[HN Gopher] Thunderbird for Android preview: Modern message rede...
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Thunderbird for Android preview: Modern message redesign
Author : _-david-_
Score : 178 points
Date : 2022-12-05 16:56 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.thunderbird.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.thunderbird.net)
| Twirrim wrote:
| They're improving the email display by reducing the amount of
| space showing the actual email?
|
| By very rough measurement it's reducing the email display area by
| about an inch, dropping it from 4" to 3". I really don't want
| that, myself. I open an email because I want to read the email.
| That's my primary focus. One of the really nice things about the
| K9 interface has been that so much of the screen gets dedicated
| to the thing I actually care about (contrast this to the way that
| web interfaces like outlook.com love to almost relegate the email
| content to the bottom most corner)
| izacus wrote:
| Adding better margins and spacing around text significantly
| improves readability on mobile (usually it also makes UI
| elements easier to distinguish).
|
| Yes, there's a limit to that, but the new design is most likely
| result in making emails easier to read despite stealing away
| screen space.
| grammers wrote:
| I agree. Design updates in email clients are not that important
| - unless it actually also improves usability. Unfortunately,
| most apps just want to look fancy, not focusing on
| functionality.
| JaggedJax wrote:
| To be fair, they are comparing a best case scenario email in
| the current UI to a worst case email in the new UI. Multi-line
| subject, multi-account identifier, tags, external images. So it
| looks to me like there's actually higher information density in
| the new UI. A little difficult to tell without a direct
| comparison of the same email and settings though.
| worble wrote:
| Yeah, I do think they had a bit of a faux pas with this
| showcase by not showing like-for-like differences. The first
| email didn't have multi-line subjects or anything like that,
| so it's hard to compare the two and see why the update might
| actually be better.
| nashashmi wrote:
| I don't know. Seems like everything is twice or three times
| as large.
|
| Click on who else was the message sent to -> appears a big
| box that you have to scroll to figure out who is included.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| I agree.
|
| It looks to me like the only place they're really wasting
| space is the hefty margin above the body text.
| Klonoar wrote:
| _> I really don't want that, myself. I open an email because I
| want to read the email._
|
| You have a working finger and can scroll the small amount
| necessary to do that. More comfortable properly spaced out/laid
| out UI/UX is generally ideal.
|
| They _should_ , though (at the very least) just let the
| padding/margins be configurable for the people who seem to care
| about this. No reason we can't have a middle ground approach.
| e12e wrote:
| It's wierd to use different samples for new and old ui too? Why
| show different email in different design, rather than same
| email in different design?
| dhdhhdd wrote:
| On my device, when the email fails to send, it gets stuck in an
| outbox, and no magic incantation is able to retry it.
|
| The only thing that worked was to move the email from outbox to
| drafts (by editing it) and then sending again.
|
| I wish this got fixed :-)
| tecleandor wrote:
| I've seen something similar happen when I answer to an email
| address that's not configured.
|
| Let me explain better: - In K9 I only have
| configured to receive and send from my main address. Let's say
| it's 'main@domain.com' - I have several different
| addresses to my main address. Again, let's say it's
| 'secondary@domain.com.' - If I receive one of those
| forwarded emails and reply to it, in the FROM you'll find
| 'secondary@domain.com' - It will go to the outbox, but
| never get sent... but without any error. So you never know it
| wasn't get sent unless you check the outbox, and you won't know
| the reason.
|
| I guess it's because there's no outgoing email profile for
| secondary@domain.com and it's lacking some sort of error
| management for that.
| dhdhhdd wrote:
| Interesting!
|
| In my case the error is actually shown. E.g. DNS error when
| on crappy wifi or even without network.
|
| But then when i connect to a better network, it doesn't get
| sent.
