I use Thunderbird and it’s… fine? I’m not the person you should talk to about it because I hate email and generally avoid it as much as possible. But Thunderbird isn’t trying to be flashy or...
I use Thunderbird and it’s… fine? I’m not the person you should talk to about it because I hate email and generally avoid it as much as possible. But Thunderbird isn’t trying to be flashy or charging a subscription, it’s not syncing my creds to the cloud, it’s not shoving more ads in my face. No weird corporate office workflow stuff. It gets the job done. I get warm fuzzies from using Mozilla software. I’ve used Thunderbird for, probably decades? And I haven’t had any real issues with slowdown or bugs during that time.
Thunderbird has definitely gotten better recently but imo it's still pretty bloated and annoying to work with as a client. It's probably what I'd be using if I hadn't found Mailspring though,...
Thunderbird has definitely gotten better recently but imo it's still pretty bloated and annoying to work with as a client. It's probably what I'd be using if I hadn't found Mailspring though, since there's not many better options on Linux. I enjoyed using Spark back when I used a Mac for work (and I still use them on my phone) but I've got zero hope of a Linux port.
Yeah, Thunderbird is definitely better than the other Linux options like Geary and KMail, but imo it's only one of the top clients because the Linux options are so sparse (largely because the...
Yeah, Thunderbird is definitely better than the other Linux options like Geary and KMail, but imo it's only one of the top clients because the Linux options are so sparse (largely because the "fancier" options with better UI don't bother porting to Linux despite afaik mostly being Electron apps).
My only beef with Thunderbird is that in the latest version this little icon that looks like someone making a fist and a finger is actually the 'get mail' button. Kept looking for it til I...
My only beef with Thunderbird is that in the latest version this little icon that looks like someone making a fist and a finger is actually the 'get mail' button. Kept looking for it til I realized thats supposed to be a cloud with a download arrow. Ok, that makes more sense lol.
Also been using Thunderbird for decades. Even happy enough to donate to their cause.
Thunderbird spent a decade wandering the desert, when there was really, really minimal support and development and modernization and such-like. I forget the reasons, but in the past couple of...
Thunderbird spent a decade wandering the desert, when there was really, really minimal support and development and modernization and such-like.
I forget the reasons, but in the past couple of years, it is experiencing a revival. Mozilla is throwing a lot of time, money and effort at bringing it up to speed as a high-quality modern email client. They also took over (ahem, "merged with") K-9 email and are in the process of retooling it to become T-Bird mobile for Android.
A) they're not "there" yet, and 2) I'm not entirely happy with some of the choices they're making in how to modernize it.
Regardless, though, T-Bird is right now in the process of becoming much better than it has been in a very long time.
I'm largely in agreement with the author. Most email clients are just bad. There's also this issue with bloat. There are a lot of different kinds of email users. Some people also need calendars,...
I'm largely in agreement with the author. Most email clients are just bad. There's also this issue with bloat. There are a lot of different kinds of email users. Some people also need calendars, messaging, extensions, it can get out of hand. For me, I just want a simple and snappy email client that isn't a browser. I don't want to use a terminal interface but terminal interfaces tend to be the snappiest.
Right now, I'm using Proton Mail and it kind of helps that I am sort of stuck using a browser to access it. On my phone, I use the Proton Mail app and Mail.app. Like everyone else I have multiple email addresses for multiple purposes.
I think Mail.app is probably the best email client I have ever used on the phone despite paying for and trying almost all of them. It's just unbeatable in its elegance and simplicity.
It’s rather surprising to me that there are practically no 1:1 clones of Apple Mail, because as you’ve said it’s focused and functional and hasn’t become mired in frills and distractions like most...
It’s rather surprising to me that there are practically no 1:1 clones of Apple Mail, because as you’ve said it’s focused and functional and hasn’t become mired in frills and distractions like most mail clients tend to. Geary is the closest out there but it’s missing a bunch of features in comparison, is a bit buggy/quirky, targets Linux only, and hasn’t received much development attention in a long time.
Instead, it’s Outlook (the full fat Office version, not the renamed-Hotmail thing) which seems to be the most frequently cloned client which I’ve never really understood. I’m sure that type of design makes sense for a corporate setting but for personal use I find it overbearing.
I think so many email apps are clones of Outlook simply because so many people have experience with Outlook, especially in the business space. That kind of influence sticks around. I absolutely...
I think so many email apps are clones of Outlook simply because so many people have experience with Outlook, especially in the business space. That kind of influence sticks around. I absolutely would kill for a more Apple Mail-inspired email client on Linux.
I've heard a few times* that Gnome Evolution is the email (groupware?) client result of Apple Mail and Outlook having some sort of tech baby. Honestly, i've only loaded evolution like once or...
