https://github.com/rustmailer/bichon
Bichon – A lightweight, high-performance Rust email archiver with WebUI
https://github.com/rustmailer/bichon
backup compression email email-archiver email-archiving imap mail oauth2 openapi rust search self-hosted selfhosted tantivy webui
Last synced: 14 days ago
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Bichon – A lightweight, high-performance Rust email archiver with WebUI
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/rustmailer/bichon
- Owner: rustmailer
- License: agpl-3.0
- Created: 2025-11-18T18:02:57.000Z (about 2 months ago)
- Default Branch: main
- Last Pushed: 2025-11-18T20:03:23.000Z (about 2 months ago)
- Last Synced: 2025-11-18T20:13:03.048Z (about 2 months ago)
- Topics: backup, compression, email, email-archiver, email-archiving, imap, mail, oauth2, openapi, rust, search, self-hosted, selfhosted, tantivy, webui
- Language: TypeScript
- Homepage:
- Size: 563 KB
- Stars: 0
- Watchers: 0
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
- Funding: .github/FUNDING.yml
- License: LICENSE
Awesome Lists containing this project
- awesome-rust - Bichon - performance Rust email archiver with WebUI (Applications / Emails)
README
Bichon
A lightweight, high-performance Rust email archiver with WebUI
Bichon is an open-source email archiving system that **synchronizes emails from IMAP servers**, **indexes them for full-text search**, and provides a **REST API** for programmatic access.
**Unlike email clients**, Bichon is designed for **archiving and searching** rather than sending/receiving emails. It runs as a **standalone server application** that continuously synchronizes configured email accounts and maintains a **searchable local archive**.
Built in Rust, it requires no external dependencies and provides fast, efficient email archiving, management, and search through a built-in WebUI. Its name is inspired by the puppy my daughter adopted last month.
## Key Differences from Email Clients
### Core Comparison
| Feature | Email Clients | Bichon |
|---------|---------------|--------|
| **Primary Purpose** | Send/receive emails, real-time communication | Archive, search, manage historical emails |
| **Sending Capability** | ✅ Supports sending emails | ❌ No email sending support |
| **Runtime Mode** | Desktop/mobile applications | Server-side application |
| **Data Storage** | Local cache + server | Local archive store |
| **Search Capability** | Basic search | Full-text indexing, advanced search |
| **API Interface** | Typically not provided | Complete REST API |
| **Multi-account Management** | Limited | Supports unified search across accounts |
## 🚀 Features
* **Lightweight & Standalone** — Pure Rust, no external database, with built-in WebUI
* **Multi-Account Sync** — Download and manage emails from multiple accounts
* **Flexible Fetching** — Sync by date range, email count, or specific mailboxes
* **IMAP & OAuth2 Auth** — Password or OAuth2 login with automatic token refresh
* **Proxy & Auto Config** — Supports network proxies and automatic IMAP discovery
* **Unified Search** — Search across all accounts by sender, subject, body, date, size, attachments, and more
* **Tags & Facets** — Organize emails using Tantivy facet-based tags
* **Compressed Storage** — Transparent compression and deduplication for efficient storage
* **Email Management** — Browse, view threads, bulk clean up, export EML or attachments
* **Dashboard & Analytics** — Visual insights into email volume, trends, and top senders
* **Internationalized WebUI** — Frontend available in 18 languages
* **OpenAPI Access** — OpenAPI docs with access-token authentication
* **Multi-User & Role-Based Access Control (RBAC)** — Supports multiple users with fine-grained, role-based permissions
## 🐾 Why Create Bichon?
A few months ago, I released **rustmailer**, an email API middleware:
https://github.com/rustmailer/rustmailer
Since then, I’ve received many emails asking whether it could also archive emails, perform unified search, and support full-text indexing—not just querying recipients.
But rustmailer was designed as a middleware focused on providing API services.
Adding archiving and full-text search would complicate its core purpose and go far beyond its original scope.
Meanwhile, I realized that email archiving itself only requires a small portion of rustmailer’s functionality, plus a search engine.
With that combination, building a dedicated, efficient archiver becomes much simpler.
Using the experience gained from rustmailer, I designed and built **Bichon** in less than two weeks, followed by another two weeks of testing and optimization.
It has now reached a stable, usable state—and I decided to release it publicly.
**Bichon is completely free**.
You can download and use it however you like.
It’s not perfect, but I hope it brings you value.
## 📸 Snapshot
## Star History
[](https://www.star-history.com/#rustmailer/bichon&type=date&legend=top-left)
## 🚀 Quick Start
### Docker Deployment (Recommended)
```bash
# Pull the image
docker pull rustmailer/bichon:latest
# Create data directory
mkdir -p ./bichon-data
# Run container
docker run -d \
--name bichon \
-p 15630:15630 \
-v $(pwd)/bichon-data:/data \
-e BICHON_LOG_LEVEL=info \
-e BICHON_ROOT_DIR=/data \
rustmailer/bichon:latest
```
## CORS Configuration (Important for Browser Access)
Starting from **v0.1.4**, Bichon changes how `BICHON_CORS_ORIGINS` works:
### **🔄 New Behavior in v0.1.4**
* If **`BICHON_CORS_ORIGINS` is not set**, Bichon now **allows all origins**.