| c_prompt wrote:
| One random guy's opinion (and a long-time K9 user):
|
| Little UI design changes are NOT what you should be spending
| time/money on; they are a waste of effort given K9's already
| strong usability. I acknowledge it's your time/money but this
| does not make the app any more appealing. I know I sound like a
| broken record [1] but, at minimum, I believe Thunderbird could
| take quite a few users (who prefer privacy-focused apps) from
| both Google and Microsoft (not to mention 3rd-party apps [2] [3]
| [4]) by integrating functionality at the local level. This would
| be a considerable (IMO) differentiation in functionality. I will
| continue to use Outlook until there is a significant
| justification to switch to Thunderbird. And until "Thunderbird
| for Android" is significantly differentiated in functionality
| (i.e., ignoring UI), it will remain branded in my mind as K9.
|
| - Signed: someone who still calls a tall building in Chicago as
| the Sears Tower
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31728531
|
| [2]
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.callicia.b...
|
| [3] https://addons.thunderbird.net/en-
| us/thunderbird/addon/mypho...
|
| [4] https://generalsync.com/en/
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| What flaws are there in K9 that still motivates you to stick to
| Outlook?
| c_prompt wrote:
| I use Outlook on my Windows PC and transfer all personal
| contacts, calendar entries, tasks, and notes locally. I would
| love to move to Thunderbird primarily because "Microsoft bad"
| but then I'd lose my local transfer functionality (not to
| mention Xobni - which still crashes every-so-often - but the
| functionality is worth it).
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Why not just run Thunderbird on your windows pc, then? It
| should synchronize perfectly happily using caldav et al.
| c_prompt wrote:
| Caldav requires the cloud.
| matmatmatmat wrote:
| Hm? We sync our calendars using Nextcloud, but
| admittedly, that's not everyone's cup of tea.
| goodusername wrote:
| To avoid syncing my calendar and contacts to the cloud,
| I'm using wireguard as a always on VPN on my phone, to
| connect to a locally running CalDav/CardDav server.
| Wireguard on Android can be setup to only affect specific
| apps, so my DavX app is the only one using the VPN.
| dlahoda wrote:
| mailbird or emclient
| vetinari wrote:
| But is there a demand for desktop-based sync?
|
| You can run your caldav/carddav service in your local
| network, if you are so inclined. You will get local sync,
| and the client authors do not have to build specific
| desktop-based tools.
|
| I for one do not want to return 15 years back, to
| serial/irda/bluetooth sync, having to think about sync, and
| eventually forgetting. Running a local service is much
| preferable, with devices syncing themselves as they see
| fit.
| c_prompt wrote:
| If you have a link for running a small footprint of a
| caldav/carddav service on my Windows laptop, I'm all
| ears. I played around using WSL and setting up a
| NextCloud instance but why do I want to use 2GB+ just to
| sync?
|
| At the end of the day, I want all my personal events,
| contacts, todos, and notes on my laptop and able to sync
| directly with my phone. I'm happy enough with my current
| bluetooth sync and wouldn't trade it for UI changes.
| vetinari wrote:
| Personally, I'm using a small Synology NAS and the
| Contact and Calendar servers that Synology provides. It
| solves the problem for being a host for multiple devices,
| with my laptop not having to be on, or even present, at
| all times. Also having dns entry helps.
|
| But for running on your laptop? Yes, nextcloud is
| overkill, it is not contacts/calendar server in the first
| place. I would look for smaller, more focused tools
| instead, baikal for example. For another inspiration, you
| can have a look at what davx5 -- the caldav/carddav
| provider for android -- tests against
| (https://www.davx5.com/tested-with).
| c_prompt wrote:
| I use davx5 with my NextCloud setup on the cloud. But
| that's not what I use (or want to use) for other events,
| contacts, to-dos, etc.
| MrBurrito wrote:
| You can try DAViCal https://www.davical.org/
| c_prompt wrote:
| Tried it when I played with WSL. Like with radicale [1],
| I don't remember what specifically wasn't working
| properly but it didn't.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33872707
| goodusername wrote:
| You might be interested in https://radicale.org/v3.html.
| Runs on my odroid board with 26mb memory. The
| documentation is particularly good. I've used it as a
| replacement for the Synology CalDav and CardDav services.
|
| It's very easy to install and does not require a DB. As a
| bonus, it stores everything as files which can be read
| and edited manually. It does require python.
