[HN Gopher] Mailspring: Cross-platform, fast, open source mail c...
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Mailspring: Cross-platform, fast, open source mail client
Author : thunderbong
Score : 15 points
Date : 2025-02-03 06:38 UTC (16 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| brw wrote:
| I've tried a ton of email clients over the years and always end
| up coming back to Mailspring, which I started using ever since it
| used to be Nylas N1 years ago (later rebranded to Nylas Mail,
| then discontinued and forked into Mailspring).
|
| While I do think it's the only well performing and good looking
| cross-platform email client, there are some potential pain points
| people should probably be aware of.
|
| 1. Development has become very stagnant. It's still semi-
| maintained with small bug fixes every now and then, but it hasn't
| seen any changes in years. This might also be a good thing
| depending on how you look at it, it's largely a finished product.
|
| 2. There are quite a lot of bugs that have never gotten fixed
| over the years[1]. Personally I run into these bugs every now and
| then where e.g. deleting a draft will often also delete the
| entire thread without you realizing it, leading to unknowingly
| deleted emails[2]. And sometimes the local sqlite db gets
| locked/corrupted and I have to reset it[3]. I personally put up
| with this but I wouldn't expect anyone else to. Definitely not
| when it comes to non-tech people. This makes it hard to recommend
| the app to other people.
|
| 3. You're required to have a "Mailspring ID" account to use the
| app at all. It doesn't actually do anything useful like
| synchronize your settings or connected mail accounts. As far as I
| can tell it's only used to check for a Pro subscription, and
| probably some telemetry, but I don't use any of the Pro features
| so I can't say how well it works for that. Still required to have
| it though.
|
| Nonetheless I still use it because no other client seems to have
| the UI/UX and information density down quite like Mailspring
| does. And it performs very well even with hundreds of thousands
| of emails thanks to its C++ sync engine (only the UI is Electron,
| but I'd say it's still pretty snappy, it's one of the better
| ones). If Gmail ever supports third party IMAP accounts without
| needing Workspace for it and without needing to have a Gmail
| address attached to your Google account I would probably just use
| that instead though.
|
| In the past I used to use Alto Mail[4], which was a wonderful web
| and mobile app email client that did support external IMAP
| accounts. I believe it was created by AOL, but was sadly shut
| down in 2017, shortly after Verizon merged AOL and Yahoo. I've
| wanted to create a spiritual successor to it ever since, but
| email standards and HTML email rendering has always seemed like
| such a massively complicated space. Plus email clients like these
| are so niche considering that almost everyone simply uses Gmail,
| Outlook, or their default system mail apps instead that the
| required effort just doesn't seem worth it. Perhaps I'll still do
| this someday if I can find the motivation, or maybe I'll try to
| contribute to Mailspring instead, but for now I just put up with
| its issues.
|
| [1] https://community.getmailspring.com/c/bugs/10 [2]
| https://community.getmailspring.com/t/deleting-draft-emails-...
| [3] https://community.getmailspring.com/t/database-is-locked/420
| [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alto_Mail
| elashri wrote:
| Regarding the third point. you are no longer required to have
| Mailspring ID for sometime now.
|
| For me, what actually makes me not using it is because it does
| not support Exchange without IMAP support which my university
| disable. Otherwise it is the best UX/UI email client on Linux.
| brw wrote:
| Oh! You're right. I suppose I just missed the fact that
| there's now a skip button/text on the set up screen. Thanks
| for the correction. And yea its Linux/cross-platform support
| is also one of the main reasons for why I use it.
|
| I do also remember the part about Exchange not being
| supported if IMAP is disabled. I had the same issue when I
| tried to use it at a university, but luckily haven't needed
| that since. Not surprising to hear that it hasn't changed
| either.
| zuhsetaqi wrote:
| To bad it's an Electron app. I'm really RAM restricted ...
| tony-allan wrote:
| On MacOS the RAM usage is much better than for Apple's mail
| app.
| rekabis wrote:
| >Electron
|
| ...oh. Shame, that.
|
| _right-click- >delete_
| cwbriscoe wrote:
| I used it for a couple of years but I find Thunderbird to be
| better.
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(page generated 2025-02-03 23:01 UTC)