Where Apple Mail stores emails on a Mac
One path gets you there. What confuses people is everything after it, because none of the folder names match anything they recognise from Mail itself.
Apple Mail keeps your messages in ~/Library/Mail/V10. Each account gets a folder. Each message is a file with the extension emlx. The V number has stayed at 10 since macOS Ventura. What sits inside each of those message files is covered in what an EMLX file actually contains. Nothing inside is named after anything you see in Mail. That is what makes the folder confusing, rather than the path.
Getting there takes one line. Click the desktop, press Shift, Command and G together, then paste this into the box that appears.
~/Library/Mail/V10That box is Go to Folder, which also sits in the Go menu if you would rather click. Either way it is the only route in, because Library stays hidden in Finder. What else lives in that folder is covered in the hidden Library folder and what is inside it.
What is inside the Apple Mail V10 folder
- FolderV10The current store
- FolderA1B2C3D4-…-9F8E7D6C5B4AOne per account, named with an identifier rather than the account name
- PkgINBOX.mboxA mailbox, stored as a package rather than a plain folder
- PkgSent Messages.mboxNested mailboxes sit inside their parent as further .mbox packages
- FolderMailDataSettings, signatures and the index Mail searches against
That last point is worth pausing on, because the description you will meet most has it the other way round, with the mail sitting inside MailData. Some versions go further and give the path as ~/Library/MailData, near the top of the Library. No such folder exists there. Check for yourself in ten seconds.
Why your Apple Mail folders have names you do not recognise
Open V10 and you are looking at folder names built from thirty two hexadecimal characters and four hyphens. Those are UUIDs. None of them says Gmail or iCloud or Work.
Those are identifiers Mail generates when you add an account and never surfaces in the interface. There is no lookup table to consult. The practical approach is to open one and read the mailbox names inside. Those are in plain English, so you can work backwards to the account.
Sorting the account folders by size in Finder is quicker on most Macs. It tells you which account is responsible for the size. The account you actually use is the largest.
What an Apple Mail .mbox folder really is
Every mailbox is a .mbox package. That word matters twice.
Read more: What Apple Mail Export Mailbox actually produces.
It is not an MBOX file. The shared name causes endless confusion. A real MBOX is a single file holding many messages. This is a folder holding many files. Mail did once store mail in genuine mbox files, up to Mac OS X Tiger. It kept the extension for the folder that replaced them.
It is also a package, which is macOS shorthand for a folder that Finder presents as one item. Double clicking opens Mail rather than showing you the contents. To look inside, right click and choose Show Package Contents.
Do that and you find a Data folder, then a tree of numbered subfolders leading to a Messages folder that holds the mail itself.
The three emlx extensions you will find
Inside a Messages folder the filenames are numbers. The extension tells you what each one holds.
| Extension | What it is |
|---|---|
.emlx | A complete message, headers and body together |
.partial.emlx | A message whose attachments are stored separately |
.emlxpart | An attachment belonging to a partial message nearby |
The split exists so Mail can hold a message without holding its attachments. That is what makes downloading attachments on demand possible. It also means a partial file on its own is exactly that. Copy one out without the matching emlxpart files and the attachments do not travel with it.
Where On My Mac mailboxes are stored
These are the ones worth knowing about. They are the only mail in the folder that exists nowhere else.
Anything inside an account folder came down from an IMAP or Exchange server. It will come down again. On My Mac mailboxes sit somewhere else entirely, in a directory that says so.
~/Library/Mail/V10/MailboxesThat folder sits beside the account folders rather than inside one. No server has ever held its contents. Lose it and the mail is gone.
It is also the part people report missing after a macOS upgrade. Threads about it appear after every release, nearly always from someone who has just moved between two versions and found years of archived mail gone from the sidebar.
Two places to look before assuming anything is lost. The old V folder is the first, since Mail leaves it behind and its Mailboxes directory is still readable. A Time Machine backup from before the upgrade is the second. It is the one that works when the old folder is genuinely empty. It is also the reason to back up before every major upgrade rather than after one. Restore the Mailboxes directory into the current V10 folder with Mail closed, then reopen it.