| c_prompt wrote:
| I had played with it for 2 days before I gave up. I don't
| remember what specifically wasn't working properly but it
| didn't. Even if I had gotten it to work, syncing between
| a Windows PC and Android device should not require that
| level of effort.
| orra wrote:
| > Little UI design changes are NOT what you should be spending
| time/money on; they are a waste of effort given K9's already
| strong usability
|
| I'm going to go out on a limb and disagree. I left K-9 ages
| ago, because unfortunately for ages it had no Material Design.
|
| These upcoming changes are a modernisation. That's good for
| mass appeal. Mass users don't want an app which looks
| antiquated.
| handedness wrote:
| On the other hand, I can't imagine leaving an app for that
| reason.
|
| As one who fairly loathes Material Design (especially on
| mobile), I was hoping cketti would fix what's wrong with
| Thunderbird, rather than Thunderbird ruining the best Android
| email client out there, which is now looking like an almost
| certainty.
|
| I really hope there's a good fork.
| awill wrote:
| I'm neither for or against Material Design, but when I used
| Android, but MD was generally a good sign that the app was
| well supported, and the devs cared about UX. When I'd
| search for an app, the high quality apps were almost always
| MD. Maybe k9 was an exception, but I'm sure they lost
| potential users.
| kevincox wrote:
| As a short-time K9 user I disagree. You have to pick between
| the display name and email of senders. There is no way to show
| both. This is because of problems with the UI design that risks
| being misleading with malicious names.
|
| The think there are also lots of UX improvements that would be
| great. Right now the threading UI is awkward. I'm really glad
| that swipe actions and swiping between messages have landed as
| well.
|
| I like K9 but I can definitely see the benefit of better UX.
| ilyt wrote:
| "But we hired designers and if we don't make small design
| changes they'd be out of work"
|
| Seriously that's how most of the UI trends feel like
| lelandfe wrote:
| > _Little UI design changes are NOT what you should be spending
| time /money on; they are a waste of effort given K9's already
| strong usability_
|
| "This rotary phone in the office is perfectly fine and usable!
| The new-hires just need to learn how it works, and then it's
| the exact same thing."
| tmtvl wrote:
| Learn how it works? It's a rotary phone! Just turn the disk
| the appropriate amount for the number you're dialing and
| loose. You could train a chimpanzee to do that.
| lelandfe wrote:
| You've rather missed my point, I think: an unfamiliar or
| aging look over what is a common interface is a huge
| problem for gaining new users.
|
| Further, I have witnessed people not understand rotary
| phones. Plunk one down in front of 10 teenagers and I would
| wager few indeed would intuit it immediately.
| worble wrote:
| What's wrong with rotary phones, other than being different
| to the current norm?
| lelandfe wrote:
| "Intuitiveness" is AKA "resembling the current norm" when
| it comes to UX. Updating an aging UI to fit current
| patterns makes it more cohesive with the operating system,
| attracts more new users, and avoids confusing those new
| users.
|
| Attempting to paint "strong usability" through the lens of
| existing users only (the guy who already knows how to use a
| rotary phone) is a lopsided view of the goals for an app
| creator.
| rlpb wrote:
| It's slow and tedious to dial numbers with many high digits
| in them. And there's no quick dial function for commonly
| used numbers. Both of these things directly impact UX.
| PenguinCoder wrote:
| > Signed: someone who still calls a tall building in Chicago as
| the Sears Tower
|
| I think all locals/natives to the 312 and 773 still refer to it
| as such. Ain't changing!
| nicholasjarnold wrote:
| confirmed. it's not changing. haven't lived there for a
| while, but it'll always be the Sears Tower if you ask me.
| snthd wrote:
| Would JMAP not be a better focus both in general, and to
| attract those same users?
|
| https://github.com/thundernest/k-9/issues/3272
| commandersaki wrote:
| There's only one significant mail provider that supports
| JMAP.
