Thanks! There are a few issues why I cannot use MailMate for some Office 365 accounts:
Policies prevent the use of other applications apart from Outlook and Apple Mail. This is also the reason why Airmail won’t work;
POP and IMAP are prevented from use by forcing policies;
Using an app-password is disabled.
As far a I know it is impossible to workaround these issues unfortunately. I’m glad I was able to get approval to use Fantastical for my calendar, and I’m still glad they allow Apple Mail. I now mostly use the Outlook web client for work and use Apple Mail for personal, associations and foundations I work on in my personal time. I could use MailMate for everything but work e-mail, which I’m thinking about trying.
Is MailMate still actively developed and supported? Because after checking the website the latest version has been in Beta for a long time now.
Oh I see, so your company limits the use of other clients. Does it lock oauth2, too? Because I use my company’s Office 365 with oauth2. The password didn’t work either.
I would use the webclient, too, if Mailmate wouldn’t work. I’m done with this MS crap.
Yes, it is still actively developed, but by just one person. He is very helpful and eager to do everything right. This is reflected by the app. He keeps as close to standards as possible.
Look into the issue tracker: https://freron.lighthouseapp.com/projects/58672-mailmate/overview
Yes, it is in Beta, because he seems to be a perfectionist. For what I’ve seen the beta is more stable than Outlook for Mac ever was…
I’ve been trying AirMail again and so far I really like it. I can’t seem to figure out how to sync rules between the desktop and iOS versions. But I also haven’t perused the manual.
I liked Spark for a bit, but returned to Apple Mail for simplicity. I may return again but I like the expanded rules in AirMail.
Hah. Well, after this thread, I was fiddling with Airmail’s settings and… I actually managed to take some of the cludginess out.
It had a lot of bells and whistles—especially in Appearance—that made the UX of the app clunky. After I slimmed it down (see the settings for Appearance I’m now using, below), the app seems to work a little faster.
So some of my qualms with it have been alleviated.
It’s still glitchy at times, sadly. (At least, I don’t think Send Later works at all, if the eight messages I just found in that box that were supposed to have been sent a week ago are any indication…)
But as long as I’m willing to tolerate a bit of buggery in order to get customizable actions, I think it’s the only app for me.
yes, thats my philosophy as well. airmail’s customizable actions go a long way to covering up its shortcomings so I just accept that it will never be perfect. I reaaaaalllyyyy like hitting the spacebar to create a pdf and dropping it into devonthink.
eM Client just launched a major new release (v9) which I’m taking for a spin. (I’ve been using Spark up until now)
A few pros and cons which matter to me. Of course, different things will matter to different people.
Cons
It’s not a proper native MacOS app. (It doesn’t appear to be Electron either, but nobody is going to mistake it for a “mac-assed app”)
The UI looks like it was designed for Windows
Keyboard shortcuts are not Gmail shortcuts. They can be edited, but it won’t allow shortcuts without modifier keys. I’ve implemented a kludgy solution using BetterTouchTool which enables me to use Gmail shortcuts with it.
No iOS app
No option to track read/opens.
Pros
Good support for Gmail features, inc labels
Avatars in the message list
Extremely customisable / configurable. Even more options & settings than Airmail.
Side-pane which shows my email history with each contact
I’ve recently been using the web ui for my work email (Google Workspace), improved with the beta version of https://simpl.fyi/
It’s a (paid) browser extension created an ex-Googler who was the design lead for Google’s (discontinued) Inbox product
It is astonishing how much better the gmail web UI works with all the cruft cleared away, plus various other enhancements via simpl.fyi.
I’ve also remapped several of the gmail text-formatting keyboard shortcuts using BetterTouchTool.
Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts for managing email (e.g. tagging, archiving, trashing etc) are great out-of-the-box, and can easily be remapped via the built-in settings.
However, the text formatting shortcuts are non-standard and can’t be edited. They were driving me crazy until I realised I could re-map them with BTT.
I’ve attached a screenshot of all the improvements which simpl.fyi provides.
With Ventura coming out soon’ish, and them introducing MailKit, I am hopeful that Mail.app gets better and more extensible. While Mail.app does work on both macOS and mobile, it bugs me and feels like more work to deal with email the way I want to.
I gave AirMail yet another try and within 24 hours was bumping into things that made it a deal-breaker for me. The DEVONthink share/import feature is horrible IMO. Adding an email as a task in OmniFocus had a link to the email, but if I archive that message after adding it to the task, clicking the link only took me to the “All Mail” folder… not the specific message. Finding it in a sea of thousands of emails was not fun.
Spark is decent for email and getting task-emails into a task manager, while being able to get back to the email on both desktop as well as mobile even if you archive the email. The calendar is crap IMO and trying to respond to Office 365 invites seems to be hit or miss at best. I accepted an invite once, which then deleted the email, but never actually accepted the meeting nor added it to my calendar. Not good!
The latest thick Outlook client on macOS seems fairly decent. It obviously works well with my work O365 account, but also works well with my family’s iCloud calanders. I don’t think it has label support for Gmail, and there is no consistent task management integration that I have found (across all my different accounts). I was using Todoist for a while, which does integrate with my work O365 account, but I don’t think I could get it to work with my Gmail account in the Outlook thick client.
I just want something that can work everywhere and allow me to save things to DEVONthink and a task manager whether I am on a desktop, phone, or tablet. And, if creating a task from an email, the ability to archive that email and be able to get back to it later from ANY of my devices. Oh, and I’d like to be able to snooze emails if possible, but if not I can use a task manager for those as well. So far, I can’t find this.
I used Spark for a while. I can’t remember the specifics but the calendar was problematic. I had to use Spark without the calendar. I’m back on Apple Mail now.
+1 to Spark, I have re-used it instead of Airmail. Spark is much faster in checking and downloading emails from my 6 email accounts, and no issue with Calendar, at least for now
Another +1 for Spark. The email templates, team collaboration, scheduled send and linking to Reminders are huge benefits and it’s very reliable. I just use Apple’s native Calendar app as I have a load of calendars on different platforms, so ignore Spark’s calendar.
I use Fantastial for calendars and it’s wonderful. Good news is, when I accept a meeting invite through it, it sticks and also removes the email from my inbox.
One of the best features of Spark is the “Send + Archive”!! So much better to cleaning up the inbox as I deal with email. You can still just send, but love archive as the default.
If you are a Gmail user there is an app that will automatically save your mail as a PDF and download any attachments to Google Drive, and log everything to a Google spreadsheet.
It is subscription but it appears it will run indefinitely in trial mode, at a much slower speed. When I tested it I think it was processing about 12 messages an hour. I don’t recall the exact number.
I’m mainly iOS on spark and I pull the PDF button to the main tab so it’s a click away. I’m much more selective about email saving so I may only save a few a week. It’s better than the print then pinch and then open in from mail.app on iOS Devices