I've heard a few times* that Gnome Evolution is the email (groupware?) client result of Apple Mail and Outlook having some sort of tech baby. Honestly, i've only loaded evolution like once or twice in my almost 20 year usage of linux...so can not seem to recall its look-and-feel and UX to agree with the validity of that assessment or not. (I'm not a fan of either Apple mail nor outlook, so have no interest in validating this)...But i mention with the hopes that if what the handful of people i heard state what they stated...maybe it can help you or others find that goldilocks of an email client.
For me, I'm a multi-year user of thunderbird...and while its ok, i agree it has some flaws. But, it seems toi be the best of the hot garbage that are the rest of the email clients. I'm holding out for a world where matrix (or something like matrix) rules all messaging in a unified approach...maybe there will be a matrix client that can allow for "higher velocity" messaging a la chat (and maybe shows the UI with lists of people), but also allow for a UX for "slower messaging" like email (with the traditional email list of messages)...but all within the same software. Maybe i'm crazy but i have a feeling there are a grouop of UX / designer people out there who can solve something like this - since i think the underlying matrix protocol can accomodate the very different approaches to messaging. Who knows? Maybe we'll see in the future.
By a "few times", i mean a handful of people, not thousands...so just to clarify scale here. ;-)
Geary's current design predates Apple Mail's current Big Sur era design, for what it's worth. I remember looking at that redesign of Apple Mail and thinking "wow, that looks like Gnome mail"...
Geary's current design predates Apple Mail's current Big Sur era design, for what it's worth. I remember looking at that redesign of Apple Mail and thinking "wow, that looks like Gnome mail" (which is what Geary is labelled in your typical Gnome install)
“Mail.app” is indeed a common colloquial name for Apple Mail, referencing its filename with “.app” being the extension of choice for executable bundles on Apple platforms.
“Mail.app” is indeed a common colloquial name for Apple Mail, referencing its filename with “.app” being the extension of choice for executable bundles on Apple platforms.
Can I link Protonmail to the Mail app? Does it feature calendars as well? I like the proton calendar and mail apps, though they're buggy some of the time.
Can I link Protonmail to the Mail app? Does it feature calendars as well?
I like the proton calendar and mail apps, though they're buggy some of the time.
If you’re a paid protonmail customer, on the mac (and presumably other desktops) there’s protonmail bridge. On mobile, you gotta use the protonmail app.
If you’re a paid protonmail customer, on the mac (and presumably other desktops) there’s protonmail bridge. On mobile, you gotta use the protonmail app.
Their functionality certainly has room to grow. True also for their vpn app. Apple mail caches their mail on desktop, amd spotlight is pretty good for that. Still, protonmail is good as a service,...
Their functionality certainly has room to grow. True also for their vpn app. Apple mail caches their mail on desktop, amd spotlight is pretty good for that.
Still, protonmail is good as a service, and with drive and the vpn it’s an awesome deal.
Agreed. I like hearing people in service roles repeat my email back to me when I sign up for something. I always make sure to tell them that I pay for it and why, as well. They must know!
Agreed. I like hearing people in service roles repeat my email back to me when I sign up for something. I always make sure to tell them that I pay for it and why, as well. They must know!
I would be surprised if you could link protonmail to anything else, since it's whole thing is encryption and data protection. Involving additional parties is contraindicated.
I would be surprised if you could link protonmail to anything else, since it's whole thing is encryption and data protection. Involving additional parties is contraindicated.
I use mutt and am pretty happy with it, but given the list of applications she mentioned, it doesn't look like the author was interested in a terminal client.
I use mutt and am pretty happy with it, but given the list of applications she mentioned, it doesn't look like the author was interested in a terminal client.
I think the problem with email clients is that email sucks and most people either ignore it or find ways to zoom through trying to fish the important stuff out of the ocean of spam being vented on...
I think the problem with email clients is that email sucks and most people either ignore it or find ways to zoom through trying to fish the important stuff out of the ocean of spam being vented on you 24/7. I've gone from using Thunderbird to Apple Mail and Spark and various other paid clients, all the way back to just using Mail.app on iOS and sticking with Fastmail's web client because every other solution is just annoying enough to put me off.
There's stuff I miss, like having all my email accounts in one place, but simulating that by brutally discarding/shelving old accounts and funneling everything into one mailbox via different addresses works well enough. The one thing I can't replicate is keeping old emails downloaded, but that's always something I can set up later if I care enough.
Hey @delphi, Have you ever looked at MailPile? It started out as a crowd-funded effort and I'm not sure it was ever "completely" finished (a fuzzy concept in the software world). I've chatted a...
