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:
- Which palette — the set of colors.
- 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.
Some mail won't look right with this on
Doing this perfectly isn't possible, which is why it's a separate choice — the same trade-off a browser dark-mode extension makes. Nothing the sender wrote is thrown away: turn it off and the message looks exactly as before. Printing is not affected either way.
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.
The nine translations are Beta — and nobody who speaks them has checked them yet
The translations were made by AI, using standard dictionaries, and no one who speaks the language has read them. Settings says this too, next to a link for reporting anything that reads wrongly, because shipping them quietly would ask you to trust text nobody has checked. A language loses its Beta label once a speaker has read it and said so.
If you speak one of them, reporting a bad phrase is the most useful thing you can do. A wrong line can simply be deleted: anything missing falls back to the English original.
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 22.11.2025Day/Month/Year 22/11/2025Month/Day/Year 11/22/2025Year-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:
22.11.2211256:23pm- 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.
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.
If your organization manages passwords elsewhere
Some accounts get their password from a separate company directory (LDAP, SQL or OIDC). For those, INBUXA Server refuses password changes, and INBUXA Webmail shows you the server's own reason.
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.