BAREMAIL — email's bare necessities. A minimalist, open-source Gmail client built for spotty connections. Airplane wifi. Rural networks. Developing regions. Anywhere Gmail's multi-megabyte interface refuses to load — BAREMAIL gets your email through in kilobytes. Get BAREMAIL on GitHub: https://github.com/matt-virgo/baremail
My name is Matt. By day I run a startup called Virgo (https://virgosvs.com) that's building AI for endoscopy to solve diseases mediated by the gut. By night I like to hack away on fun side projects.
BAREMAIL was inspired by my own frustration just trying to get a few emails taken care of while dealing with spotty airplane wifi.
Gmail's web interface transfers megabytes on every load. On a connection throttled to 50–200 Kbps — the kind you get at 35,000 feet — that means 30–60 second load times, frequent timeouts, and an essentially unusable experience. All to read a few text emails and send a short reply.
So I built BAREMAIL: a Gmail client where the entire UI fits in ~60KB, caches itself permanently, and the only thing that travels over the wire is your actual email content. A few kilobytes per inbox load. A couple kilobytes per message.
It's open source, has no backend, and your data never touches a third party. Just you, your browser, and Gmail's API.
PS. check out the inbox zero easter eggs!
No backend local first design makes this really appealing from a privacy standpoint .
About BAREMAIL ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ on Product Hunt
“Minimalist Gmail client for bad wifi connections”
BAREMAIL ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ launched on Product Hunt on April 9th, 2026 and earned 81 upvotes and 3 comments, placing #46 on the daily leaderboard. BAREMAIL — email's bare necessities. A minimalist, open-source Gmail client built for spotty connections. Airplane wifi. Rural networks. Developing regions. Anywhere Gmail's multi-megabyte interface refuses to load — BAREMAIL gets your email through in kilobytes. Get BAREMAIL on GitHub: https://github.com/matt-virgo/baremail
BAREMAIL ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ was featured in Email (36.7k followers), Productivity (649.9k followers), Open Source (68.3k followers) and GitHub (41.2k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 164.1k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted BAREMAIL ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ?
BAREMAIL ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ was hunted by Matt Schwartz. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
Want to see how BAREMAIL ʕ·ᴥ·ʔ stacked up against nearby launches in real time? Check out the live launch dashboard for upvote speed charts, proximity comparisons, and more analytics.
Matt Schwartz