Connected accounts: Email, Calendar, Apple apps & iMessage

Email insights

Connect Gmail (Settings → Accounts, or the gear in the Inbox header) and mail syncs from Google's servers straight to this Mac, no service in the middle.

Bundles: categorical mail (newsletters, promotions, receipts) is grouped into a handful of piles, each a card showing the pile's name, when its newest mail arrived, and who has been writing lately. Click a card to see only that mail; the breadcrumb at the top names where you are, and clicking "Inbox" takes you back. Inside a bundle, a row of buttons above the list acts on the whole pile: mark all read, mark all unread, archive all. Personal mail is never sorted into a topic bundle: it sits in "Unbundled", the first card.
Needs reply / Waiting on them: the top two rows of the Inbox sidebar, above the labels. "Needs reply" is mail a person sent you, still in the inbox, that you have not answered. "Waiting on them" is mail you sent that has had no answer for more than three days. Both are worked out from the threads themselves (who wrote last, and how long ago), so nothing is guessed and no reminder has to be set. Both clear themselves: reply and it leaves the first list, they reply and it leaves the second, and archiving a thread takes it off both. Bulk mail, newsletters and no-reply addresses never appear.
View toggles: two icon buttons in the header. The envelope filters the list to unread mail only. The stack turns bundling off, for one flat list of everything in date order. Both remember their setting on this Mac. A message opened in the reading pane marks itself read after a second, so a skim past it does not clear it, and the row you are reading stays in place while it is open; a message opened full-width (reading pane off) is marked read right away.
Reading pane: on a large monitor the inbox is two panes: the list on the left, the message on the right. Click a row to read it, click another to move on. Drag the divider to resize (double-click it to reset), and use the panel button in the header to hide the pane when you want the full-width list. On a laptop-sized display the pane starts hidden, so a message opens full width with a way back to the list; the same button turns the pane on, and the choice sticks on this Mac. The page itself never scrolls: the sidebar, list, message, and insights each scroll on their own. The hamburger beside the Inbox title folds the Labels and Accounts sidebar away.
Finding mail: the search box in the header matches your words in any order across sender, subject, snippet, and the bodies of mail already synced to this Mac. Typos of one letter still match on longer words, accents fold ("jose" finds José), "quotes" force an exact phrase, and you can narrow with from:, to:, subject:, is:unread or is:read. Ask the assistant instead if you would rather not scan the results yourself: it searches the same way and can pull older mail from Gmail once you confirm how far back to go.
Insights: the AI reads important mail and writes short summaries of what matters. Click one (in the Insights app, or its card on home) to open its detail page: summary, action items linked to their tasks, feedback buttons, and the underlying email. Opening an insight marks it read. Marking one "not useful" teaches it: enough votes stop that kind of insight from that sender, but insights that need action from you always come through (only Mute silences a sender). Everything it learned to skip is listed under Email Settings › Skipped insights, each with a "Show again" undo; right-click an email in the inbox list and choose "Analyze with AI again" to re-run one message after unlearning.
Action items: deadlines, renewals, RSVPs found in mail become tasks automatically, with a source badge linking back to the email. Confirm or dismiss; never retype.

Each Mac syncs mail independently (Gmail is the source of truth), and analysis happens on your own model.

Calendar

The Calendar shows scheduled tasks and Google Calendar events on one timeline: month, week, or day. It is a lens: tasks live in Tasks, events live in Google; the calendar lets you see time. Connect Google Calendar in Settings → Accounts. Today's events also appear at the bottom of the Tasks Today page.

With more than one calendar account connected, the rail on the left scopes the grid to a single account; "All accounts" brings the rest back, and the hamburger beside the title folds the rail away.

Tasks on the same days: anything you schedule in Tasks shows on the calendar too, so the grid works without any account at all. The Tasks checkbox in the header hides them when you only want events.
Google round-trips: new events, edits, deletes and recurring events (the form's Repeat row; an instance asks whether the change is for this event or the whole series) all write back to Google, and the same edits on an Apple Calendar event write to Apple Calendar on this Mac (see below).
Ask about any event: open an event and use "Ask about this event…" to hand it to the assistant; the conversation already knows which event you mean.

