I regularly try Apple Mail on MacOS, but I’m never satisfied. In few words:
- I need something like “smart notifications” to only notify for important emails, and not all my incoming emails
- Group emails (like what Gmail do), for exemple Newsletters, Notifications/ Promotional, …
If possible, I would like to use the same app on MacOS and iOS (iPad & iPhone). But Apple Mail is the worst app I’ve ever tested…
I’m currently using Spark (Desktop on MacOS + app on iPhone & iPad), the app is really good but not in term on privacy, dependent to a 3rd party, ….
What are you using for your emails on MacOS?
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I’ve tried all kinds of apps but in the end I fall back to Mail.app
same here. I tried Spark, Edison Mail, Canary and one more that I don’t remember the name. Every time I’m coming back to Apple Mail.
It’s not perfect, but I love having my mail app simple.
I used Spark for an extended time and was happy with that. Then they started launching their “upgrades” crap with AI+ and everything else and I only got frustrated with their design and technology desicions.
What really pushed me over the edge was that they removed the “compose” button from their main UI in a update/pre-release. Reached out to their support since it surely must have been a bug, you can’t have an e-mail client without a compose button I thought.
Nope, it was a deliberat desicions, wasn’t needed. You are supposed to use keyboard shortcuts instead.
Got fed up and returned to Mail.app.
Don’t like it but it’s better than Spark and all of the other options out there.
I settled with Spark, I come from iOS and it was my replacement to Mailbox app, I still miss it though.
I use Mail.app for both
Mail.app can do what you need.
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If you assign your important contacts as VIPs, you can set notification settings to only notify fir VIPs
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You can set up a rule to dump your newsletters into folders
Is there still a 100 person limit on VIPs?
That was the sticking point for me.
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Not the best advice I can give you. Spark mail client, what looks really beautiful on the outside hides a lot of sorrow underneath, if only you find the time to go through their T&C’s, 2-3y ago when I checked, there was a clause there that was saying they’re allowed to download ALL your emails — which to me is a mental breach to privacy.
I’ve arrived at an age that beautiful UI/UX does not sell it for me anymore unless I get privacy — privacy on should be default IMO; but sadly, we live in a world where this became tabu nowadays… which is quite unfortunate. Personally I just stick with Apple Mail; I receive emails, I can reply back, it’s private enough — enough for me.
I agree with you, I totally understand your point about “beautiful UX/UI vs privacy, privacy win”. That’s the whole point of my question. I currently use Spark because it’s convenient, but I dislike this kind of tool / platform / services and I’m trying to find alternatives. Even if I loose a bit on the “practical” side…
Thunderbird. Free and open source, thus no corporate data collection garbage. Even supports extensions like uBlock Origin and comes with PGP encryption built in. They’ve recently had a major design overhaul as well.
I’d strongly advise against using Spark if you want your emails to remain private.
I need something like “smart notifications” to only notify for important emails, and not all my incoming emails Group emails (like what Gmail do), for exemple Newsletters, Notifications/ Promotional, …
To make this work with Mail.app, you can use server-side filter rules to sort stuff into respective folders. The big advantage of course being that it doesn’t depend on what your client can do (but if you can’t use server-side, you can also set up rules directly in Mail.app itself). As for notifications, you can filter them with a “Smart Mailbox” (including checking that it’s in a certain folder so you can re-use the rule processing) + setting message notifications to only trigger for that smart mailbox.
It’s AirMail for me. I use this many years already and happy with it. I don’t like the subscription tho and lately nothing new is coming. It seems it’s more of a cash cow now for the developers. And sometimes strange behaviors, but still the one for me.
Subscriptions for an email client is insane to me, especially if the developer(s) have no other project. Show me your second act.
True, but what are good “free” solutions where you aren’t the product yourself?
Oh, definitely don’t expect or want free. But charge me once. Don’t make me pay you in perpetuity. Then, go make more things and I’ll buy those too.
Adobe and CC made being beholden to a subscription for software the norm and I despise them for it. Luckily some fantastic alternatives were born from it.
I moved my email to Hey and ProtonMail so am using their apps. Doing that allowed me to push reset on what goes to each address and how I sort/filter/etc. Gmail is now my junkbox like Yahoo was forever ago.
Lately, email is virtually not a priority outside of work, and is pretty much just storage for service notifications, online receipts, vendor mail, and poor man’s mfa/password resets. I’ve got these classified decently well, and virtually all of these are read/acknowledged in near real time on my phone.
Human to human comms are now over signal or discord, though admittedly I don’t have a great method to track items needing follow up.
All said, how is thunderbird these days?
Agreed. I you’re sending me an email, you better text me first to let me know or I won’t see it.
Thunderbird is great imo.
Mimestream is the best macOS client if you’re using gmail and are willing to spend money ($50/yr). There is talk of an iOS app, but nothing yet. I use mail.app on the phone.
Guy leaves his job at Apple and makes one thing and charges a subscription for it. I’m sorry but they can kick rocks with that pricing.
$4/mo. for the best gmail/email app on a Mac is a no-brainer for me. It’s got some incredibly useful and time-saving features, and feels like Apple made it.
Subscription fatigue is real, though. I get it.
$50/year to only support gmail and not even have a mobile app is batshit insane.
Ok.
I like Spark a lot
Spark is pretty good. Has a nice MacOS and iOS app. I like the behaviour of swiping your email as “done” to make it disappear and keep your inbox clean. This is different from moving read email to a folder. You can set the default view of your inbox to only see email that have not been marked as “done”. Search is good too.
I really like Spark. The only thing that bothers me with Spark is that they have full access to my emails, and it’s not very clear what they’re used for.
and it’s not very clear what they’re used for.
Ads, probably.
Spark is the only way I can effectively handle email at this point.
Gmail. Never took the time to set the mail app!
