Ha! I’m Canadian, though! I just liked the bug/buggery wordplay. 
(Sorry!)
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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.
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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
- Fast
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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.
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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.
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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
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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.
I suppose the only thing I haven’t figured out with Spark is how to get emails into DEVONthink that I want to archive within DT.
Does anyone have any ideas or workflow around that when using Spark?
Wondering if I could use IFTTT or the like (Zapier?) to watch for emails to hit a “folder” in my accounts and then somehow get them into DT.
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
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What do you use on the backend? Gmail, Fastmail?
PDF button? I don’t see one?
Go to settings and then see images below to get the PDF button directly on emails. (Hoping the pictures are in order).
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Awesome, thanks for taking the time to give me such a great explanation!
Fastmail for 99% keep an iCloud account for a few odd Apple related bits as well.
Great wishlist of useful features!
I was using Mail to access my Gmail accounts until Mail suddenly decided to stop letting me do so, and so I am currently using Spark for Gmail. My main quibble is the inability to set a default font size for viewing and writing emails, which I would have thought was fairly basic functionality for an email app. I also haven’t figured out how to navigate using the keyboard.
YOU ROCK!! This is nice for iOS for sure. While not technically the same thing as an “archive” of the actual email (.eml file including attachments) it at least saves a “copy” of the email message.
Like you, I don’t save many emails outside of my email platform, but I am starting to realize potential future benefits (just-in-case, better contextual search in DT, etc.), but I am still working through how I intend to use DEVONthink (still a new user to it).
I still wish there was a better integration with DT from Spark.