MailSynth hands all four to Ada. She sets up a system for your Gmail and keeps it running.
That’s the core advice from ADHD researcher Russell Barkley: stop relying on trying harder. Ada builds the structure for your inbox and keeps it up.
Source: Barkley, fact sheet
Proposed by AdaShe looks at how your inbox works and suggests labels that fit. You approve once. You never file an email again.
Priority 1 stays in your inbox 30 days. Priority 2 stays 7. Priority 3 is archived right away. Change any of it.
It arrives at a time you pick. Bills and replies you owe stay on top until they’re done. Skip a day and they carry over.
AdaGhost it for a month. Ada keeps sorting. When you’re back, there’s nothing to re-learn.
All of it happens in Gmail. No new app.
A Gmail filter takes six steps and some search syntax. With Ada, you reply to your digest in plain English, or forward any email with a note like “make a label for these.”
Ada1 · Northwind Electric · bill due FriStop showing me recruiter emails.
Got it. Here’s the change: recruiter emails go to Misc as priority 3, so they’re archived right away and still searchable.
ConfirmCompared with custom Gmail filters, not Gmail’s built-in tabs. Source: Gmail Help
You don’t have to clean up first. Ada starts with new mail, then works through the backlog a chunk at a time. Old stuff gets archived, never deleted.
All worth seeing.
You know the archived email exists. The hard part is remembering it at the right moment.
That makes inboxes a trap. Show everything and the bill drowns in promos. Hide everything and it leaves your head. In a 2026 study, adults with ADHD followed through on fewer of their own everyday plans.
Checking all day costs more than it feels like. Ada sorts mail as it lands, so you can check once a day instead.
Source: Visits per day from Mark et al., 2016. The MailSynth lane is an example day, not data.
Ada labels and archives. She doesn’t delete mail. Archived mail stays in Gmail, one search away.
Changed your mind about a rule or an archive window? One click puts it back.
Every rule is a sentence you can read, and the digest shows what got archived. No hidden settings, no rules you can’t read.
MailSynth is bootstrapped. No VC, no investors pushing for a pivot. Just a small team with ADHD building the tool we needed.
Your emails stay in Gmail. We keep only your preferences, summaries, and labels, and delete them if you cancel. Nothing is used to train AI models.
Privacy policyFree for 30 days, no card required. Ada builds your system, then keeps it running.
The official criteria for ADHD give adult examples like forgetting to pay bills, return calls, and keep appointments. Twenty years ago that was a pile of envelopes. Now it’s email.
Source: Volkow & Swanson, 2013
By around age 40, Swedish adults diagnosed with ADHD were over six times as likely as other adults to have an unpaid bill go to the state debt collector.
Source: Beauchaine et al., 2020
of adults with recorded ADHD in Scotland missed a GP appointment in a year, vs 23% of similar patients.
Source: McQueenie et al., 2024
of Yahoo Mail users had never made a single folder. Systems quietly dying is normal.
Source: Koren et al., 2011
People with ADHD use organizing strategies as often as anyone. Follow-through is the hard part, so that’s the part Ada does.
Source: Durand et al., 2020
MailSynth doesn’t diagnose or treat ADHD. It isn’t a replacement for medication, therapy, or coaching. It’s an external structure for your inbox, so the strategies that work for you have one less thing in the way.
How we use research. We only cite what a source actually says, and we say when we’re drawing our own conclusion. Most email research wasn’t done with people who have ADHD, and we say so where it matters. Spot something we got wrong? Email support@mailsynth.com.
