I like the part where David equated the way Hey works with the way Spark Mail 3 works and a lightbulb turned on in my head - “that’s why I didn’t like the new Spark Mail.”
On a new installation where nothing has been changed in the user interface, you are presented with a blank screen and a list of your emails. When you are done with an email you press the keyboard shortcut “I’m done with it” and the email vanishes.
Where? They assume you know that done equals stored so you can search for it later.
Old way of thinking: I want to know what folder it’s in or what label has been applied.
New way of thinking: who cares where it is; just search for it.
And I think that’s a generational shift.
To be fair this approach has been around since Gmail’s introduction.
I am an “archivist” in that sense. This new approach has been followed by people since Gmail days as @nfdksdfkh points.
My observation here is that the “archiving” traditional mail management problem can only be successful if you happen to search your emails by “topic” or “project” to retrieve knowledge or references. In these days there are other places to organize your project’s assets so email has become another comms notifications channel rather than something you go into to search for reference. Hence, just archiving everything and resorting to search makes total sense.
Great episode. I face the same problems with email overload and the only solution I’ve found that makes it manageable is Superhuman.
I found it stressful when it took longer to process, but now I get to Inbox zero by 9am every day - which was never possible before. I recon I have 2 hours extra a day now, when I was previously slogging through email. The AI is lightyears ahead of other services, and the interface is ideal for quick processing.
The effect on my work and productivity has been amazing as I don’t worry at all about email anymore and I can focus much better on other responsibilities.
Since EDITED IMAP, this is the ultimate dilemma of Email. When POP was the primary protocol, you downloaded a message once and it wasn’t “online” anymore. SMTP allowed people to retain emails and access them from multiple devices (I’m not saying that was a bad thing)
People use email as both a communications service and an information store.
It should only be comms. If you want to store something it should be placed elsewhere (file storage, database. This becomes even more apparent when more than one person is involved.
That’s basically what I do. Like Stephen I’m “all in” with Google Workspace so I keep just about everything, except my archives and some sensitive data, online. That lets me search most file types, and my email, with a single query.
As a single person you’ll get away with that, but organisations which run on email become problematic due to lack of shared organisational knowledge, email mailboxes for leavers retained for years “just in case”, and failure of ability to find that contract when you need it.
It works the same for organizations. Of course a company has total control over everything a user can see and do.
The ability to search everything, email, calendar, notes, files, etc., at once is only available in business accounts. I have to search my mail, calendar, contacts, files, etc. in my free Gmail account, one at a time.
Does anybody know if there’s a non-Sanebox way to do the “remind me in a week” thing?
Just for clarity, I believe you’re referring to IMAP. SMTP is the protocol where mail bounces around between servers for delivery.
I harp on this with clients all the time. I’ll have a company that has 9 gigabytes in their IMAP folders, some of it years old. “We need to reference it.” Even if that’s true, the IMAP folders aren’t the place to put it, as a glitch in IMAP or an accidental deletion from one client could make those emails disappear at any time. Any documents - especially mission-critical documents - should be out of email and into a local folder with a robust backup regimen.
Just today I was thinking “Damn you Apple, I want a better Mail client.”
And here is the episode that will give me so much more options…
Did we ever had a MPU thread regarding “top-posting”, “bottom-posting” and “interleaved responses”? That’s a sure flamewar 
Superhuman and Outlook have this feature.
Some email providers offer that, and probably some clients. You can do it in Gmail and the Gmail.app on iOS/iPadOS. The user can set the times.
Reminders can do this, though there is not a preset “remind in a week” option. Here is what the process looks like on the iPad.
Of course, you’re right!
Anyone familiar with Clean Email?
Beside the price point, Superhuman is Gmail centric and is geared for teams. And, as I suppose is true for any of the alternatives out there, has to have email go through, or be hosted (is that the correct term?) on their servers for the AI to perform its magic. I wonder if there isn’t a real opening for Apple Intelligence here.
In the meantime, while clicking through and beyond some of the options mentioned in the show notes, I stumbled across one called Clean Email which looks like the most interesting alternative. I find only one mention of it on these forums. Has anyone here experienced it? According to their web site, Clean Email is a now- US-based company founded in the Ukraine 10 years ago.
The biggest problem I have with email is dealing with all of the junk email. I used Sanebox for a year or two back during the Katie Floyd era at MPU when Sanebox was a regular sponsor and both David and Katie regularly mentioned using it. The key feature for me—and often mentioned by Katie—was the “Sane Black Hole” where I could send a spammy email and never see another from that sender again; without having to “unsubscribe”, and thereby potentially notifying the sender that this was a valid email address with a human at the other end and therefore a sellable commodity.
I had Sanebox on only one of my three email accounts. Covering all three at their current rates would cost $300 per year. That’s getting into Superhuman territory.
Post Sanebox, I would try to unsubscribe from emails which appeared were from legitimate senders and create elaborate rules in Mail to send the suspicious-looking ones to Trash. It’s surprising how often unsubscribing from legitimate-looking senders didn’t work and also how elaborately email senders hide their identity. But that’s a pretty time-consuming way to get rid of the cruft.
From what I can glean from their web site, it appears that Clean Email could automate a lot of that while working behind Mail or any other client. I’m intrigued with the idea of using Clean Email behind Spark, which I’ve never used but is available through Setapp. Spark would effectively be free, and Clean Email would be a far more palatable $50 per year than the $300 to $400 for Sanebox or Superhuman.
To be clear, I don’t have many folders: three for work and one for personal. I want to have a robust search ability in my email client. I also don’t need explicit contact and calendar user interfaces in my email client, in opposition to Outlook, Thunderbird or eM Client’s construction. The API’s Apple provides for contact and needed calendar support are enough for me.
There’s another consideration here - I have a 13.3" laptop; I just don’t have the screen real estate for those three programs because I still like to have a small portion of the desktop and multiple apps open and visible.
I’ve been looking somewhat at MaiMaven, as it’s out of private beta and is in public beta for a reduced price until the end on June. $45 is passable this year, but $75 a year thereafter is pushing it with my limited email needs. Right now I’m using MailMate.
Having good Gmail account support is critical, as an email client has to be engineered to work the way Gmail does, meaning its mail store should be a database and not mbox folders. EDIT: MailMaven is using an SQLlite database for its message indexes and messages themselves are stored in cascading sets of numbered folders. So there’s promise for good Gmail support.
Most of my clients either call or text me; having native Messages and FaceTime audio call support on my laptop is far more crucial to me than email is.
Apple Mail doesn’t work for me because search is spotty, I can’t selectively unsubscribe from certain account folders and its attachment policy (inline-only) is maddening.
Just listened to a podcast episode that finally pushed me to make a change I’ve been thinking about for a while: I’ve left Mail.app behind and stopped using my old @me.com address as my primary.
It’s been feeling outdated for some time, and I realized how much more flexibility Gmail gives me. I’ve forwarded all my @me.com emails to my Gmail, and from now on I’m switching back to using my Gmail address as my main one.
I really like Gmail cu<
• I like the UI , its just feels cleaner and more functional.
• Tags/labels work way better for me than just folders. It makes organizing emails a lot more intuitive. Works with my brain beter
• I can connect Gmail to way more services, like Notion mail, Superhuman
So far I’m happy with the change. It already feels like I have a better overview of everything.
Assuming you occasionally link emails to tasks, which task manager do you use, and how might this change impact your workflow?