Forward by email

With Forward by email you get your own private Paperwise address. Forward a bill, a receipt or any attachment to it, and it arrives in Paperwise, sealed for your devices, ready to file.

What it is

Forward by email (Pro) gives your account an address such as amberk3x9qm7d@paperwise.app. Anything sent to it arrives in Paperwise:

Every attachment, PDFs included, becomes its own item in your vault, kept as the original file. Images placed inside the message itself (logos, signatures) aren’t kept.
The text of the message becomes a note when there’s no attachment, or when the message actually says something.
New items wait in the Inbox in All items until you file them.

Our mail server seals each message for your devices the moment it arrives. It stays sealed until one of your devices downloads it.

When to use it

Your energy or phone company emails you a PDF bill every month.
A shop sends a receipt or a warranty by email.
Someone emails you a document you want to keep with your other papers.
You set up an automatic forward in your email app, so certain mail goes to Paperwise by itself.

Step by step

Set it up

You need Pro and to be signed in with Apple.

Go to Account → Forward by email. (Or tap + on the Vault, then By email.)
If you’re signed out, tap Sign in with Apple first. (“Forward by email needs a free Paperwise account.”)
Tap Get my address.
Paperwise asks to send you notifications. Allow them if you want to hear about new mail; see Email notifications.
Your address appears under Your address. Tap Copy or Share to save it somewhere handy, such as your contacts.

Forward something

In your email app, forward the message to your Paperwise address, or give the address to a company as where to send bills.
In a moment, the item appears in Paperwise. Paperwise checks for new mail when it opens and comes back to the screen, and when a notification arrives.
To check by hand, go to Account → Forward by email and, under Received mail, tap Check now. It shows how many items are “waiting to download”, or “Nothing waiting”.

Find and file what arrived

On the Vault, under More, tap Inbox. This row only shows while something is waiting to be filed. (In All items, the Inbox chip does the same.)
All items opens on the Inbox chip: “Received by email. Move items to a folder or mark them as filed.”
Open an item. Under the title you see who sent it, for example “From Lydec · factures@lydec.ma”.
File it: ••• → Add to folder, or ••• → Mark as filed to leave it where it is.
To clear the whole Inbox at once, tap Mark all as filed.

Change your address

If your address leaks or gets spam:

Go to Account → Forward by email.
Tap Change address, then confirm with Change address.
You get a new address straight away. The old one stops working at once and is never given to anyone else.

Turn it off

Go to Account → Forward by email.
Tap Turn off Forward by email, then Turn off.
Your address stops working. Mail sent to it afterwards is quietly discarded. Items you already received stay in your vault.

Deleting your Paperwise account also retires your address for good; it’s never given to anyone else.

Limits

	Limit
Size of one message	25 MB. A bigger message bounces back to the sender.
Attachments per message	20. A message with more is quietly discarded.
Messages a day	200. Messages over the limit are quietly discarded.
Waiting to be downloaded	Up to 30 days, then deleted. Up to 1 GB in total; when that’s full, new mail bounces.

“Quietly discarded” means the sender gets no error back, the same as for an address that doesn’t exist. That stops people from guessing which addresses are real.

Free and Pro

Forward by email is part of Pro, and needs a free Paperwise account (Sign in with Apple). On Free, Account → Forward by email and + → By email show what Pro includes.

If Pro ends, mail sent to your address is quietly discarded as it arrives, not kept for later. Your address isn’t retired, so mail is delivered again once you have Pro.

Privacy

Email isn’t end-to-end encrypted in transit. The sender, their email provider and our mail server see the message as it arrives. Our mail server then seals the attachments, the text, the sender, the subject and the file names to your devices’ key and keeps only the sealed copy.
The private key that opens it exists only on your devices. Once sealed, we can’t open it.
Each item is deleted from our server as soon as one of your devices downloads it, or after 30 days. Our server also records when each message arrived, as part of its records about your mail (not what’s in it).
On your iPhone, what arrives is encrypted with Paperwise’s own key as it’s filed into your vault, like everything Paperwise stores.
With Pro’s Name and sort new scans on, items that arrive by email are named and sorted by AI like anything else you add. Otherwise they’re read on your iPhone only.
If you limit who can send, your approved-senders list is stored readable on our server so it can check incoming mail. See Approved senders.

Exactly what’s sealed and what isn’t: What’s sealed and what isn’t.

Tips

Add your Paperwise address to your contacts so forwarding takes two taps.
Set up a rule in your email app that forwards bills from a company to Paperwise automatically. An automatic forward usually keeps the company as the sender, so with Only approved senders on, add the company, not yourself.
Turn on Only approved senders to keep spam out. See Approved senders.
An item with an “Unverified sender” label failed the sender checks. Be careful with links and attachments in it.

What if…

What if nothing arrives?

Open Paperwise, or tap Check now. Check the address you forwarded to, letter by letter. If Only approved senders is on, the sender may not be on your list, or their email may not be verified. Also check the limits above. More help in Sync, backup and email problems.

What if I see “Set up this iPhone”?

This iPhone is signed in but doesn’t have your account key yet. Add it from a device that does: Add a device by code.

What if an attachment is missing?

Programs, scripts, disk images, shortcuts, web pages and some other risky file types are never stored. See What’s sealed and what isn’t.

What if the Inbox row disappeared from my Vault?

It only shows while items wait to be filed. Once you’ve filed everything, it goes away until new mail arrives.