Mail and calendars: iCloud or your own server

Your iCloud Mail and iCloud calendars, or the mail and calendars on a server of your own (Fastmail, Nextcloud, mailbox.org, your company's server), read by Iris. She tells you what is new, finds that one mail, answers what is on your agenda, and puts appointments in it. Sending a mail, moving or deleting an appointment always waits for your tap on her Send or Delete button.

What you need

iCloud: an app-specific password. Apple lets no other app sign in with your real password, so you make one just for Iris (two-factor authentication has to be on):

1. Go to account.apple.com and sign in. 2. Sign-In and Security, App-Specific Passwords, then +. 3. Name it Iris and copy the password it shows (like abcd-efgh-ijkl-mnop). 4. In Iris: Plugins, imap-caldav, Settings. Fill in your iCloud Mail address and paste the password.

It is checked right away: under the field you see how many mails are in your inbox and which calendars were found. You can revoke the password on the same Apple page at any time; Iris then simply stops reading.

Your own server: set "Mail from" to Other server, fill in your address and password. The servers are guessed from your domain (imap.<domain>:993, smtp.<domain>:587, https://<domain>/.well-known/caldav); if yours differ, fill them in, with a port when it is not the usual one. A server with a certificate of its own works too: Iris shows its fingerprint once, you say whether it matches, and from then on only that certificate is accepted.

What you can ask

• "Anything new in my mail?"
• "Find the mail from the school about the trip."
• "What is on the family calendar this week?"
• "Put the dentist in my calendar on Thursday at two."
• "Reply to Jan that Tuesday works." (you tap Send)
• "Move the dentist to Friday." (you tap Change)

Where the password lives

On your Iris server, outside Iris's own workspace: the bridge keeps it and does the logging in, so Iris never holds it. Only you set it, and the servers it goes to, on the settings screen, which shows it as stars. Sending a mail, changing or deleting an appointment, and trusting a server's certificate wait for your Face ID on exactly that, on your phone. It travels to Apple or your server only encrypted (TLS). An app-specific password can read mail and calendars but cannot change your Apple Account, and you can revoke it with one click.

What it costs

Nothing.

For the curious

imap-caldav check                          log in to mail and calendar now
imap-caldav today | cal [days] | cal search <text>
imap-caldav cal add "<title>" <start> [end] [--cal <name>] [--where ..]
imap-caldav cal change <id> [--start ..] [--title ..]   (you approve)
imap-caldav cal delete <id>                             (you approve)
imap-caldav mail [n] | mail unread | mail search <text> | mail read <uid>
imap-caldav mail send <to> "<subject>" "<text>"         (you approve)
imap-caldav mail reply <uid> "<text>"                   (you approve)

IMAP and SMTP for mail, CalDAV for calendars, the standards iCloud and almost every mail server speak. Repeating appointments are unfolded by the calendar server itself. Nothing is deleted from your mail; there is no command for it.