Our recommendation list contains email clients that support both [OpenPGP](encryption.md#openpgp) and strong authentication such as [Open Authorization (OAuth)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OAuth). OAuth allows you to use [Multi-Factor Authentication](basics/multi-factor-authentication.md) and prevent account theft.
When using end-to-end encryption (E2EE) technology like OpenPGP, email will still have [some metadata](email.md#email-metadata-overview) that is not encrypted in the header of the email.
OpenPGP also does not support [forward secrecy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_secrecy), which means if either your or the recipient's private key is ever stolen, all previous messages encrypted with it will be exposed: [How do I protect my private keys?](basics/email-security.md) Consider using a medium that provides forward secrecy:
**Thunderbird** is a free, open-source, cross-platform email, newsgroup, news feed, and chat (XMPP, IRC, Twitter) client developed by the Thunderbird community, and previously by the Mozilla Foundation.
We recommend changing some of these settings to make Thunderbird a little more private.
These options can be found in :material-menu: → **Settings** → **Privacy & Security**.
##### Web Content
- [ ] Uncheck **Remember websites and links I've visited**
- [ ] Uncheck **Accept cookies from sites**
##### Telemetry
- [ ] Uncheck **Allow Thunderbird to send technical and interaction data to Mozilla**
#### Thunderbird-user.js (advanced)
[`thunderbird-user.js`](https://github.com/HorlogeSkynet/thunderbird-user.js), is a set of configurations options that aims to disable as many of the web-browsing features within Thunderbird as possible in order to reduce surface area and maintain privacy. Some of the changes are backported from the [Arkenfox project](https://github.com/arkenfox/user.js).
**Apple Mail** is included in macOS and can be extended to have OpenPGP support with [GPG Suite](encryption.md#gpg-suite), which adds the ability to send PGP-encrypted email.
**Evolution** is a personal information management application that provides integrated mail, calendaring and address book functionality. Evolution has extensive [documentation](https://help.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/) to help you get started.
When replying to someone on a mailing list the "reply" option may also include the mailing list. For more information see [thundernest/k-9 #3738](https://github.com/thundernest/k-9/issues/3738).
**Kontact** is a personal information manager (PIM) application from the [KDE](https://kde.org) project. It provides a mail client, address book, organizer and RSS client.
**NeoMutt** is an open-source command line mail reader (or MUA) for Linux and BSD. It's a fork of [Mutt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutt_(email_client)) with added features.
**Please note we are not affiliated with any of the projects we recommend.** In addition to [our standard criteria](about/criteria.md), we have developed a clear set of requirements to allow us to provide objective recommendations. We suggest you familiarize yourself with this list before choosing to use a project, and conduct your own research to ensure it's the right choice for you.
!!! example "This section is new"
We are working on establishing defined criteria for every section of our site, and this may be subject to change. If you have any questions about our criteria, please [ask on our forum](https://discuss.privacyguides.net/latest) and don't assume we didn't consider something when making our recommendations if it is not listed here. There are many factors considered and discussed when we recommend a project, and documenting every single one is a work-in-progress.
### Minimum Qualifications
- Apps developed for open-source operating systems must be open-source.
- Must not collect telemetry, or have an easy way to disable all telemetry.
- Must support OpenPGP message encryption.
### Best-Case
Our best-case criteria represents what we would like to see from the perfect project in this category. Our recommendations may not include any or all of this functionality, but those which do may rank higher than others on this page.
- Should be open-source.
- Should be cross-platform.
- Should not collect any telemetry by default.
- Should support OpenPGP natively, i.e. without extensions.
- Should support storing OpenPGP encrypted emails locally.