Have you ever looked at MailPile? It started out as a crowd-funded effort and I'm not sure it was ever "completely" finished (a fuzzy concept in the software world). I've chatted a lot online with the guy primarily responsible for it; he's cool and sharp.
But the main point is, it's not just another email client. He/They really came up with a very original, new-and-different way of managing email. It may not be entirely user-friendly (and as I noted, it may not even qualify as "done"), but it is both different and more powerful than traditional clients.
He's also come up with several other interesting, fairly original software ideas. Worth a look, I think.
I use SparkMail on Mac and Iphone. It handles multiple mail accounts and it deals with the massive amounts of notifications and spam and sales stuff effectively - to the point that I don't spend a...
I use SparkMail on Mac and Iphone. It handles multiple mail accounts and it deals with the massive amounts of notifications and spam and sales stuff effectively - to the point that I don't spend a lot of time on email and I'm only looking at what I really need to look at. It's very opinionated - Spark focuses on reading important email quickly and is very anti filing every email into a separate folder.
Yeah, it's a subscription and it has a 'modern' ui, but the productivity has been life changing for me.
There have been a couple runs at good alternatives. There was a pretty awesome app that got bought by google, can’t remember the name. It went the way of dejanews. There was another, edison maybe?...
There have been a couple runs at good alternatives. There was a pretty awesome app that got bought by google, can’t remember the name. It went the way of dejanews.
There was another, edison maybe? That hinted at promise.
I agree with her wholeheartedly, RIP eudora. Also ya-newswatcher and soundjam.
I use Thunderbird and it’s… fine? I’m not the person you should talk to about it because I hate email and generally avoid it as much as possible. But Thunderbird isn’t trying to be flashy or charging a subscription, it’s not syncing my creds to the cloud, it’s not shoving more ads in my face. No weird corporate office workflow stuff. It gets the job done. I get warm fuzzies from using Mozilla software. I’ve used Thunderbird for, probably decades? And I haven’t had any real issues with slowdown or bugs during that time.
Thunderbird has definitely gotten better recently but imo it's still pretty bloated and annoying to work with as a client. It's probably what I'd be using if I hadn't found Mailspring though, since there's not many better options on Linux. I enjoyed using Spark back when I used a Mac for work (and I still use them on my phone) but I've got zero hope of a Linux port.
Yeah, Thunderbird is definitely better than the other Linux options like Geary and KMail, but imo it's only one of the top clients because the Linux options are so sparse (largely because the "fancier" options with better UI don't bother porting to Linux despite afaik mostly being Electron apps).
My only beef with Thunderbird is that in the latest version this little icon that looks like someone making a fist and a finger is actually the 'get mail' button. Kept looking for it til I realized thats supposed to be a cloud with a download arrow. Ok, that makes more sense lol.
Also been using Thunderbird for decades. Even happy enough to donate to their cause.
Thunderbird spent a decade wandering the desert, when there was really, really minimal support and development and modernization and such-like.
I forget the reasons, but in the past couple of years, it is experiencing a revival. Mozilla is throwing a lot of time, money and effort at bringing it up to speed as a high-quality modern email client. They also took over (ahem, "merged with") K-9 email and are in the process of retooling it to become T-Bird mobile for Android.
A) they're not "there" yet, and 2) I'm not entirely happy with some of the choices they're making in how to modernize it.
Regardless, though, T-Bird is right now in the process of becoming much better than it has been in a very long time.
Use BetterBird
I'm largely in agreement with the author. Most email clients are just bad. There's also this issue with bloat. There are a lot of different kinds of email users. Some people also need calendars, messaging, extensions, it can get out of hand. For me, I just want a simple and snappy email client that isn't a browser. I don't want to use a terminal interface but terminal interfaces tend to be the snappiest.
Right now, I'm using Proton Mail and it kind of helps that I am sort of stuck using a browser to access it. On my phone, I use the Proton Mail app and Mail.app. Like everyone else I have multiple email addresses for multiple purposes.
I think Mail.app is probably the best email client I have ever used on the phone despite paying for and trying almost all of them. It's just unbeatable in its elegance and simplicity.
It’s rather surprising to me that there are practically no 1:1 clones of Apple Mail, because as you’ve said it’s focused and functional and hasn’t become mired in frills and distractions like most mail clients tend to. Geary is the closest out there but it’s missing a bunch of features in comparison, is a bit buggy/quirky, targets Linux only, and hasn’t received much development attention in a long time.
Instead, it’s Outlook (the full fat Office version, not the renamed-Hotmail thing) which seems to be the most frequently cloned client which I’ve never really understood. I’m sure that type of design makes sense for a corporate setting but for personal use I find it overbearing.
