Watch Inbox: Email Attachments, Handled for You

Invoices, statements, and receipts that arrive by email land in the right folder with a clean name, without you opening the message.

What It Is

Watch Inbox connects FilesDesk to your mailbox. You choose which emails count by sender, subject, attachment type, and how far back to look. Matching PDFs and photos are saved to a folder you pick, renamed with Smart Rename or a template, and routed by your Organize Flows, the same way a watch folder handles new files.

Available on Mac and Windows from version 1.0.29.

How It Helps You

No more downloading each bill attachment by hand and renaming invoice.pdf or document(3).pdf.
Monthly statements, utility bills, and supplier invoices file themselves, ready for your accountant or tax season.
One setup covers past mail too: set how far back to look and FilesDesk works through the backlog.

Supported Mailboxes

Gmail, iCloud Mail, Yahoo Mail, Fastmail, Proton Mail, and other mailboxes that support IMAP with an app password. You can connect several inboxes, each with its own rules.

Outlook and Microsoft 365 mailboxes are not supported yet.

Use an app password. FilesDesk never asks for your main email password. Create an app password in your email provider’s security settings and paste that in instead. You can revoke it at any time without changing your main password.

Choosing Which Attachments Are Saved

Senders — e.g. only mail from billing@ or a specific supplier.
Subjects — e.g. subjects containing Invoice or Statement.
Attachment types — PDFs, photos, or both.
How far back to look — only new mail, or catch up on older messages too.

What Happens to Each Attachment

Saved to the folder you chose for that inbox.
Renamed with Smart Rename or the template you picked, e.g. 2026-09-21_Invoice_Adobe_54.99.pdf.
Filed by any Organize Flow that matches, e.g. into Invoices/2026/.

Every saved attachment appears in History as Saved, with the sender and subject it came from.

Read-Only by Design

Watch Inbox only saves copies of matching attachments. Nothing in your mailbox is marked as read, moved, or deleted, so your inbox stays exactly as it was.

Never Misses, Never Duplicates

Picks up where it left off. Each inbox remembers its place, so a restart or a dropped connection never re-downloads or skips mail.
Duplicates are detected by content, not just by filename. Choose whether to keep both, replace the existing file, or skip the new one.

Managing Your Inboxes

All inboxes live on the Automatic tab next to your watch folders. From there you can pause, edit, duplicate, or check an inbox on demand. Turn on Run on Startup in Settings to keep inboxes and watch folders working after a restart. Inbox activity is recorded in the Activity Log in Settings.

Credits: automatic renaming stops at your last credit instead of running past zero. Files that arrive after that wait and are renamed automatically once credits are added.

Industries That Benefit

Who	How they use it
Bookkeepers & accountants	Client invoices and receipts emailed to a shared inbox are named by date, vendor, and amount and filed per client.
Freelancers & small businesses	Supplier bills and SaaS receipts collect in one tidy expenses folder, ready for tax season.
Households	Utility bills, bank statements, and insurance letters are filed by month without any manual downloading.
Property management	Contractor quotes and inspection photos sent by email land in the right property folder.

Last updated: 3 October 2026

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