| zahllos wrote:
| ...and it must also be said that the selection of client
| software that supports it is somewhat limited. For this
| discussion, Thunderbird does not. I'd also add that some
| fairly major providers, e.g. anything based on MS Exchange,
| and Google's Android client, do their own thing (e.g.
| ActiveSync).
|
| For myself I'm aware of a bunch of bugs in Thunderbird
| affecting my experience and I'd rather these were fixed
| first.
| zmk5 wrote:
| Kudos to the team. Looks great from the preview. I hope there is
| an iOS version in the works. I would love to use this on my
| iPhone instead of the default mail app.
| quasarj wrote:
| We need Exchange support, not whatever this is
| ponytech wrote:
| I am a Thunderbird user on desktop but I had been using Blue Mail
| on Android for several years and had been pretty happy with it. I
| may switch to Thunderbird when they have the sync feature
| implemented.
| lucb1e wrote:
| K9 already exists today if you want to switch which is
| "thunderbird for android" with a different name, but what do
| you mean with sync feature? That it shows notifications, or
| fetches all your email for offline reading or so?
| solarkraft wrote:
| Oh boy, I don't like that the document is split by the sender
| info. Other than that I'm happy that a nice FOSS app is receiving
| design attention.
| indymike wrote:
| Here are three killer features that would be a much better use of
| design/developer time:
|
| * Give me a way to filter email based on the ORIGINATING SERVER,
| not the advertised one. I.e. give me a way to filter stuff coming
| from from bunchofalphanum.something.else.salesforce.com that is
| relayed for somedomain.com with good domainkeys << This will make
| email useful again.
|
| * Give me a way to quickly unsubscribe from marketing emails in
| the email list view. (last I looked couldn't do that in K9 or TB
| for android)
|
| * Give me a really nice threaded view with my responses inline
| inbound messages as an option.
| nolls wrote:
| If you're going to use stock pictures to demo your interface at
| least make sure that they match the sex of the name...
| egberts1 wrote:
| Any mail client (web, mobile, or desktop) that does NOT display
| the fully-qualified email address (FQEM) next to the "UTF-8"
| fancy name gets a hard PASS from me.
|
| Such FQEM should ALWAYS display the fully-qualified email
| address.
|
| I am looking at all the email clients so far. (Please correct me
| as I would love to be slightly wrong).
|
| I think I can safely speak for all tired people that we are tired
| of spam.
| lucb1e wrote:
| This sounds like the type of thing FairEmail might have as an
| option. You could also have your email server change the fancy
| name to an ascii name so any client would display that.
| college_physics wrote:
| How would that interoperate with the desktop thunderbird?
| guerrilla wrote:
| It seems to be an unrelated code base.
| college_physics wrote:
| that's fine (or could be :-). I am thinking more about
| syncing the state of differnt mailboxes, local storage on
| mobile versus desktop, what is read / unread, user tags and
| other such things. I.e. how to use the mobile and desktop
| together as different clients to the same email content.
| aendruk wrote:
| In typical use both are IMAP clients.
| Maxburn wrote:
| The majority of what you are talking about (read / unread,
| user tags and other such things) is handled by the IMAP
| server. eg; I routinely start drafts on mobile, save it,
| then continue to draft on a computer before sending. Also
| set flags on mobile for follow up later on desktop. Almost
| none of this depends on the client itself, it's all stored
| in IMAP.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Read/unread and tags are all supported by IMAP already so
| that should be possible for sure. Same with
| starring/flagging email, any willing mail client could
| implement those.
|
| The big integration points I see are within special
| features such as some kind of cross device PGP support, the
| ability to sync customised "from" addresses, and other
| features that the more basic built-in email apps lack.
|
| Perhaps the code could be further extended to also support
| calendar, task, and chat functionality, just like on
| desktop, but that would take more effort.
| CalebJohn wrote:
| They plan to integrate Firefox Sync with Thunderbird (android
| and desktop)[1]
|
| [1]:
| https://developer.thunderbird.net/planning/roadmap#firefox-s...
| college_physics wrote:
| that would actually be... quite good. but I'd love to see
| more ambition (and community support) for thunderbird. I
| would like it (or some future converge) to be my RSS reader
| and, why not, my fediverse client.
| heffer wrote:
| I'm mentally preparing for the inevitable "Microsoft Office
| Ribbons UI"-esque resentments from the power users in the
| comments.
|
| Give it time.
| asdfigadfjinio wrote:
| No, I don't think I will give it time. UIs should nearly never
| be changed. It doesn't matter much whether or not it's an
| improvement. Don't monkey with other people's tools.
