Keyboard-first, mouse-optional
A command palette on ⌘K, chat cycling on ⌃⇥, and ⌘1–9 to jump straight to a conversation. Your hands never leave home row.
Native for macOS · Apple silicon & Intel
The iMessage client that keeps up with you.
i2Message is a quiet, keyboard-first Mac app for the Messages you already have. Search years of history in an instant, fly between chats without the mouse, and reply in threads — with every message staying on your Mac.
Find any message. On your Mac. Instantly.
Two searches, one keystroke. Exact full-text search jumps to the precise message the moment you type. Semantic search finds the conversation you remember but can't quote — "that place Maya recommended" — by meaning, not just keywords.
- Indexes your entire Messages history, however many years deep
- Exact and semantic — both computed 100% on-device
- No cloud, no embeddings service, no account. Nothing leaves your Mac.
Built like a native Mac app should be.
Calm, fast, precise — and quiet enough to live beside your work all day.
Slack-style threads
Swipe any bubble to reply in its own thread. A quiet indicator marks new replies, and a bottom-of-list jump walks you through every thread you haven't read.
Native tapbacks
Right-click a message to react — the same tapbacks you already use, sent through Messages, rendered inline exactly where they belong.
Dates become plans
"Thursday at 7" is detected as it arrives. One tap drops it straight into Calendar — no copy-paste, no switching apps.
Real names & faces
Pulls names and photos from macOS Contacts, so a wall of phone numbers reads like the people you actually know.
Fast under a heavy history
Paginated browsing and a local index keep years of transcripts scrolling smoothly — where Messages.app starts to stutter.
The whole app, one key away.
Every shortcut from the in-app tour — reopen it any time with ⌘/.
Fly between chats
- ⌃⇥
- Cycle chats (⇧ reverses)
- ⌘1–9
- Jump straight to a chat
- ↑↓
- Step through the list
Threads
- ⇠ swipe
- Open or start a thread
- ↩
- Send the thread reply
- esc
- Close the thread panel
Find anything
- ⌘F
- Search this chat
- ⌘⇧P
- Search every chat
- ⌘K
- Command palette
Power moves
- ⌘S
- Collapse or expand the sidebar
- ⌘U
- Keep unread, hop to next
- ⌘I
- Chat info & attachments
- ⌘R
- Remind me about this chat
Your conversations never leave your Mac.
i2Message reads your Messages database locally, read-only, after you grant Full Disk Access. Search indexes — exact and semantic — are built and stored on-device. There is no server, no account, and no telemetry that carries your message content. Privacy isn't a setting here; it's the architecture.
100%on-device processing
0servers your messages touch
Read-onlyaccess to your chat history
Bring your Messages up to speed.
Free and open source. Download the latest build and open it on macOS 14 or later.
Download for MacLatest release · All releases