BlindBox Desktop guide

Connect Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail (iCloud), Yahoo, ProtonMail through Proton Mail Bridge, or any other IMAP account. With Insight or Insight Plus you can connect several and read them together in All Inboxes.

A small mail engine runs on your own Mac or PC and talks to your provider directly. BlindBox does not keep a copy of your mailbox on its servers.

Sidebar, header, message list and message view. Each area keeps the same job wherever you are, so you can build a reliable mental map.

Press Alt + Shift + V to hide everything on screen while your screen reader keeps working. Press it again to bring the picture back.

Ask for a summary or full transcript of an image or PDF attachment, or of the pictures inside an email. Insight Plus adds Email AI, a chat that answers questions about your mail.

Write in plain text or with formatting, dictate into any field with speech recognition that runs on your computer, or record an audio message and attach it.

A large-tile, speech-first mailbox with one action per tile, turned on from the sidebar or the Layout tab in Settings.

The app is translated into 18 languages, including Arabic and Hebrew right-to-left. Choose one on the sign-in screen or in Settings, Accessibility, App Language.

The four areas of the window, the sidebar in order, and how to get unstuck.

Mailboxes, reading, files and AI, writing, calendar invites and Block Mode.

What lives in each of the seven Settings tabs.

Blind Sight, screen reader support, read aloud, sound cues and visual comfort.

Every keyboard shortcut, including the ones that are Mac-only.

The sidebar is the anchor for navigation and the easiest place to get your bearings again.

• It holds Inbox, All Files, Starred, Compose, the rest of your folders, your mailboxes and Settings.
• Arrow Up and Arrow Down move in the order you see on screen.
• With VoiceOver on a Mac, Control + Option + Left Arrow walks down the sidebar from Home to your account and folders, and Control + Option + Right Arrow walks back up. This is deliberate.
• Back to top at the end of the sidebar returns you to the first item.

The header names the folder you are in and keeps the mailbox tools beside it.

• The folder name jumps you to the first message when you activate it.
• Search looks through the current folder. With a paid Insight Plus plan you can switch on semantic search, which ranks your locally synced mail by meaning instead of exact words.
• Refresh fetches new mail. The Messages and All Files tabs switch the list between email and attachments.
• Gmail accounts can show inbox category tabs (Primary, Updates, Social, Promotions) if you turn them on in Settings, Layout.

The list is where you triage. It shows messages, or attachments when All Files is open.

• Move with the arrow keys, Home and End. At the end of a page the arrows carry on to the next page.
• Select several messages with their checkboxes to mark them read or unread, archive, mark as spam or delete them together.
• Press D to delete the focused message after a confirmation.
• In All Files you can sort attachments and filter to files you received or sent.

Opening a message shows it over the list, with everything you can do to it in one place.

• Along the top: Back, Next email and Delete.
• Below the message: Reply, Next email, and an Actions menu with Reply all, Forward, Star, Archive, Print, Previous email, Delete, Report spam and Read aloud.
• Attachments appear in the message, with Download and, for images and PDFs, AI descriptions.
• At the bottom: Back to top, Back to email list and Back to sidebar.

Compose, Settings, sign-in and confirmations open on top of the mailbox.

• While one is open, the mailbox behind it is out of reach, so your screen reader stays inside the task.
• Escape closes it, and focus goes back to the control that opened it.
• If you close the composer with unsaved changes, BlindBox asks before discarding them.

A few modes change the picture without changing the layout underneath.

• All Inboxes, in the sidebar once you have two or more mailboxes, mixes them into one list.
• Streamlined mode hides the mailbox title and the All Files tab for a quieter screen.
• Blind Sight hides everything visual while your screen reader keeps working.
• Block Mode replaces the whole mailbox with large tiles.

Your BlindBox profile, your mailboxes, and how mail arrives.

• BlindBox profile: change your email or password.
• AI reads used this month, and your AI consent.
• Connected inboxes, your default mailbox and the address you send from.
• Local Mail Sync and how far back it keeps mail; auto-refresh every 1, 5 or 10 minutes; desktop notifications.
• Calendar connection: Apple, Google or Outlook.
• Updates: check, update and restart.
• Clear cache, and Log out.

How BlindBox speaks, sounds and responds.