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Should we still be using the Windows 1.0 UI from 1985?
| hulitu wrote:
| Windows 10 looks a lot like 1.0 except that it is black.
| waboremo wrote:
| Whether it's an improvement matters, actually that's
| explicitly the only point.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I've said this before, but it's worth saying again:
|
| Define "improvement".
|
| Because the best UI (as in unquestionably the absolute
| best) is the UI that you're already an expert with.
|
| Can there be better UIs later? Yes.
|
| Can there be better UIs for new customers? Yes.
|
| Can there be a better UI than the one you're already an
| expert in? NO! At least not until you do the work to become
| an expert in the new UI all over again.
|
| At a minimum, you're asking users to trust you that re-
| learning their UI will ultimately be a better experience
| for them. Because it will absolutely suck for your existing
| user base when it first changes (this is why UI changes are
| almost exclusively met with negative backlash from the
| current users).
|
| Can you do that? Sure. Do companies do it often? Nope. The
| vast majority of the time, the UI is changing for one of
| two reasons:
|
| 1. The company believes the new user experience is better
| with a different UI. They are actively trading existing
| customer satisfaction to improve metrics around new users.
|
| 2. The company believes they can drive users to new
| features with a new UI. They are actively trading existing
| customer satisfaction to improve metrics around new
| features.
|
| Neither of those are compelling reasons for a new UI from
| the perspective of an existing customer.
|
| Broadly - they might still be an acceptable trade for a
| company on the whole. But don't expect happiness from your
| current users, and be very wary of the churn and brand
| loyalty you're burning by making the change.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| I still hate the ribbons. I go looking in the top "file - edit
| - view - [...]" menus for things that used to be there, find
| them absent, and then have to go play Where's Waldo in the damn
| ribbon. Even in Explorer, these days! And the ribbons
| themselves just seem like a jumble of button sizes and
| placement with no rhyme or reason.
| MAGZine wrote:
| I think they're placed and sized based on frequency of use.
|
| Anyone who thinks file -> print -> page setup is a better
| place for orientation buttons than the ribbon gets my
| curmudgeon award.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| That _is_ a pretty good place to have orientation buttons
| _for printing_. Especially if it 's in the exact same place
| in practically every program that can print. Programs like
| Word managed to have toolbars for all kinds of things
| before the Ribbon interface, and that was usually fine.
| Often they even had printing-related buttons (in addition
| to file -> print).
|
| One big difference is that these tended to be more compact
| and one-dimensional. There's a lot of eye movement involved
| in scanning a ribbon toolbar, looking for something, since
| you have to scan both up-and-down and side-to-side; and the
| mixed-size icons, mixed icons-and-labels that don't
| segregate icons and labels to their own rows or columns but
| jumble them together so you're always scanning a mix of
| both, and inconsistent placement between programs make the
| whole thing feel _slow_ and frustrating.
| [deleted]
| Jorengarenar wrote:
| >Today, it's something even more exciting: a completely
| redesigned message view!
|
| Every user in existence: oh no...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I've used K9 in the past for its functionality but I switched
| back to the Gmail app because the UI wasn't very good. I got
| the feeling it was designed by and for programmers rather than
| for a good experience.
|
| I'm sure most K9 users will lament the change and demand (the
| option) to undo the redesign, but I personally consider this to
| be a massive improvement, big enough to give switching back a
| go.
