Managing contacts

The Contacts page is your customer list. Speudio auto-detects the people you correspond with most when you first import, but you stay in control.

Deactivating vs removing

Deactivate contact takes them out of your list and deletes the mail Speudio stored for them, which is how it frees space, and stops taking in new mail from them. What you made yourself stays: your notes, tags, custom fields, files you uploaded and your AI chat. Restore them any time and Speudio fetches the mail again from your mailbox. Remove permanently deletes the local Speudio copy of that contact and its chat: no undo, no recovery bin. Your real mailbox is never touched by either one, so you can re-import them from your inbox anytime, and a new email from that address starts the contact again. The Archive covers both in more detail.

Before you remove anyone, the confirmation shows what it costs and what you get back: how many emails and attachments go, and how much space that frees. The same figures appear when you remove several contacts at once, so you can decide whether a clean-up is worth it before anything happens. If some of that mail also belongs to a contact you're keeping, it stays and the confirmation says so, which is why the total can be lower than you expected.

Contact pictures

Each contact has a small picture next to their name. For an address at a company (not Gmail, Outlook or another personal mailbox), Speudio can look on that company's own website for its logo and keep a copy here. Speudio's own server does the looking, once, so no other service learns who your contacts are. Turn it on or off with Add company logos when you import. To change a picture, open the contact and use its ⋮ menu: Choose picture puts in a photo or logo of your own, Find logo again looks on the website once more, and Use letters shows the contact's initials instead. A picture you chose is never replaced by a logo. The picture shows next to the contact's name everywhere: in the list, on their page, beside each of their messages and in the answers of Iris and Mnemo.

Your own picture

You can have a picture too. In Settings → Your details, under Your picture, press Choose picture (or Change) and pick a PNG, JPEG or WebP image. It shows next to your name in the menu at the bottom left and beside the messages you sent. Remove brings back your initials. Only you can see the picture, and it is deleted with your account.

Tagging + custom fields

On each contact's page, the Info panel holds any custom fields you've defined in Settings → Contact fields. On a computer that panel sits on the left. Tags are added from the ⋮ menu on a contact's card or page, or by right-clicking it. The AI uses tags + field values when you ask category questions like "who's tagged plumber?" or "which customers are in Sweden?". You can give any tag an icon from a searchable picker. Set it once and it shows on that tag everywhere it's used. In Settings → Contact fields you can also reorder the fields (drag the handle or use the arrows); every contact's Info panel follows that order.

A universal field doesn't fit every contact? On a contact's Info panel, hover a custom field and click the eye-off icon to hide it on that one contact: it disappears from this contact's panel and the AI stops filling it here, while the field stays exactly as it was on every other contact and in Contact fields. When at least one field is hidden, a "Show a field" link appears at the bottom of the custom fields. Open it to bring any hidden field back on this contact. Fields you created for just one contact are deleted (the trash icon) rather than hidden.

Bulk operations

On the Contacts page, click the Select button (the checklist icon at the end of the toolbar) then drag across cards to select a range. On a phone, press and hold a card and pick Select. While you select, the toolbar turns into the bulk bar, and Esc or the X leaves it. Dragging from an already-selected card deselects (Finder-style lasso). Bulk actions: set importance, add a tag, mark as spam, mark as a service, deactivate, and remove.

Moving between contacts

On a contact's page, the arrows next to Back step to the previous or next contact in the list you came from, in the same order and with the same filters (or press [ and ]). Back returns you to the same spot in the list. The star next to the name marks the contact as important in one click, and clicking the email address copies it. To write from your own mail app instead, use Open in mail app in the menu.

One bulk action handles up to 1,000 contacts at a time. If your list is longer, "Select all" takes the first 1,000 and tells you how many were left out, so nothing is changed without you seeing it. Work through the rest in a second pass.

Automated senders (newsletters, invoicing tools, notification robots) are auto-detected and filed as services rather than mixed in with the people you actually correspond with. You'll find them under Archive → Services, where you can restore any that you'd rather track as a normal contact. See Service-relayed email and Archive sections.

