MailVault is a full email client with a vault behind it. Read, search and reply like in any client, while every message you keep is saved to your own disk as a plain .eml file. Delete it from the server and your copy stays. Search 50,000 messages offline in under 15 ms. Clear the server without losing a thing. No account, no telemetry, passwords in your OS keychain, AI that can run on your own machine. Gmail, Microsoft 365, Outlook.com and any IMAP. macOS, Windows, Linux. Core is free.
Every photo book tool I tried handed me a blank spread and 300 thumbnails and said "go on then." I got four pages in and closed it.
The photos went back to the folder. That was two years ago and they're still there.
So I built the opposite. PhotoBooks (macOS + iOS) takes an Apple Photos album or a folder and gives you a finished book first - curated, laid out, cover, spine text, back cover - before you've made a single decision. Then you argue with it. Make this one bigger, swap that, drag it there, write on the page, change the book size at the very end. The whole thing reflows around you.
Two rules I refused to break: it never crops a photo to fit a template, and nothing leaves your machine. Scoring runs on device, your book is a plain file in whatever folder you keep it in, no account.
PhotoBooks turns an Apple Photos album or a Mac folder into a finished, print-ready photo book. It curates the selection, gives standout shots bigger slots (faces, sharpness, saliency - on device) and builds balanced, zero-crop spreads with a real wraparound cover. Then you take over: drag, resize, crop, add text, swap photos, change size - the whole book reflows. Export Blurb-ready or bleed-ready PDFs. No account, no upload, your book is just a local file. Native macOS + iOS, 9 languages.
