bichon
About bichon
Bichon is a self-hosted email archiving server built in Rust. It downloads emails from IMAP accounts, builds a full-text search index, and provides a REST API with an embedded WebUI. Designed for long-term preservation, it enables unified cross-account search and programmatic access to archived email.
Bichon focuses on archiving rather than email client functionality. It does not send, compose, forward, or reply to emails. The optional SMTP server is solely for receiving emails. The system supports multi-account IMAP downloads with various authentication methods and connection types.
Key features
- Multi-account IMAP download with password and OAuth 2.0 support
- Incremental download with UID-based delta fetching
- Full-text search across email content and attachments
- Advanced filters including date range, size, and attachment properties
- Thread grouping for conversation reconstruction
- Faceted tags for message and attachment organization
- Three-layer storage with embedded dependencies
- Content deduplication via BLAKE3 hashing
Download 1.6.2
Jul 8, 2026macOSmacOS
Frequently asked questions
- Is bichon free?
- Yes. bichon is free and open-source software, distributed under the AGPL-3.0 license.
- Which platforms does bichon support?
- bichon provides downloads for Windows, macOS, Linux.
- What is the latest version of bichon?
- The latest version is 1.6.2, released on Jul 8, 2026.
- What is Bichon used for?
- Bichon is used for archiving emails from IMAP accounts, enabling long-term preservation, unified search across accounts, and programmatic access to archived emails.
- How can I run Bichon?
- Bichon can be run using Docker, Docker Compose, or as a binary installation. Docker is the recommended method for most users.
- What platforms does Bichon support?
- Bichon supports Linux (GNU and MUSL), macOS, and Windows platforms.
- What license does Bichon use?
- Bichon is licensed under AGPLv3.
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