Settings

This page covers inbuxa Webmail's settings: where they are kept, how to change the look and the language, and how to manage your own password.

Your settings follow you

Your settings are saved in your account on the mail server, not in the browser. So they are the same wherever you sign in, even in a private window. This covers:

• identity and signatures
• language, and date and time formats
• theme
• labels, templates and folder colors

Because they live with your mail, they are backed up with your mail.

Two limits to know:

• If two devices change the same setting, the last one saved wins.
• A change doesn't reach a device that already has inbuxa Webmail open until that device signs in again.

Settings that stay on this device

Some settings describe the screen in front of you, so they stay on that device on purpose:

• pane sizes
• density and font size
• whether the sidebar is open
• notification toggles, because notification permission is granted by each browser separately

On a device you didn't mark as your own when signing in, these are not stored at all. They last only as long as you stay signed in.

How it works

Settings are kept in a file called settings.json in your account's own Files, on inbuxa server. It is in a hidden ihasmail folder — see Files.

Themes

Go to Settings › Appearance. You choose two things separately:

1. Which palette — the set of colors.
2. Light or dark.

There are twelve palettes, each with a light and a dark version. The light/dark toggle in the top bar only switches between those two, and never changes the palette. The accent color setting applies on top of any palette.

Palette	What it is
Classic	Plain light and dark
ihasmail	The palette the webmail was built with
inbuxa	The colors of this project's website
Catppuccin, Dracula, Gruvbox, Rosé Pine, Tokyo Night, Solarized, Ayu, Kanagawa, Everforest, Primer	Popular palettes from other projects

Each borrowed palette uses the light and dark versions its own project publishes — Dracula with Alucard, Rosé Pine with Dawn, Catppuccin's Mocha with Latte, Kanagawa's Wave with Lotus. None has a light version invented here. A palette that only publishes a dark version isn't offered, which is why some well-known names are missing.

Why the colors are slightly adjusted

These palettes were designed for code editors, where text is small, monospaced and often only glanced at. Mail is read for hours. So inbuxa Webmail measures the contrast of every text color against the background it sits on, and lifts any that fall short. It adjusts along the color's own hue, so it still looks like itself. Body text is held to a higher standard than the palettes set for themselves.

Twenty-one of the twenty-two borrowed light and dark versions needed at least one adjustment. It is done by calculation, not by eye, and a palette that would not pass is not shipped at all.

Themes in messages

By default, HTML mail sits on a white card. Two settings change that:

Apply the theme to messages too lets mail follow your palette. It is careful: any message that sets even one color of its own is left exactly as the sender designed it. In practice that is nearly all marketing mail and receipts — one colored button is enough to leave the whole message alone.

Apply it even to mail that styles itself goes further. It only works when the first setting is on. It forces your palette over the sender's colors:

• the white background behind the message is dropped;
• colored buttons and banners are kept whole, so the text on them stays readable.

Interface language

Go to Settings › Appearance › Language to choose the language inbuxa Webmail's own screens are in. There are ten:

English, German, Spanish, French, Dutch, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Ukrainian, Simplified Chinese and Japanese.

Language is separate from date format

The interface language is a different setting from language and region (under Dates and times), which decides how dates, times and numbers are written. You can have an English interface with German dates, or the other way round.

The one link between them: when the date format is set to automatic, it follows your interface language. Choosing 日本語 gives you Japanese month and weekday names without setting the region too.

Folder names

The standard folders are translated: Inbox, Archive, Drafts, Sent, Deleted Items and Junk Mail. Folders you made keep the names you gave them, in whatever language you used.

Why only those folders

Those folders have a role set by inbuxa server, so their names mean the same thing in every language. A folder you created has no such role, only the name you typed.

Why some languages aren't listed

Only languages inbuxa Webmail has actually been translated into appear in the list.

Why not offer more

A language offered with no translation behind it would leave the page claiming to be in a language it isn't. That's worse than not offering it, because it stops your browser offering to translate a page you can't read.

Dates and times

Go to Settings › General, under Locale. You can set:

• Language & region

• Date format:

  Choice	Example
  Automatic	follows your language and region
  Day.Month.Year	22.11.2025
  Day/Month/Year	22/11/2025
  Month/Day/Year	11/22/2025
  Year-Month-Day (ISO 8601)	2025-11-22

• Time format: a 24-hour or 12-hour clock

• Time zone and Week starts on

Your choices apply everywhere in inbuxa Webmail.

The starting value comes from the language and region set for your account on the mail server. If none is set, it comes from your browser.

Numbers follow your region's style, except with ISO dates, which always use 0–9 digits for the date and the clock.

Typing dates

inbuxa Webmail uses its own date pickers rather than the browser's. Typing is forgiving — all of these work:

• 22.11.
• 221125
• 6:23pm
• a plain ISO date, such as 2025-11-22

Why not the browser's date picker

Browsers show <input type="date"> in the browser's own language and region, and ignore the page's. So a German interface could still show an American-style date box. inbuxa Webmail's own pickers follow your settings.

Calendars other than the Gregorian calendar

Date boxes you type into always use the Gregorian calendar and 0–9 digits, even for regions whose dates are normally shown in another calendar or numbering system. They do keep your region's order of day, month and year, and its separator. A Buddhist-era year typed into a box would not match a Gregorian calendar grid, so other calendars are not supported.

Notifications

Go to Settings › Notifications. There are two switches:

• Desktop notifications while inbuxa is open — a notification for new mail in your Inbox while the tab is in the background.
• Notify me even when inbuxa is closed — your mail server sends the notification straight to your browser, so it arrives with no inbuxa Webmail tab open. The browser itself still has to be running.

The second switch needs a device you marked as your own when you signed in. Your browser asks for permission the first time.

Every account you are signed in to

If you have added more accounts with Add account, the switch covers all of them, not just the one in front:

• A notification for another account is titled with that account's address, so you can see whose mail it is.
• It appears even while inbuxa Webmail is open, because the open tab only shows the account in front.
• Mark as read and Archive act on that account's mail.
• Clicking it brings that account to the front and opens the message.

Signing out of one account stops its notifications on this browser. Sign out of all accounts, or turning the switch off, stops them all.

Notifications stop if inbuxa Webmail has not been opened for about a week — see keeping notifications coming.

Your password and app passwords

Go to Settings › Security & sessions. You don't need an administrator for any of this. You can:

• change your password;
• manage app passwords — a separate password for each mail app or device, which you can cancel on its own without changing your main password.

Making inbuxa Webmail your default mail app

Go to Settings › General to make inbuxa Webmail open when you click an email link (a mailto: link) in your browser. The new message opens with recipients, Cc, Bcc, subject and body already filled in.

This needs:

• inbuxa Webmail served over HTTPS;
• a browser that supports it — Safari does not.

If you install inbuxa Webmail as an app, your operating system can also offer it wherever something asks for a mail client.

How it works

In the browser, inbuxa Webmail registers itself as the handler for mailto: links. Installed as an app, it also declares protocol handlers in its manifest, which is what lets the operating system offer it.