The "New mail" band

Contacts with new unread mail are pinned to a green band at the top of the list, so the people waiting on you come first. "Mark all read" clears the whole band in one click. This read/unread state is a Speudio-only flag for your own triage; it never changes anything in your real mailbox.

The "Sent lately" band

This one is off until you switch it on. Open the filters and pick Sent lately, and contacts you have written to recently get pinned to a blue band of their own.

Speudio never sends mail for you, so this is not about anything you did here. You write from Outlook, Gmail or your phone as usual, and the next sync finds those messages in your Sent folder. The band is how you see that they landed, which is useful when you sent something from one device and are looking at Speudio on another.

A contact appears when Speudio has just found mail you sent them and you sent it within the last week. Both halves matter. The first is why a message you sent on Friday still shows up when Speudio only imports it on Monday. The second is why connecting a mailbox for the first time does not fill the band with years of old correspondence.

A contact leaves the band when you deal with them, and there are three ways to do that. Open them and read what you sent. Click the small tick on the corner of their card. Or use Dismiss all in the band's header, which clears every contact in it, including any the band is holding back behind Show all. The number on that button is how many will go.

Nothing else takes anybody out: you can look at this page all day, switch the option off and on again, and everybody you have not dealt with is still there. Nothing is deleted or hidden, and if you write to that person again later they come straight back.

Changed your mind? Show latest 5 again brings back the five people you wrote to most recently in the last week, and leaves everyone else out. It sits under the cards, or on a quiet line in the same place when the band is empty.

The band shows six contacts and offers Show all under the cards when there are more. Somebody with unread mail stays in the New mail band instead, so nobody appears twice, and switching the option off leaves the page exactly as it was.

Speudio remembers which way you left it. Open the band up and it is still open the next time you come back to Contacts, and after a reload. Close it and it stays closed. On a quiet week, when there are six or fewer people in the band, everybody fits and the link is simply not there.

The "Important" band

Star a contact and they move into a gold band pinned just under New mail, so the people who matter most sit at the top of every view. The band follows the sort you picked for the list: choose "By name" or "Most emails received" and it reorders along with everything below it, direction toggle included.

It shows the first four starred contacts. When you have more, a Show all link under the band opens the rest in place, and Show fewer puts it back. That keeps a long list of stars from pushing the rest of the page out of view, which matters most on a phone. With four or fewer you see them all and there is no link. A starred contact with unread mail sits in the New mail band instead, so nobody appears twice.

Your choice is remembered, the same way the sort and the filters are. Leave the band open and it is open when you come back to Contacts or reload the page, so you only have to say it once.

Reading a conversation (bubble colors)

Inside a contact's conversation, each message is a bubble colored by who wrote it, so you can tell at a glance who said what:

Teal: you sent it. It sits on the right and the sender shows as "You".
Grey: received from this contact (the person whose conversation you're reading), with their picture (or their initials) in a small rectangle.
Apricot with a golden-brown edge: an email written by someone else who also looped this contact in: a third party where both you and this contact were on the thread (To or Cc). It has their picture (or initials) with a golden-brown ring and the label "Third person". The bubble shows that real sender's name, and if they're one of your saved contacts, the name links straight to their own conversation.
Pink: a forwarded copy. For a person who gets a copy of everything that comes into your mailbox, those copies show in their conversation with a plum edge, a square picture with an arrow and a "Forwarded copy" tag.
Beige with a dashed edge: a message sent through a website form or another service. It has a square picture with a dashed edge and the label "Via a service".

Messages from a form on your website

When someone fills in the contact form on your website, the message shows under the address they typed, as "Anna Berg via yoursite.se", with the beige look above. Each one says Sent through a website form. The address was not checked. Anyone can type any name and any address into a form, so a message like this might not come from the person it names.

Speudio keeps that in mind everywhere: a draft reply for such a message reminds you to check who it goes to, "Open in mail app" asks you first, and Iris and Mnemo are told the address was not checked, so they never treat it as the person's own word. Speudio never sends anything to that address by itself.

