Getting started with Blockjay

Welcome. This is the short version of everything you need to know — what Blockjay does, what to expect at first, and how to get it working the way you want.

What Blockjay does

Blockjay connects to the mailbox you already have and reads each incoming message to decide whether it's spam. Spam is moved out of your inbox into a private quarantine; legitimate mail stays exactly where it belongs. You review and correct everything in one calm app — there's no extra "junk" folder to dig through, and you're always in control.

What to expect in the first few weeks

Blockjay learns your mail, not a crowd's, so give it a little time. In the early days it's deliberately cautious — it would rather let a borderline message through than hide something you wanted to see. Each time you confirm or correct a decision, your personal filter gets sharper. Within a week or two it settles into a quiet, accurate rhythm and you'll barely think about it.

If you connected your mailbox in monitor mode, Blockjay classifies everything but doesn't move anything yet — a safe way to watch it work before you let it act. Flip to enforce mode in settings when you're convinced.

How to use it day to day

• Spam shows what Blockjay caught and removed from your inbox.
• Valid shows what it let through.
• Every message shows a score and a one-line reason, so you can see why it decided.
• If something's in the wrong place, fix it with a single tap — restore a good message, or mark a bad one as spam.

How to make it better

That single tap is the whole point: every correction trains your filter. For senders you always want — or never want — add an allow or block rule, and Blockjay will honour it every time. The more you steer it in the first weeks, the less you'll need to later.

What if I'm missing an important email?

Nothing is ever lost. Anything Blockjay catches is held safely in quarantine and is one tap from being restored to your inbox. If you're expecting something that hasn't arrived, open the app, check Spam, and restore it — that also teaches the filter to let it through next time. If you'd rather be sure, add the sender to your allow-list.

The one promise that matters

Blockjay never deletes your mail. It sorts it — you decide what to delete. Quarantined spam stays restorable until you clear it yourself; nothing is ever deleted automatically. Your valid mail is never auto-deleted.

Next steps

• Connecting another mailbox? See Gmail setup or IMAP setup.
• Curious how the filtering works under the hood? Read how it works.
• Questions about privacy and what's shared with AI? See security and privacy.