This makes local testing and simple deployments much easier.
* If you **do set** `BICHON_CORS_ORIGINS`, then **you must explicitly list each allowed origin**.
* `*` is **not supported** and will **not work** — you must provide exact URLs.
#### How CORS Matching Works
When a browser accesses Bichon, it will send an `Origin` header.
* **Incoming Origin** = the exact address the browser is using
* **Configured origins** = the list you passed to `BICHON_CORS_ORIGINS`
If Configured origins does not contain the Incoming Origin exactly as a full string match, the browser request will be rejected.
Example debug log:
```
2025-12-06T23:56:30.422+08:00 DEBUG bichon::modules::rest: CORS: Incoming Origin = "http://localhost:15630"
2025-12-06T23:56:30.422+08:00 DEBUG bichon::modules::rest: CORS: Configured origins = ["http://192.168.3.2:15630"]
```
In this example:
* Browser is using `http://localhost:15630`
* But the configured origin is `http://192.168.3.2:15630`
→ **CORS will fail**, and you can immediately see why.
#### When Should You Configure CORS?
It is strongly recommended to configure CORS in production environments to ensure that only trusted browser origins can access Bichon.
If you want to access Bichon from a browser:
* Add the exact **IP** with port
* Or the exact **hostname** with port
* Or the **domain** (port optional if it's 80)
Examples:
```
http://192.168.1.16:15630
http://myserver.local:15630
http://mydomain.com
```
If you access Bichon in **multiple different ways**, list all of them:
```
-e BICHON_CORS_ORIGINS="http://192.168.1.16:15630,http://myserver.local:15630,http://mydomain.com"
```
> **Do not add a trailing slash**
> (`http://192.168.1.16:15630/` will not match)
>
> **Do not use `*`**, it is not supported.
#### How to Enable Debug Logs (Highly Recommended for CORS Issues)
Set environment variable:
```
BICHON_LOG_LEVEL=debug
```
Or via command-line:
```
--bichon-log-level debug
```
Default is `info`, so CORS logs will not appear unless debug logging is enabled.
---
#### ⚠️ Note on Running Bichon in a Container
> ⚠️ **Note:** If you are running Bichon in a container (via **Docker Compose** or **docker run**), be careful with **quotes in environment variable values**.
For example, **do not** write:
```bash
-e BICHON_CORS_ORIGINS="http://localhost:15630,http://myserver.local:15630"
```
* The outer quotes (`"`) will be passed literally into the container and may cause CORS misconfiguration.
**Correct way:**
```bash
-e BICHON_CORS_ORIGINS=http://localhost:15630,http://myserver.local:15630
```
Or using YAML literal style for Docker Compose:
```yaml
environment:
BICHON_CORS_ORIGINS: |
http://localhost:15630,http://myserver.local:15630
```
This ensures that the configured origins are interpreted correctly inside the container.
> ⚠️ **Note:** This fucking problem I actually didn’t know about myself; thanks to [gall-1](https://github.com/gall-1) for pointing it out.
### Binary Deployment
Download the appropriate binary for your platform from the [Releases](https://github.com/rustmailer/bichon/releases) page:
- Linux (GNU): `bichon-x.x.x-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz`
- Linux (MUSL): `bichon-x.x.x-x86_64-unknown-linux-musl.tar.gz`
- macOS: `bichon-x.x.x-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz`
- Windows: `bichon-x.x.x-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip`
Extract and run:
```bash
# Linux/macOS
./bichon --bichon-root-dir /tmp/bichon-data
# Windows
.\bichon.exe --bichon-root-dir e:\bichon-data
```
* --bichon-root-dir argument is required and must be an absolute path.
* If you are accessing Bichon from a proxy domain **mydomain** argument --bichon-cors-origins="https://mydomain" is required.
## 🔐 Setting the Bichon Encryption Password
Please refer to the following documentation for detailed instructions on how to set the Bichon encryption password:
👉 [https://github.com/rustmailer/bichon/wiki/Setting-the-Bichon-Encryption-Password](https://github.com/rustmailer/bichon/wiki/Setting-the-Bichon-Encryption-Password)
All configuration methods, including command-line options, environment variables, and password file support (v0.2.0+), are documented there.
## 🔑 User Authentication & Admin Account
Starting from **Bichon v0.2.0**, the authentication model has been updated.
### Built-in Admin User (v0.2.0+)
* Bichon no longer uses the legacy single-account `root / root` login.
* The system now ships with a built-in **admin** user by default.
* **Default credentials:**
* **Username:** `admin`
* **Password:** `admin@bichon`
> The legacy `root` account and the `root / root` default credentials **no longer exist**.
### Mandatory Access Token Authentication
* From **v0.2.0 onward**, **access-token–based authentication is always enabled**.