You never need the colour alone: the side, the picture, the edge and the label say the same thing, so it works for colour blind readers too, and with colours you picked yourself.

When a message was only Cc'd to you, the bubble says so: a quiet "To: …" line shows who it was mainly sent to, and an "In reply to: …" link jumps to the message it answered, so copied-in mail never masquerades as part of your own conversation.

The most recent message carries a "Most recent" badge. Unread mail has a green border and a "New" tag until you've read it.

When you go to a message from search, a file, a link in a chat or a notification, the conversation scrolls to it and its border lights up for a moment, in the message's own colour.

On a computer, a thin strip at the left edge of the conversation has a small mark for every message, in the same order as the chat, however long the conversation is. The mark's shape shows who wrote it: round for a person (on the right for your own), with an extra ring for another person, square for a forwarded copy, and square with a dashed edge for a message that came through a service. New mail has a thick green edge. A thin line across the strip marks a new day, and a small tick on the left marks a new subject. In a long conversation the marks get small. Point at the strip and the marks near the pointer spread out and grow to full size, and a box names the messages there. Click a mark to go to that message. A shaded band shows which messages are on your screen. Turn the mouse wheel over the strip, or drag on it, to move through the conversation. The button with two small figures at the top of the strip lists everyone in the conversation: choose a name and everyone else's messages turn dark, so that person's stand out. Clear, or Esc, shows everyone again. At the bottom of that list, Hide the message strip puts the marks away. The button stays where it was, choosing a person still works, and the same list shows the strip again. Speudio remembers your choice.

Each attached file shows its type with an icon and a short label (PDF, DOC for Word, XLS for Excel, ZIP, or the word Picture), its size, and a download button. A file that could not be saved says "Not saved". A long file name is shortened in the middle, so you still see how it ends. When a message has many files, the first three show and "Show more files" opens the rest.

Translate any message

A customer writes in a language you don't read? Point at the message and press Translate at the bottom of it (on a phone, tap ⋯ at the bottom of the message, then Translate). A little menu opens with a search box: type a language name (in English, its own name, or your own language) and pick it. Your app languages sit at the top as quick picks, then every other language alphabetically; your last couple of choices come back as one-tap chips. The message is translated into the language you pick, with a quiet "Translated from …" line under the text; "Show original" flips it back. Each message is translated at most once per language: the result is saved, so choosing it again later is instant and free. A fresh translation uses a small amount of your AI; a message already in the language you pick is detected and costs nothing.

A long message is translated part by part, and the line under it says how far it got (“Translating… part 2 of 4”). The Translate, View original and Draft a reply buttons stay on screen meanwhile. Cancel stops it; the parts already done are kept, so trying again only does the rest. If a part could not be translated, it stays in the original under a “Not translated yet” mark, and Translate the rest finishes it. About the first 15 pages of a very long message are translated, and the line under it tells you when it stopped there.

Earlier messages in an email

Most replies carry the earlier messages underneath the new text. Speudio hides them so the conversation reads like a chat. In their place you see a small preview of who wrote them and how many there are. Press it and they open right there, above the text. The message you were reading stays where it is on your screen, and the earlier messages unfold above it, so scroll up to read them. They look like the conversation itself: one bubble per message, oldest first, with who wrote it and when, yours on the right. Their colours are paler and they sit on their own light background, so you can always tell them from new mail. To close them, press Hide quoted message. In a long list it stays at the top of the screen while you scroll, so you never have to go back up for it. If Speudio can't tell exactly where one earlier message ends and the next one starts, it shows them together in one bubble called Earlier messages. If you read the conversation with the newest message on top, the preview and the earlier messages sit at the end of the message instead, newest first.

A greeting at the end of a message, like "Best regards" and a name, stays under the text where it belongs. A longer signature with phone numbers and addresses also shows under the text, small and grey. A very long one is folded; press Show the end of the message to see all of it.

A long message shows its first lines, which fade out at the bottom. Press Show more under them to read all of it, and Show less to fold it again. It stays open until you reload the page. Only the text folds: earlier messages, files and pictures stay as they are. When you search in the conversation and what you look for is in the folded part, the message opens by itself.

