit. It starts with your Mac and gets out of the way.
MAIL_HOST=127.0.0.1
MAIL_PORT=1025
MAIL_USERNAME=null
MAIL_PASSWORD=null
MAIL_ENCRYPTION=null
Three lines of config, then forget about it.
Point SMTP at MailBar
Copy the settings from the menu into your .env. Username and password are ignored, so existing configs keep working.
Use your app
Place an order, reset a password, trigger the nightly job. Nothing leaves your Mac.
Read the mail
Click the notification or the menu bar icon, open the message, check the template and the attachment.
Fair questions.
Is it safe to run an SMTP server on my Mac?
MailBar binds to 127.0.0.1 only, so nothing on your network can reach it, and it never relays or forwards a message anywhere. It stores what it receives and stops there. Message size, line length and connection count are all capped.
How is this different from MailHog or Mailpit in Docker?
Same idea, no container and no browser tab. MailBar is a native menu bar app that starts with your Mac, notifies you when mail arrives, and reads messages in a proper window. If you already run Mailpit happily, you do not need this.
Will it deliver anything to a real address?
No. There is no outbound path in the app at all. That is the point: a misconfigured staging job cannot reach a real customer while MailBar is the mail server.
What about tracking pixels in a client template?
Blocked. Message bodies render with scripts disabled and every remote request denied, so opening a marketing template in MailBar does not register an open or leak your address. Clicking a link deliberately opens your normal browser.
Will macOS warn me about the app?
No. MailBar is signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple, so it installs and opens without any Gatekeeper warnings.
What does it cost?
€7.50, once. That includes a license for 3 Macs and free updates. Try it free for 7 days first, no account needed. Payments and licensing are handled by Polar.
HostsBar
Your hosts file, one click away. Toggle /etc/hosts entries from the menu bar.
DigBar
DNS propagation, watched for you. Get a ping when your records land.
PortBar
See what's listening on every port, and stop it in one click.
Get MailBar
Stop reading test email in a Docker log. Catch it in your menu bar.