I think so many email apps are clones of Outlook simply because so many people have experience with Outlook, especially in the business space. That kind of influence sticks around. I absolutely would kill for a more Apple Mail-inspired email client on Linux.
I've heard a few times* that Gnome Evolution is the email (groupware?) client result of Apple Mail and Outlook having some sort of tech baby. Honestly, i've only loaded evolution like once or twice in my almost 20 year usage of linux...so can not seem to recall its look-and-feel and UX to agree with the validity of that assessment or not. (I'm not a fan of either Apple mail nor outlook, so have no interest in validating this)...But i mention with the hopes that if what the handful of people i heard state what they stated...maybe it can help you or others find that goldilocks of an email client.
For me, I'm a multi-year user of thunderbird...and while its ok, i agree it has some flaws. But, it seems toi be the best of the hot garbage that are the rest of the email clients. I'm holding out for a world where matrix (or something like matrix) rules all messaging in a unified approach...maybe there will be a matrix client that can allow for "higher velocity" messaging a la chat (and maybe shows the UI with lists of people), but also allow for a UX for "slower messaging" like email (with the traditional email list of messages)...but all within the same software. Maybe i'm crazy but i have a feeling there are a grouop of UX / designer people out there who can solve something like this - since i think the underlying matrix protocol can accomodate the very different approaches to messaging. Who knows? Maybe we'll see in the future.
Geary's current design predates Apple Mail's current Big Sur era design, for what it's worth. I remember looking at that redesign of Apple Mail and thinking "wow, that looks like Gnome mail" (which is what Geary is labelled in your typical Gnome install)
Is "Mail.app" supposed to be Apple Mail? I visited https://mail.app and it just redirects to some random app
“Mail.app” is indeed a common colloquial name for Apple Mail, referencing its filename with “.app” being the extension of choice for executable bundles on Apple platforms.
Can I link Protonmail to the Mail app? Does it feature calendars as well?
I like the proton calendar and mail apps, though they're buggy some of the time.
If you’re a paid protonmail customer, on the mac (and presumably other desktops) there’s protonmail bridge. On mobile, you gotta use the protonmail app.
Good to know - I am and I will. Do you find that their inbox search function sort of sucks?
Their functionality certainly has room to grow. True also for their vpn app. Apple mail caches their mail on desktop, amd spotlight is pretty good for that.
Still, protonmail is good as a service, and with drive and the vpn it’s an awesome deal.
Agreed. I like hearing people in service roles repeat my email back to me when I sign up for something. I always make sure to tell them that I pay for it and why, as well. They must know!
I would be surprised if you could link protonmail to anything else, since it's whole thing is encryption and data protection. Involving additional parties is contraindicated.
Claws mail is the best GUI client hands down. Not pretty, but does the job and it's fast.
I use mutt and am pretty happy with it, but given the list of applications she mentioned, it doesn't look like the author was interested in a terminal client.
I think the problem with email clients is that email sucks and most people either ignore it or find ways to zoom through trying to fish the important stuff out of the ocean of spam being vented on you 24/7. I've gone from using Thunderbird to Apple Mail and Spark and various other paid clients, all the way back to just using Mail.app on iOS and sticking with Fastmail's web client because every other solution is just annoying enough to put me off.
There's stuff I miss, like having all my email accounts in one place, but simulating that by brutally discarding/shelving old accounts and funneling everything into one mailbox via different addresses works well enough. The one thing I can't replicate is keeping old emails downloaded, but that's always something I can set up later if I care enough.
Hey @delphi,
Have you ever looked at MailPile? It started out as a crowd-funded effort and I'm not sure it was ever "completely" finished (a fuzzy concept in the software world). I've chatted a lot online with the guy primarily responsible for it; he's cool and sharp.
But the main point is, it's not just another email client. He/They really came up with a very original, new-and-different way of managing email. It may not be entirely user-friendly (and as I noted, it may not even qualify as "done"), but it is both different and more powerful than traditional clients.
He's also come up with several other interesting, fairly original software ideas. Worth a look, I think.
I use SparkMail on Mac and Iphone. It handles multiple mail accounts and it deals with the massive amounts of notifications and spam and sales stuff effectively - to the point that I don't spend a lot of time on email and I'm only looking at what I really need to look at. It's very opinionated - Spark focuses on reading important email quickly and is very anti filing every email into a separate folder.
Yeah, it's a subscription and it has a 'modern' ui, but the productivity has been life changing for me.
There have been a couple runs at good alternatives. There was a pretty awesome app that got bought by google, can’t remember the name. It went the way of dejanews.
There was another, edison maybe? That hinted at promise.
I agree with her wholeheartedly, RIP eudora. Also ya-newswatcher and soundjam.