|
| I just hope the users who prefer the old look will have the
| ability to use a fork/alternate version so that they won't be
| forced to adopt the new UI, perhaps one that only receives the
| bare minimum amount of maintenance to keep current features
| working for those that need them.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Eye candy is definitely the appeal of a commercial app. It
| should not be the appeal of a technical and sophisticated
| app. And that is what K9 was to so many for so long. The only
| reason I left for outlook is because I was able to fit more
| information in a small screen and because my workplace
| migrated to Exchange which was outlook exclusive.
| ilyt wrote:
| > It's clean and readable, but we can do more to help you stay
| organized and to highlight key information at a glance.
|
| _proceeds to remove content from the screen_
|
| _shoves "show image" in the middle instead of leaving that space
| for actual message content
|
| Seriously, it looks like they just copied how GMail on mobile
| looks but _badly* and with more wasted space
| arendtio wrote:
| Reading about a Thunderbird version for Android got me exited,
| because I am a big fan of the desktop version (actually, I
| donated a few bucks this week). However, on Android I used K9 for
| years, until I noticed how unreliable it became. I switched to
| Outlook and it is okay.
|
| When I saw that the Thunderbird app will be based on K9, the
| excitement vanished instantly. I really hope they will invest
| into the reliability issues. Judging from the play store
| comments, it could be worth it.
| tecleandor wrote:
| I don't know when you used K9 for the last time, but it has
| improved in stability greatly in the last ~two years. It's true
| that some years ago it went downhill for a while.
| Aachen wrote:
| Last time I used K9 was in ~2020 (then I discovered FairEmail) so
| I'm not married to the old UI in any way, but from the before and
| after screenshots, this seems like a regression:
|
| 1. Firstly, why did this need rebuilding? I know they want to
| rebrand it from K9 to Thunderbird and I'm happy that the
| thunderbird team isn't going to be caught up for years trying to
| rewrite what already exists while K9 gets to benefit from a
| comparatively very, very well-known name. But what was so
| fundamentally broken here that it needs to be entirely remade?
| Could just have applied a color scheme.
|
| 2. I had trouble recognising the subject as part of the email
| (but only in the new layout). I was looking for it and looking
| for it... and it turns out banner blindness strikes again: it's
| above where I thought the email started. No problem, that's an
| issue on day one only, people will get used to that soon enough.
|
| 3. The attention grabber on every email is going to be the
| purple-colored "SHOW REMOTE IMAGES" (caps theirs). I can't recall
| the last time I've shown remote images. Perhaps a Domino's email
| where they briefly hid the discount codes in images in 2016/'17?
| Anyway I hope that can be moved into a menu as it apparently was
| before.
|
| 4. The date has like ten characters available to it. What happens
| when it's not "10:00 am"? This seems designed by a designer, then
| the coder comes in and finds that "yesterday" still fits but
| "2022-07-03 22:47" is going a problem. That means either making
| design decisions single-handedly and annoying users who were
| promised (and gave input on) a different design, or going back to
| the design team and the mailing list for input and on lord no
| let's just hide the time and get something done today
|
| 5. There's suddenly a lot more space on the side. Hope that's
| configurable, I don't have a large phone to begin with. Probably
| just me.
|
| 6. The text seems bold and blurry. Probably the screenshot just
| isn't shown at 1:1 size (old layout looks crystal sharp though?)
| and the bold might be the email in question using a bold tag. One
| can hope.
|
| 7. Recipients hidden when the field has literally ONE word in it
| ("Alessandro"), there is space for at least another same-sized
| name and a blank line below. I bet if you click that tiny expand
| button (good luck not pressing on the user and composing an email
| to them instead), nothing in the layout has to change to show the
| three other names. This would annoy the heck out of me if I'd use
| K9 for work where more than one recipient is common.
|
| 8. It says "Thunderbird Ryan" on top. Is that me? Is it reminding
| me who I am / which account I'm using, and using another two
| lines of text for that (one for the text, top and bottom each
| like half a line's worth of borders and spacing)? Sure hope
| that's default hidden if you have one account only and configure
| if not.