* The startup flag and environment variable
`--bichon-enable-access-token` / `BICHON_ENABLE_ACCESS_TOKEN`
are **deprecated and no longer used**.
* No additional configuration is required to enable authentication.
### Managing Account Information
After logging in, the admin user can manage their profile directly in the WebUI:
1. Log in to the WebUI using the default admin credentials.
2. Navigate to **Settings → Profile**.
3. Update:
* Username
* Password
* Avatar and other profile information
⚠️ **Security Notice:**
For security reasons, you should **change the default admin password immediately after the first login**.
## 📖 Documentation
> Under construction. Documentation will be available soon.
[Bichon Wiki](https://github.com/rustmailer/bichon/wiki).
## FAQ
please see the FAQ in the project Wiki:
👉 [https://github.com/rustmailer/bichon/wiki/FAQ](https://github.com/rustmailer/bichon/wiki/FAQ-(Frequently-Asked-Questions))
## 💡 User Case Showcase
We have collected a real-world case study from a user processing email data, which demonstrates Bichon's performance and storage efficiency in a live environment.
This case involves ingesting and indexing data from **126 email accounts**. The total original data volume was **229 GB**, comprising **460,000 emails**.
### 📊 Performance Data Overview
A special thank you to **[@rallisf1](https://github.com/rallisf1)** for sharing this usage scenario and the detailed data.
#### 🤝 Open Invitation
This data is provided solely as a **reference** for real-world usage. We encourage more users to share their Bichon usage screenshots and metrics (e.g., ingestion volume, compression ratio, search speed, etc.) to help the community conduct a more comprehensive assessment of Bichon's suitability and performance.
---
## Roadmap
- ✓ Multi-user support with account/password login
- System-level roles (admin / user)
- Per-mail-account permissions
* [ ] `bichon-cli` command-line tool
* Import emails from `eml`, `mbox`, `msg`, `pst`
* [ ] Manual sync controls
* Sync on demand
* Sync a single folder
* Verify completeness by comparing with the mail server
* [ ] Post-sync server cleanup
* Clean up server-side emails after successful sync
* Free up mailbox space (e.g. Gmail)
* [ ] Email export
* Export by folder
* Export by entire account
* [ ] Account-to-account email sync
* Sync emails to a specified target account
* Support mailbox migration
---
## 🛠️ Tech Stack
- **Backend**: Rust + Poem
- **Frontend**: React + TypeScript + Vite + ShadCN UI
- **Core Engine (Storage & Search)**: Tantivy
- Acts as both the primary storage for email content and the full-text search index. This unified approach ensures high performance and eliminates data redundancy.
- **Metadata Storage**: Native_DB
- Used exclusively for lightweight configuration and account metadata.
- **Email Protocols**: IMAP (Supports standard Password & OAuth2)
## 🤝 Contributing
Contributions of all kinds are welcome!
Whether you’d like to submit code, report a bug, or share practical suggestions that can help improve the project, your input is highly appreciated.
Feel free to open an Issue or a Pull Request anytime. You can also reach out on Discord if you’d like to discuss ideas or improvements.
## 🧑💻 Developer Guide
To build or contribute to Bichon, the following environment is recommended:
### Prerequisites
- **Rust**: Use the latest stable toolchain for best compatibility and performance.
- **Node.js**: Version **20+** is required.
- **pnpm**: Recommended package manager for the WebUI.
### Steps
#### 1. Clone the repository
```bash
git clone https://github.com/rustmailer/bichon.git
cd bichon
```
#### 2. Build the WebUI
```bash
cd web
pnpm install
pnpm run build
```
Run the WebUI in development mode if needed:
```bash
pnpm run dev
```
#### 3. Build or Run the Backend
After the WebUI is built, return to the project root:
```bash
cd ..
cargo build
```
Or run directly:
```bash
export BICHON_ENCRYPT_PASSWORD=dummy-password-for-testing
cargo run -- --bichon-root-dir e:\bichon-data
```
`--bichon-root-dir` specifies the directory where **all Bichon data** will be stored.
`BICHON_ENCRYPT_PASSWORD` is the password used to encrypt the sensitive data (see `cargo run -- --help` for alternative ways to specify this).
### WebUI Access
* The WebUI runs on **[http://localhost:15630](http://localhost:15630)** by default.
* **HTTPS is not enabled** in development or default builds.
## 📄 License
This project is licensed under [AGPLv3](LICENSE).
## 🔗 Links
- [Docker Hub](https://hub.docker.com/r/rustmailer/bichon)
- [Issue Tracker](https://github.com/rustmailer/bichon/issues)
- [Discord](https://discord.gg/Bq4M2cDmF4)
## 💖 Support & Promotion
If this project has been helpful to you and you’d like to support its development, you can consider making a small donation or helping spread the word.
Financial support is optional but deeply appreciated — it helps me dedicate more time and resources to building new features and improving the overall experience.
You can also support the project by sharing it with others, writing about your experience, or recommending it within relevant communities. Every bit of visibility helps more people benefit from the tool!
[](https://buymeacoffee.com/rustmailer)