Apple Reminders, Notes & Calendar

Settings → Accounts → Apple apps imports what this Mac's own Apple apps already hold, no Apple ID or password involved, just a one-time macOS permission prompt. Each import is a separate switch:

Apple Reminders → Tasks: every open reminder becomes a task, with its due date, time, and repeat (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly). Each task is tagged apple-reminders plus the name of its Reminders list, and a list picker under the switch chooses which lists to import. Completing a reminder in Apple Reminders marks the task done here on the next import.
Apple Notes → Notes: notes come across with their text, tagged apple-notes plus the name of their Apple Notes folder (a note moved to another folder picks up the new folder's tag on the next import, as long as you have not changed its tags here). Locked notes are skipped. Turn this on for ONE Mac only; imported notes reach your other Macs through nenva's own sync.
Apple Calendar ↔ Calendar: events from this Mac's iCloud and local calendars appear in the Calendar with their own "Apple Calendar · this Mac" row in the accounts rail, refreshed every minute while Calendar is open. New events can go into any of those calendars (pick it in the form's Account row), and editing or deleting an Apple event writes to Apple Calendar on this Mac, with the same this-event / all-events choice for a series. Calendars that refuse edits (subscribed, holidays, shared read-only) show their events but no Edit or Delete. The assistant can create, update and delete Apple events too: say which calendar, or "apple" when there is one. Google-account calendars in the Mac's Calendar app are deliberately left out; nenva syncs Google Calendar itself.

All three are one-way: nothing is ever written back to the Apple apps. Reminders and Notes import when the app opens, plus an Import now button on each row; the Calendar mirror also refreshes on its own (every minute while Calendar is open, every five minutes otherwise), so an event added in Calendar.app shows up without a relaunch. A note or task you edit in nenva keeps your edit; later changes on the Apple side no longer touch it. Turning a switch off removes what it imported (everything stays in the Apple app; turning it back on brings it all back).

Chatting with this Mac's assistant from the Telegram app has its own guide: see Telegram. Its card is in Settings → Accounts → Telegram.

iMessage

Settings → Accounts → iMessage has two cards. The first sends this Mac's reminders and alerts to your own iMessage: a text from you to you, through the Messages app on this Mac, so it reaches your iPhone and Apple Watch with Apple's own end-to-end encryption and no bot or server in between. Enter the phone number or email you use for iMessage, press Send a test (the first send asks macOS for permission to let nenva control Messages), then turn the switch on. Messages on this Mac must be signed in to iMessage.

Insights from your texts (the second card) reads the texts that arrive in Messages on this Mac the way Insights reads your mail: each conversation is read once it goes quiet, and appointment reminders, deliveries, bills, codes and plans made over text land in the Insights app's folders (with an "iMessage" tag and their own entry under Accounts); anything that needs doing becomes a task, with a "Text from" banner on the task that opens the insight. It needs Full Disk Access, and you have to give it by hand: macOS does not put nenva in that list on its own, so do not look for a switch that is not there yet. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Full Disk Access, click the + button under the list, pick nenva from your Applications folder, and make sure its switch is on. Then quit nenva, open it again, and press Check now on the card. The first read covers the last 30 days of texts, grouped by conversation (one conversation counts as one item, and a chat with only your own texts is skipped), so the count is smaller than your Messages list; from then on new texts are read as they arrive. That permission covers the whole Messages database, which is why the switch is off until you turn it on. Your texts go only to the model you chose; with a cloud brain they stay on this Mac unless Settings → AI Assistant → Cloud Privacy allows Messages. Turn it on for ONE Mac. Turning it off forgets the conversations it read; tasks stay. The assistant still does not answer texts. Use Telegram or the nenva phone app to chat with it from your phone.

The assistant can send texts. Once either card is set up, ask it in chat: "text Priya that I'm running late", "send myself a reminder by iMessage", "text +1 555 0100 the address". It sends through the Messages app on this Mac, and it shows you the recipient and the exact wording first. Every text to another person asks for your OK, and a standing permission (Settings → AI Assistant → Permissions) can only ever cover texts to your own number. It knows your own number from the Notifications card, and a person's name from conversations Insights from your texts has read; otherwise give it the number. If you just say "send a message", it asks whether you mean a text or an email rather than guessing.