Disable or Disconnect: What Happens to Your Mail

Two controls, adjacent in the interface, with opposite consequences. Worth knowing which is which before you need one.

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The mailbox card exposes two lifecycle actions, and the gap between them is larger than their placement suggests.

Action	What it does	Your data
Disable	Pauses Inbox; it stops receiving and processing new email	Everything already processed is kept. Re-enable any time
Disconnect	Deletes the email Insulin stored and resets to a never-connected state	Cannot be undone

Disable is the reversible one, and it is what you usually want — pausing over a quiet period, stopping automation during a migration, or taking a breath while you rewrite a rule that is misbehaving.

What Disconnect actually removes

Disconnect is destructive, and — this is the part worth being precise about — it is not a full erasure. Three different things happen to three different kinds of data:

• Stored email records, their AI drafts, and the labels Inbox applied are hard-deleted. This is the bulk of what Insulin holds about your mail.
• Your writing style is cleared, reset to empty. Reconnecting rebuilds it from whatever mailbox you reconnect.
• Processing history is redacted but retained. Message content, subject, classification and your mailbox address are stripped; a minimal record with no message content is kept for de-duplication and audit.

That last row is the one people are surprised by, and it is the right design. A system that could not tell whether it had already processed a message would reprocess it, and an automation with no audit trail is not one you can answer questions about later. Neither requires keeping the content.

What Disconnect does not touch

Your actual mailbox. Nothing in your real Gmail or Outlook is deleted or modified. The only thing Insulin ever writes there is its own drafts.

Your rules. They survive a disconnect and apply again if you reconnect. This is a genuine convenience and a small trap: reconnecting a mailbox re-arms every rule you had written, immediately. If you disconnected because a rule was doing the wrong thing, fix the rule before you reconnect.

Switch is the third destructive path, and it does not say “delete”

Only one email provider can be the Inbox mailbox. While one holds the slot, the other card offers a Switch to… action — and that action belongs in the table above, not in a paragraph about convenience.

Switching permanently deletes the old provider’s mail, including AI-applied categories, drafts and classification history. It cannot be undone, and your writing style is rebuilt from the new mailbox. The dialog says so, and it makes you type the literal word SWITCH before the button enables.

That confirmation is the tell. A control that asks you to type a word is not a toggle, and Switch is the one destructive action here whose name does not warn you.

The escape hatch nobody finds first

There is a fourth case, and it is the one people actually hit: disconnecting the underlying Gmail or Outlook integration under Settings → Integrations, outside Inbox.

That does not purge immediately. Insulin starts a 7-day grace period — reconnect within it and nothing is lost. After seven days the purge runs and Inbox resets to never-connected.

Two details worth having: the seven days start only once Insulin has confirmed the integration is really gone, so a provider outage delays the countdown rather than starting it. And nothing is deleted until a check confirms the integration is still missing — an outage can only postpone the purge, never bring it forward.

If you have pulled an integration by accident, you have a week, not a moment.

Also worth knowing: Inbox does not run its own OAuth flow. It reuses the connection from Integrations, so enabling it is a health-check plus a webhook registration rather than a fresh authorization — which is why a card can show Connect Gmail (go set up the integration) or Enable Inbox for Gmail (the integration exists, turn the feature on) depending on where you are.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between Disable and Disconnect?

Disable pauses processing and keeps everything already processed; it is reversible. Disconnect permanently deletes stored email and drafts, clears your writing style, and cannot be undone.

Does disconnecting delete mail from my real mailbox?

No. Your actual Gmail or Outlook mailbox is untouched. The only thing Insulin ever writes there is its own drafts.

Is Disconnect a complete erasure?

No. Stored email, drafts and applied labels are hard-deleted and writing style is cleared, but a content-free processing record is retained for de-duplication and audit.

Do my rules survive a disconnect?

Yes, and they apply again the moment you reconnect. If you disconnected because a rule misbehaved, fix the rule before reconnecting.

What does switching providers do to my mail?

It permanently deletes the old provider’s stored mail, including AI categories, drafts and classification history, and rebuilds your writing style from the new mailbox. You must type the word SWITCH to confirm, and it cannot be undone.

Takeaways

• Disable pauses and keeps. Disconnect deletes and cannot be undone.
• Disconnect removes stored mail, drafts and labels; clears writing style; retains a content-free audit record.
• Your real mailbox is never touched.
• Rules survive and re-arm on reconnect — fix a bad rule before reconnecting.
• Switch is destructive too — it deletes the old provider’s mail and makes you type SWITCH.
• Pulling the integration instead starts a 7-day grace period; reconnect inside it and nothing is lost.

More on what Inbox does day to day in the inbox app overview.