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Mail Shepherd 3.0 for the Mac App Store (build 535) · Updated October 24, 2026

  • No middleman. There’s no Mail Shepherd server or account. Mail Shepherd connects straight from this Mac to iCloud, over encrypted connections: to iCloud Mail (IMAP) for your mail, and to iCloud Contacts (CardDAV) for your contacts.
  • Your password: Mail Shepherd signs in with an app-specific password you make for it on your Apple Account page, never your Apple Account password. It’s stored only in this Mac’s keychain, and you can revoke it on your Apple Account page at any time.
  • What it reads in your mail: only each message’s headers: the sender, Reply-To, subject, dates, Message-ID, iCloud’s authentication results and mailing-list details, plus whether it’s read or junk. Never message bodies or attachments. Reading a message never marks it read.
  • What it changes: your mail only when you click a button, or when an Auto-Sweep you turned on runs. A Sweep marks mail read, junk or not junk, and moves it between the Inbox, Junk and Trash; only Delete Selected and Delete Permanently delete mail (see Deleting and Safety). It never sets or clears a message’s flag. Every change is written to the Action Log.
  • Contacts: Mail Shepherd reads the email addresses in your iCloud contacts, so their mail is never treated as junk. It keeps only a one-way, keyed hash of each address (HMAC-SHA256, with a key kept in this Mac’s keychain) and the address’s domain; the addresses themselves and the rest of each card aren’t kept. It never changes your contacts.
  • Mail’s Blocked Sender List: read only if you link it on Settings, and never changed.
  • Your lists: Blocked Senders, Blocked Domains and Allowed Domains are kept on this Mac.
  • Logs: the Action Log (the last 4 weeks), the Sweep Logs (the newest 500 Sweeps), the Contacts Refresh Log, the Auto-Sweep log and the Sweep statistics stay on this Mac. Crash reports from macOS are added to the Action Log. Nothing is sent anywhere: the support address on Get Support starts a message in your mail app, with your Mail Shepherd and macOS versions filled in, for you to send.
  • Internet: apart from iCloud, the version from the Take66 website asks take66.ai which build is current, when it opens and when you choose Check for Updates…; the App Store version doesn’t. Mail Shepherd Help opens in your browser.

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