Mailspring: Cross-platform, fast, open source mail client

https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring

by thunderbong • 1 year ago

60 26 1 year ago

brw3• 1 year ago

I've tried a ton of email clients over the years and always end up coming back to Mailspring. Started using ever since it used to be Nylas N1 years ago (which later rebranded to Nylas Mail, then got discontinued and forked into Mailspring).

I actually do think it's the best performing and best looking cross-platform email client, although 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]. 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 you have to reset it[3]. I personally put up with this but I wouldn't expect anyone else to. Especially not non-tech folks. 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. 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. 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 (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.

My favorite client 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 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• 1 year ago

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.

brw3• 1 year ago

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.

Fnoord• 1 year ago

Wait, you can now log in directly to IMAP? That is quite some change. Wasn't happy to give third parties key to the castle.

I've been using Postbox but unfortunately they got acquihired by eM Client. So much for lifetime license. Won't fall for that again.

Meanwhile, Thunderbird has resurfaced. So I might switch back to that instead.

zuhsetaqi2• 1 year ago

To bad it's an Electron app. I'm really RAM restricted …

tony-allan2• 1 year ago

On MacOS the RAM usage is much better than for Apple's mail app.

zuhsetaqi2• 1 year ago

Not for me. Apple Mail used 155 MB RAM for all processes with 3 Accounts connected. Mailspring used 366 MB for all processes with only one of the 3 Accounts connected. The Mailspring Helper (GPU) alone uses 130 MB RAM …

Both had the same mail opened.

I'm using macOS 14.7.3, not 15. Don't know about Apple Mail in macOS 15.

rekabis• 1 year ago

Electron

…oh. Shame, that.

right-click->delete

righthand• 1 year ago

We really do live in a web technologies hell scape. Even modern Qt apps include javascript code with an added startup time cost.

robterrell• 1 year ago

Mimestream is a fantastic native app. Mac only though: https://mimestream.com/

shamiln• 1 year ago

That’s not a mail client, it’s a GMail client

brw3• 1 year ago

It's worth noting that the actual sync engine is C++. https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring-Sync

cwbriscoe• 1 year ago

I used it for a couple of years but I find Thunderbird to be better.

wslh• 1 year ago

I wonder if someone uses Claws [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claws_Mail

etiam• 1 year ago

I probably will, but Thunderbird hasn't quite broken the interface enough yet to take the costs of emigrating everything.

rufus_foreman• 1 year ago

I use it. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they've tried everything else first, which I pretty much did.

It slowly and grudgingly does what I want it to do, but my workflow is probably not anyone else's.

svilen_dobrev• 1 year ago

i use. for ~20 years. on variuos desktops and laptops (even on 7" eee-pc).

it's somewhat wooden but it works, and no surprises. i keep few thousands mails over 2 decades, over many accounts and hierarchies of folders. Can even move things from one account to another.

And most of all, it does show all mail dates as they are, even if from 1993. Unlike Apple-mail, and Android's AquaMail which only go back to 4.oct.2019 and that's it, anything older becomes of that date.

i wonder, what is that 4.oct.2019 date?

zachh• 1 year ago

I still think about the best-designed email app I've ever used, Sparrow [1]. This is the closest I've seen in design and spirit!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_%28email_client%29

tuananh• 1 year ago

the author built dejalu few years after it was acquired by Google. but it's also abandon shortly after.

https://github.com/dinhvh/dejalu

MathMonkeyMan• 1 year ago

The code comments make it a pleasure to read the source: <https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring-Sync/blob/master/Ma...>

johnea• 1 year ago

Will it accept a self signed server certificate?

banku_brougham2• 1 year ago

this is exciting! the mail app on my mac is the one place that makes me feel like its 1995, in a bad way

banku_brougham2• 1 year ago

oh darn, i just read the comments

dddw• 1 year ago

Mailmate on mac, thunderbird on linux, freemail on android

grepfru_it• 1 year ago

I have 100k+ unread email messages. Probably 2x that actually read. The only mail client that can handle my entire mailbox is outlook. And only up to outlook 2013. I have used every mail client from lotus notes to thunderbird and all of them choke after reading 25% of my mailbox.

Further outlook 2013 can handle all of this PLUS handle my various offline mailboxes going back to 1997. I obviously don’t like using an outdated mail client so will give this a shot and report back on my findings!

Edit: the privacy policy is a nonstarter. This is not an offline application and the question of what happens to my data after acquisition is not answered satisfactorily. Back to the drawing board :)

Mailspring: Cross-platform, fast, open source mail client

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