Folders and labels
All messages
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Select a message from the list to read it here.
Univik Online MBOX Viewer
100% private. Runs only on your device
A Gmail Takeout export, a Thunderbird folder or any other .mbox, read on iOS with nothing from the App Store. The file stays in Files and never leaves the device.
Or pick it from your device. Messages open in this tab, on your own computer, phone or tablet. Your mailbox is never uploaded.
There is no Thunderbird for iOS and the Mail app cannot import an mbox. The App Store has paid viewers. This page is the other route: open the mailbox in Safari straight from the Files app and read it on the phone, with nothing installed and nothing sent to a server.
No download, no purchase, no review prompt. Safari and the Files app are the whole setup for this tool.
The picker opens the Files app, so a mailbox in On My iPhone, iCloud Drive, Google Drive or Dropbox is one tap away.
The tool has Safari read the file from the device and nothing is uploaded. Put the phone in Airplane Mode after the page loads and it still works.
Save an attachment to Files or a message as .eml, then use the share sheet to send it on.
Short answer: the same page works on both. On iPad the list and the message sit side by side like a laptop. On iPhone you tap a message, read it and tap Back.
The list fills the screen. Tap a message and the tool opens it in the reader, use the tabs for headers and attachments, tap Back for the list. Comfortable up to a few gigabytes.
Labels on the left, messages in the middle, the open message on the right, the way iPadOS was meant to be used. Split View with Files beside Safari makes dragging a mailbox in even quicker.
Every browser on iOS uses the same engine, so this page behaves the same in all of them. Safari is the one the Files picker fits best.
The file is read in pieces, but the message list has to fit in memory. A single label export from Takeout is ideal. A 10 GB archive belongs on a computer.
Load the page, switch to Airplane Mode and open the mailbox. Reading an export on a flight is the case this page was tested against.
The full parser runs on the phone, so the tool gives you on iOS what it gives you on a desktop, laid out for a smaller screen.
Open a Takeout .mbox and the label list slides in from the left. Tap Inbox, Starred or any label to filter the phone screen down to it.
A PDF or image inside a message opens in the Attachments tab and saves into the Files app, where any iOS app can pick it up.
Message-ID, Received and DKIM lines are in the Headers tab, scrollable, for the times you need to check a sender from wherever you are.
Subjects and names in Hindi, Arabic, Japanese or any script display correctly, as they would on a desktop.
A Thunderbird Inbox with no extension opens in the tool too. iOS may not show an icon for it in Files, but the picker still hands it over.
Rich messages render with their embedded pictures. Remote ones wait until you tap Show, which also saves mobile data.
Save it from a Mail attachment or download it from Google Drive or iCloud Drive. AirDrop from a Mac works too. It lands in the Files app under On My iPhone or in the cloud folder.
In Safari tap Choose .mbox from Files, browse to the mailbox and tap it. The list fills in while the file is read on the device.
Tap a message to read it. Use the Attachments tab to save a file to Files, or save the message as .eml and share it from there.
The file has to reach the Files app first. These are the usual ways it gets there.
Download the Takeout zip in Safari and tap it in Files to unzip. The .mbox is inside Takeout, then Mail. A label by label export keeps it phone sized. See the Gmail Takeout viewer page.
AirDrop the file, or an Apple Mail export package, to the phone and choose Files when asked where to save it. iCloud Drive works too and syncs on its own.
Long press the attachment in the Mail app and choose Save to Files. Very large attachments may need a download in Safari instead.
Both apps appear inside Files as locations. Make the file available offline in the cloud app first so the picker can hand the whole thing to Safari.
This tool is the answer on a phone or tablet. When the export is huge, or you need search inside every message body and printing, the free Univik MBOX Viewer for Windows on a PC is the better tool.
| Feature | Online viewer on iPhone or iPad | MBOX Viewer for Windows |
|---|---|---|
| Install needed | None, opens in Safari | 15 MB Windows setup |
| Device | iPhone, iPad and everything else | Windows 7 to 11 |
| Files uploaded | Never, read from the Files app | Never, runs on your PC |
| Comfortable size | A few gigabytes | No size limit |
| Search | Sender, subject, recipients, labels | Message bodies too |
| Attachments | Save to Files, share sheet | Save anywhere, zip |
| Safari print, AirPrint | Direct printing | |
| Price | Free | Free |
Yes. Put the .mbox in the Files app, bring up this page in Safari and choose the file. Every message appears with its attachments and nothing gets installed. The paid viewers on the App Store are not the only way.
The iOS Mail app talks to mail servers and never imports mailbox files. Only the Mac version has Import Mailboxes. On a phone, a web page that understands the format is the way in. This is one.
Anywhere the Files app can see, such as On My iPhone, iCloud Drive or a Google Drive or Dropbox location. If it is in a cloud app, mark it available offline first so the whole file is on the device when Safari asks for it.
The file is read in pieces, so size alone is not the limit. The message list lives in memory, and a phone has less of it than a laptop. A single label or a year of mail is comfortable. A complete 10 GB Takeout is a job for a computer, and an iPad sits between the two.
Yes. The label panel is there on iOS, tucked behind the Folders button so the list gets the whole screen. Tap it, pick a label and the list narrows. The Gmail Takeout viewer page explains the labels in detail.
No. Safari reads the file from the Files app on the device and nothing goes out over the network. Load the page, turn on Airplane Mode and open the mailbox. It works exactly the same, which is the simplest proof there is.
Yes. Open the message, go to the Attachments tab and tap the file. Safari offers to save it to Files, and from there you can open it in any app or send it with the share sheet. A message itself saves the same way as .eml.
It needs the Files app that arrived with iOS 11 and a Safari recent enough for modern web features. Anything from the last several years is fine. Very old devices with little memory will manage small mailboxes only.
No App Store visit, no sign up. The mailbox stays in the Files app and the reading happens in Safari.
Pick an .mbox in Files