|
| 9. What does a green lock with "OpenPGP" mean? Was the email
| encrypted or signed? Both? Either? Is transport encryption
| indicated? Can that also trigger the green lock? I was going to
| ignore this but was looking for something positive to close out
| with, scrolled down, noticed the pgp overlay screen and that it's
| also not mentioned on there, and thought that this is an
| essential UI element if users are ever going to know what the
| lock icon guarantees, so UI space needs to be in the mockup if
| you're drawing what the detail views are going to look like.
|
| 10. "Alessandro Castell..." is as far as it gets for the sender
| in the new layout before cutting it off. On the old layout,
| "Edgar W. Dijkstra" fit with two thirds of the line still empty.
| There's something to say for putting more on that line, but not
| even fitting one name in a field where a name is supposed to go?
| Interesting choice. Hopefully you know your correspondents by
| full name already or you'll need to open up another view if you
| only know them by last name, want to address them as Dear Mr.
| Castellsomething in a reply...
|
| Some of these are not going to be an issue for most people, but
| I've tried to look for clearly positive changes and haven't
| really been able to identify any. Likely most people will run
| into at least one of these. I wonder still: why in the first
| place...
| eterps wrote:
| HN'ers that use the K9 Mail app, with which email provider are
| you using it?
|
| What features of K9 do you like/dislike, especially compared to
| the GMail app?
| miedpo wrote:
| I use it with a few different email providers, including
| fastmail and a self hosted server. Works pretty well for what I
| need it to do.
|
| The only feature it's missing which hurts is nested folders.
| All nested folders are displayed in a list structure, rather
| than a tree, which is a bit of a pain if you use a nested
| archive (think Thunderbird's Monthly Archive structure).
| walrus01 wrote:
| > with which email provider are you using it?
|
| My own fully self hosted dns, postfix SMTP and dovecot IMAP
| over TLS setup. Not something to attempt casually unless you
| work in network engineering for an ISP and have the motivation
| to maintain your own MX and email hosting environment for other
| reasons.
| Multicomp wrote:
| I use it with Fastmail for my main email + calendar + todos,
| and I use it with Purelymail[1] for simply emails with no
| nonsense.
|
| Both accounts, once setup, just behave.
|
| On the groupware front, I use DavX5 and ICSx5 to do to calendar
| and todo sync to fastmail, and Tasks.org [2] to do the front
| end for the todos.
|
| For my work accounts, I use the nine email app which lets me
| authenticate to exchange active sync without needing a work
| profile on my phone so I can see emails, calendar, todos etc.
|
| [1] purelymail.com
|
| [2] https://tasks.org/
| creeble wrote:
| I use it on some self-hosted domains (all IMAP) but have used
| it with Migadu, MXroute, and others.
|
| I generally like it more than FairMail (simpler, fewer options
| that I seemed to need to set). But I have tried to sell it to
| other Android users, and not having swipe-delete made all of
| them give up. I'm fine without it, but would probably adapt to
| it if it was Thunderbird standard; I use the iOS email app a
| lot too.
| zepearl wrote:
| 4 self-hosted accounts, but I don't like much the ~new UI
| because it makes switching account more complex.
| kevinfiol wrote:
| I use K9 Mail with Migadu.
|
| Feature-wise, nothing really caught my attention compared to
| Gmail. At the time that I switched, however, K9 Mail was
| noticeably snappier for me, had no Google Play Services
| dependency, and weighed about 7MB to Gmail's 50MB (at the
| time).
| eterps wrote:
| Thanks, never heard of Migadu before.
| Tmpod wrote:
| Same situation and reasons here.
|
| Migadu has been perfect for my needs. The basic plan at $20/m
| is more than enough and it's basically dirt cheap. If you're
| a student you can even get it for half the price. I really
| like their lax and understanding limit policy.
| joshstrange wrote:
| Looks like "Basic" (Standard) is now $29 which even at $20
| I thought was rather high having never heard of them
| before. After reading through their website and pricing
| page it's pretty interesting.
|
| Instead of paying per "user"/"email address"/etc you pay
| for usage (sent/received/storage). With this you can add as
| many domains/email addresses/users that you want. If you
| have 20 domain names where you just need need 1 mailbox it
| costs the same as 1 domain name with 20 mailboxes since it
| all comes down to usage.
