Switching from Superhuman
What comes across on its own, what you move by hand, which keys match and which differ, and what Tundra does in place of Split Inbox and read statuses.
If you use Superhuman with Gmail or Outlook, most of your mail life already lives with Google or Microsoft, and Tundra reads it from there. This page covers what arrives by itself, what you move by hand, and the habits that change.
Tundra is free for personal use. For use at work, write to info@tundra-mail.com.
Before you switch
Tundra is a desktop app. It is used daily on macOS, tested by us on Linux with every release, and available for Windows, which is newer to our testing. There is no mobile app, so keep a mail app on your phone. Both read the same mailbox at Google or Microsoft, so anything you archive on one shows up archived on the other.
What comes across by itself
Connect the same Gmail or Outlook account in Tundra and it downloads your mail, folders or labels, calendar and saved contacts from the provider. Nothing needs exporting from Superhuman for any of that.
What you move by hand
Snippets. Superhuman has no export, so bring them over by hand. Open the Snippets dock (⌘K, type "snippets", Enter). You can click New snippet and give each one a name, a trigger and a body, or copy them into a CSV with the columns name, trigger and body and use Import…. In a draft, type ; and the first letters of the trigger, then Tab. Rewrite any variables in Tundra's names: {{contact.first_name}}, {{contacts.greeting}}, {{thread.subject}}, {{user.signature}}, {{date.tomorrow}}, or your own {{var.anything}}, which asks for a value when you insert it. Start with your five most used; the rest can wait until you miss them.
Signatures. Add them under Settings → Accounts → Signatures. An account can have several, and Tundra remembers which one you used per thread or address.
Your keyboard habits. Most carry over. The next section has the differences.
Keys
These work the way your hands expect: j and k to move, e to archive, # to trash, h to snooze, s to star, u to mark read or unread, r to reply, f to forward, z to undo, and ⌘K for the command palette.
A few are different in Tundra:
| You might press | In Tundra |
|---|---|
| c to compose | ⌘N |
| a to reply all | ⇧R |
| x to select | v (selection mode) |
| g then a letter to go to a folder | ⌘⇧1 to ⌘⇧7 |
| / to search | ⌘P for Quick Open, ⌥F for Full Search (/ filters the list) |
Tundra's shortcuts can be rebound (calendar keys excepted), so if you would rather keep c or a, bind them yourself: press ?, then Customize shortcuts…. The full list is in Keyboard basics.
Things Tundra does differently
There is no Split Inbox, and there will not be one. Tundra sorts senders another way. The People dock puts automated mail in its own section and groups senders by domain, and each sender has a tab where you can unsubscribe, mark everything read or move it all to Trash in one pass. Quiet sender mutes a sender inside Tundra, and the mail list can hide muted senders. For anything that should happen on arrival, write a rule in plain words (⌥R), such as "Receipts from Stripe go to Receipts and get marked read", and Tundra drafts it for you to review.
Tundra shows no read statuses and puts no tracking pixel in the mail you send. It tells you who has not replied instead: when your message is the newest in a thread and nothing has come back for between 3 and 90 days, the thread appears under "Waiting on them" in the Scratchpad and on Your day (⌥D). "You owe" lists the replies waiting on you.
There are no instant replies. Snippets cover the same ground with text you wrote yourself.
Scheduled send runs on your computer, so Tundra must be open at the time the message is due. If it is closed, the message goes out at the next launch.
AI features stay off until you turn them on and connect a model. You can bring a cloud key or run a model on your own machine with LM Studio or Ollama, and give each job its own model. Without a model, ⌘K still answers questions like "when is my next meeting" from your own data. See Bring your own model.
What will feel familiar
Undo send is there: every send holds for five seconds by default, and ⌘Z takes it back. You can set the window per account, up to 60 seconds. Snooze has Later today, Tonight, Tomorrow morning, This weekend and Next week, or a time you type. The calendar is built in, with invites answered from a card in the email. To suggest times, type /times in a letter and write them the way you would anyway, such as "tue 2-4, wed morning"; Tundra checks each against your calendar and inserts clean lines ending with your time zone. Nothing is sent or booked.
A first week
On day one, connect your account and clear your three noisiest senders from the People dock. On day two, recreate your five most used snippets. Then read and triage with j, k, e, h and # for a few mornings, and check Your day with ⌥D before your first meeting. By the end of the week you will know which Superhuman habits you still miss; tell us at info@tundra-mail.com.