• Verbose announcements, Reduce motion, and Screen reader mode (BlindBox also tells you when it detects a screen reader).
• Sound effects, with 41 individual sound cues you can preview and switch on or off.
• Dictation Cleanup: strength, filler-word removal, spoken punctuation and automatic paragraphs.
• Reading assistance: default compose mode, prefer plain text, read aloud, auto-read and reading speed, and voice action commands.
• Window screenshots, Blind Sight, App Language, the shortcut list, and Reset to defaults.

What appears on screen and in the sidebar.

• Block Mode, Action mode (opens your first email when BlindBox starts) and Streamlined mode.
• Mailbox actions and labels in the sidebar.
• Show or hide Starred, Sent, Drafts, Unread, Spam, Archive and Trash.
• File types to hide from All Files.
• Gmail inbox categories and which category opens first.

The visual layer, for anyone using some or all of their sight.

• Light, Warm or Dark theme (Dark is the default), or Automatic to follow your system.
• High contrast; text size from 100% up to 200%; readable font; extra text spacing; comfortable line length.
• Larger controls, stronger borders, reduced transparency, highlighted unread mail, a visible keyboard focus ring and larger inbox checkboxes.
• A color editor for all six schemes (each theme plus its high-contrast version).

Your plan and billing.

• See your plan, trial days left and renewal.
• Choose or change a plan; checkout opens securely in your browser.
• Open the billing portal to update payment details or cancel.

Getting help from a person.

• Email or call the BlindBox team.
• Record a screen reproduction of a problem.
• Send diagnostics, and see and vote on requested features.

The manual that lives inside the app.

• Guide walks through every area as a screen reader hears it.
• Q&A answers quick “where is…” and “how do I…” questions.

Hide the whole picture while everything keeps working for your screen reader.

• Alt + Shift + V turns it on or off from anywhere, even while writing.
• Your screen reader announces the change.
• A floating Show UI button stays available; hide it in Settings, Accessibility if you prefer.

Spoken feedback and focus are part of how the app works, not an add-on.

• Important changes such as loading, sending and errors are announced.
• Dialogs keep focus inside them, and focus returns where you were when they close.
• Verbose mode adds extra detail to announcements; turn it off for a terser experience.
• H jumps to Home, and Back to top appears at the end of the sidebar, the list, each message and each Settings tab.

BlindBox can read messages to you with your computer’s built-in voice.

• Turn it on in Settings, Accessibility, then press Ctrl/Cmd + Shift + L in a message, or use Read aloud in the Actions menu.
• Choose slow, normal or fast.
• Auto-read starts reading when you open a message. It stays off while a screen reader is running, so the two never talk over each other.
• If you move away, reading pauses and waits. It only continues when you ask.

Short sounds confirm what just happened.

• 41 cues cover things like opening a message, archiving, deleting, refreshing, switching tabs, success and errors.
• Every cue has its own switch and a preview button, under Settings, Accessibility, Audio Feedback.

Low-vision settings that combine freely.

• Text size 100%, 118%, 136%, 150% or 200%; readable font; extra text spacing; comfortable line length.
• Light, Warm and Dark themes, each with a high-contrast version and its own editable colors.
• Larger controls, stronger borders, reduced transparency, highlighted unread mail, and a visible focus ring.
• Reduce motion to calm animations.

Capture the BlindBox window for support or your records without another tool.

• Off until you turn it on in Settings, Accessibility, Window Screenshots.
• The shortcut is Alt + Shift + S unless you change it.
• Choose where screenshots are saved, whether to copy them to the clipboard, and whether to confirm with a shutter sound, a spoken message, both or neither.

BlindBox speaks 18 languages.

• Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese.
• Arabic and Hebrew lay out right to left.
• Change it on the sign-in screen or in Settings, Accessibility, App Language.

Ctrl/Cmd + N to write, Ctrl/Cmd + R to refresh, Ctrl/Cmd + 1 for Inbox, Escape to close, and F1 for help. Everything else can wait.

Arrow keys move inside the message list, menus and tab rows. Tab moves between controls.

Escape closes dialogs, menus, Settings and the composer, and returns focus to where you were.

Press F1 or ? to see every shortcut inside the app. The full list is also in Settings, Accessibility.