|
| If I wasn't so deep into google workspace (or whatever they
| are calling it this month, G-suite/g-apps/google apps for
| your domain) and if I had it to do over again I would use
| this in a heartbeat, I still might but it will be harder to
| move (need to figure out how to keep docs/drive/calendar
| stuff on google or migrate it to other services).
|
| Fastmail was the fallback provider I always considered
| moving to but at $3-$5/user it's a pain to add old/low-
| volume accounts that still need to be monitored but aren't
| seeing a ton of use. Migadu solves that problem very nicely
| and would probably lead to me spinning up new "mailboxes"
| much faster/sooner because I imagine it's pretty easy to do
| and then only need to think about upgrading as your usage
| increases, not just your mailbox count.
|
| I couldn't find a good answer to "does spam count towards
| your receiving limits", I found a reddit post [0] that says
| it doesn't and that the limits are soft anyway (which I had
| already seen) so I'm assuming this is the case or it
| doesn't really matter in the long run.
|
| Lastly I wish they would offer 2FA though I understand
| their current reasoning (still need no-2FA/app-specific-
| passwords for IMAP so does 2FA really matter?). I get what
| they are saying but it feels like they could implement 2FA
| for managing/overseeing your account and then have app-
| specific passwords for each mailbox (maybe 1 main with the
| ability to create others so you could disable it if you
| decide to stop using a client/service that you attach to
| your email)? I could be missing something as I've not
| actually signed up and tried the service, yet.
|
| [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/Migadu/comments/jqej2i/do_noti
| ficat...
| Zekio wrote:
| Migadu is great especially if you mostly receive emails and
| aren't sending out hundreds of emails every day
| Maxburn wrote:
| You might consider Aquamail. I found it to be more powerful and
| configurable than K9 or Kaiten when I was on android.
|
| I'm MXRoute/fastmail/gmail/exchange on the back end for MX
| service providers.
| MayeulC wrote:
| My own yunohost-based mail server, an ISP mail box, two
| university mailboxes (zimbra).
|
| I mainly like that it's FOSS and on F-Droid (no google services
| for me). I haven't used Gmail in years, but IIRC, no annoying
| smart replies or features I don't use like gdrive, photos,
| hangouts... denser UI, reliable notifications, unified inbox,
| good multi-account support, support for gpg. It generally gets
| out of the way. My mother asked me to reinstall it after she
| changed phones.
|
| I could use better support for nested IMAP folders, better
| search and syncing of said folders. Probably a better config
| workflows for non techies? Though that's pretty good already.
|
| I would really like it to be easier to customize the sender
| mail address, as I make extensive use of +aliases, and would
| have to create a new identity each time.
| johnchristopher wrote:
| I use it for work email. No notifications, it's just a way to
| read-only and check if anything comes up when I am AFK.
| strtby wrote:
| Migadu(mydomains), google(gmail), microsoft (outlook/hotmail)
| branon wrote:
| Using it with Gandi.
|
| I mainly like that it's no-BS, just works, is available on
| F-Droid, small download, dark theme, import/export for accounts
| and settings, lots of switches to flip in the settings should I
| find any of them necessary to use. I expect none of this to
| change with the Thunderbird rebrand so it's a win for both
| projects _and_ the users as far as I can see.
| pmontra wrote:
| I'm using the old K9 (before the pre-Mozilla redesign saga)
| with three POP3 accounts on the mail servers of the registars
| of my domains. I check my mail on my phone, read it, delete the
| unnecessary messages, eventually download on my computer
| (Thunderbird) and backup.
|
| The old UI is very good at this worflow and that's why I ended
| up using K9. The new UI with the unified inbox is bad at it.
| This K9/Thunderbird? I should download it to understand how it
| works. Probably like the new UI but who knows.
| canistel wrote:
| I switched back to K9 recently, as OAUTH2 works now. I am using
| Gmail(IMAP) and Rediffmail(POP3).
|
| Light-weight. Does not add accounts to Android system. Less
| colours.
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