Unboxed

A problem I never asked for...

If you've ever had to handle legal record requests or data exports from Google Vault, you know the pain: you get a shiny .mbox file that's worthless as-is. Sure, it's technically a "standard" email format, but try handing that to an attorney, or literally anyone who doesn't live in a terminal.

I built Unboxed to solve this exact headache. It's a native macOS app to convert your MBOX file into usable PDFs.

The app handles both small and absurdly large MBOX files, lets you preview and select specific emails before conversion, and gives you options: want one massive PDF with everything? Why not. Prefer individual PDFs for each email packaged in a ZIP? You got it.

Technical Details

Unboxed is built entirely in SwiftUI, and makes use of streaming to load MBOX files chunk by chunk - instead of loading everything into memory at once. This means you can process gigabyte-sized archives and keep working.

PDF generation uses PDFKit and can run generation concurrently, configurable in the app settings. There's also email body size limiting because, surprise, some people attach 50MB of who knows what.

I added a preview window where you can search, sort, and cherry-pick which emails to convert—in the event Vault provided a little more than you expected. The app also tracks conversion history, handles malformed emails gracefully, and has customizable filename generation when exporting multiple PDFs.

Why though?

Record requests shouldn't require a Computer Science degree to fulfill. MBOX files are technically portable, but practically useless for most workflows. Converting to PDF means anyone can open the files, they can be redacted, read by others, and you can finally move on with your day.

Is it glamorous? No. Does it solve a real problem? Without a d.

And honestly, that's what good software should do.

Unboxed is published to Github and can be found using the link below.