Emails keep the formatting that carries meaning: bold, italic and underlined words, lists, headings, dividers and the space between paragraphs. Colours, fonts, sizes and pictures in the text are left out, so every message reads the same calm way. There is always just one empty line between paragraphs. A translation is shown as plain text. Some older emails show as plain text too. To see an email exactly as it was sent, use View original.

The AI reads them too: a forwarded email in full (only the first part of a very long one), and the earlier messages quoted in a reply when it hasn't already read them in the conversation. So you can ask about something that was forwarded to you.

Reading view

Long emails are easier to read as cards. On a computer, press Reading view (the book icon above the conversation). Every message then shows mostly its text, with bigger text, and at the top who wrote it, who it went to and the time, with a thin line between messages. Files and earlier quoted messages are not shown until you ask: move the mouse over a message (or press Tab) and small icons appear at its top right. The paperclip lists the files and lets you open or download them, and the quote mark opens the earlier messages under the text and closes them again. Your own messages have a teal edge (or the colour you picked), and a message from someone other than this contact has a label that says so. Press the button again to go back to the chat. Speudio remembers your choice on this computer. On a phone the conversation always stays a chat, because the cards need the width. Press J for the next message and K for the one before. The cards have the same Translate, View original and Draft a reply as the chat. Here headings and lists show as real headings and lists, lines are a little further apart and kept to a comfortable width, and a signature sits under a thin line in lighter text.

On a computer, the Aa button above the conversation opens a short list of text sizes, from Smallest to Largest. Each size shows a sample, so you see how big the text gets before you pick it, and the size you use now has a check mark. Pick one and the conversation changes at once. The whole conversation follows: the messages, names and times, labels, files, the earlier messages, the buttons under each message and your draft. The menu, the page header and the side panel keep their size. Speudio remembers the size in this browser. The Mnemo and Iris chats have their own Aa button with the same list, which changes only the text of their messages.

Draft a reply

Every message in a conversation has Draft a reply (on your own messages it says Draft a follow-up). On a computer it shows at the bottom of the message when you point at it, next to Translate and View original. On a phone, tap the ⋯ button at the bottom of the message. The draft answers that message and opens right under it, with a dashed outline. Nothing is written yet: pick the options you want, then press Write the draft. Change the text if you like, press Copy and paste it into your own email. Write it again writes a new one. When you close the draft, it is gone.

The draft is based on the last 20 messages up to that one, never on anything that came after it. If you already answered that message, a small line under the draft says when. Switch on Base the draft on the whole conversation to use all of them: long conversations can take a little longer and count more towards your monthly limit.

You can set a tone (your voice, friendly, formal or direct), a length (as usual, short or detailed), a language, and add one line telling it what to say, for example "say yes, and ask for the invoice number". Once a draft is there, the same options are under Options: change them and press Write it again. If you change nothing, it copies your usual voice from your own past emails and writes in the language your contact wrote to you in.

Speudio remembers the tone, length and language you last used, so the next draft starts the same way. The line you typed is not kept, and the whole-conversation switch starts off each time. Tick Write the draft at once next time to skip this step: the draft then starts as soon as you open it, with your last choices.

Leave the language on Theirs unless the draft comes out in the wrong one. Speudio reads the language off their message, so a Swedish customer gets a Swedish reply even when you read the app in English. Picking a language yourself overrides that. For a language the buttons do not list, leave it on Theirs and write "reply in Portuguese" in the line under Options.

The draft is a suggestion and nothing more. Speudio never sends email, so you copy it into your own mail program, edit anything you want, and send it yourself. Anything it cannot know from your messages comes back as a [bracketed placeholder] instead of a guess, so watch for those before you send. Each draft uses a small amount of your AI, and so does drafting the same reply again with different options.

The Needs your reply card on your Home page has its own gold Draft a reply button. It answers the newest message that is waiting on you and opens a small menu: Let the AI decide needs nothing else from you, and the same tone, length, language and line are underneath it, with Draft with these.