What the V number in the Apple Mail folder means
Mail keeps its store in a folder named for the format version rather than for the macOS release. When Apple changes how Mail stores things, the number goes up and a new folder appears beside the old one.
| Folder | macOS |
|---|---|
V10 | Ventura, Sonoma, Sequoia, Tahoe |
V9 | Monterey |
V8 | Big Sur |
V6 | High Sierra and Mojave |
The gap at V7 is not a mistake in the table. Numbers track the storage format rather than the release. One can serve several versions of macOS while another appears only briefly. Which folders exist on your Mac depends on the path it took to get here.
The number changes less than you would expect. It moved almost every year for a while, which is where the habit of checking came from. It has not moved since 2022. V10 has now served four releases, so a Mac on Tahoe opens the same folder a Mac on Ventura did.
Old V folders that stay behind after an upgrade
Upgrading does not clear the previous folder. Mail builds the new one and leaves the old one where it is.
On a Mac that has been through several upgrades you will find V8 or V9 sitting beside V10. Each holds a full copy of the mail as it stood at the time. One user upgrading from Monterey to Ventura found a 39GB V8 folder next to the live V10.
Mail does not read those folders any more. They are a historical record rather than part of the working store. That makes them useful if something went missing during an upgrade and dead weight otherwise.
What Apple Mail keeps outside this folder
Two things people expect to find here are somewhere else. Both matter when you are copying or troubleshooting.
Read more: What IMAP and POP actually store on your Mac.
Inside V10
Travels with a copy
- Every message, as an emlx file
- Mailbox names and nesting
- On My Mac mailboxes
- Signatures and the search index, in MailData
Elsewhere on the Mac
Left behind
- Account passwords, held in the Keychain
- Which accounts exist and how they connect
- Window layout and viewing options, in a preferences plist
- Rules and smart mailbox definitions
How to copy the Apple Mail folder safely
Two rules cover it.
- Quit Mail first. The index is a live database and copying it mid write is how a working store becomes a broken one.
- Copy V10 in one piece. An emlx file carries a message but not its place in any mailbox. Partial files leave their attachments behind entirely.
A copy of the folder is a good safety net for migrating between Macs. It is a poor archive, since reading it later means owning Mail and persuading it to accept the folder. Mail you want to keep for years belongs in something ordinary instead. A Mac MBOX converter reads the store directly to get it there.
Common questions
Which V folder should I open?
The highest number, which on any Mac running Ventura or later is V10. Lower numbered folders are leftovers from previous macOS versions and Mail no longer reads them.
Why are my mailbox folders named with long strings of letters and numbers?
Those are account identifiers rather than mailbox names. Mail generates one for each account you add and never shows it to you. Open a folder and the mailboxes inside it carry recognisable names.
Can I open an emlx file by double clicking it?
It opens in Mail, which is rarely what people want when they are already looking at the folder. A text editor shows the raw message including headers, which is more useful for checking what a file actually contains.
Can I open these files on a Windows PC?
Not as they are. A text editor will show you the raw contents of a single emlx file, which is enough to read one message, but nothing on Windows understands the folder structure or the partial file arrangement. Getting a mailbox across means converting it first.
I cannot find a Mail folder in my Library at all.
Check that you are in your own Library rather than the one at the top level of the disk. The path starts with a tilde for a reason. If it is genuinely absent, Mail has never been opened on that account.
Can I move the Mail folder somewhere else?
No. Mail offers no setting for it and expects the folder where it is. Copy it elsewhere for safekeeping by all means, but leave the original in place.
Sources
Every date, version number and path above is taken from these pages rather than from memory.
- Where are my email folders stored. In what format Apple Support Communities
- Why do I have V8 and V10 folders under Ventura Mail Apple Support Communities
- Mail storage structure and rules, on partial.emlx and emlxpart Apple Support Communities
- Where does Mail store On My Mac mailboxes, after an upgrade Apple Support Communities