I’m currently a MailMate guy, and I’m contemplating flipping back to Mail.app. I need it for very occasional things (MailMate won’t allow HTML emails from what I can tell), but the thing I like most about MailMate is that it uses Markdown natively.
Anybody have a good way to use Markdown in Mail.app?
MailMate is the only Mac email app I’ve heard of that natively accepts Markdown, but with the Markdown Here extension you can write in Markdown click the MDH button in the browser, and the text is converted to HTML.
I believe Airmail also allows Markdown (rather than requiring it for formatting, as MailMate does), but it’s got issues that make it a no-go IMHO.
Unfortunately Markdown Here only works as a browser extension. It works great if you are composing with a browser, but not with the Mail app. I’ve used MailMate in the past – lots of useful features.
One thing to consider is using the Drafts app. You can draft an email in markdown in drafts and then create an action to send it in mail.app. It may already be there. You can also do a number of other things too.
Out of curiosity, since it sounds like you’re using something other than MailMate now, what client did you land on?
I use Drafts for just this reason. I write all my messages in there and then I have actions setup with different signatures (sigs also done in markdown) and it works great. Obviously this does not work when replying for messages.
Please can you share the link to the Drafts Action you use?
I’m back with Apple Mail for now. I still like MailMate but needed to teach new users how to use Apple Mail. So I took the easy way out and just stick with the default version from Apple. Mostly OK with a few occasional frustrations.
FWIW, I moved to Airmail on Mac and iOS a few weeks ago. There are still some small bugs, but overall I quite like it. What makes it a no-go for you? (The native Markdown feature is really helpful.)
The dark sidebar is unreadable for me. Is there a way to change it?
Oh, you’re right. There is not. You can change the appearance via their themes, but it does not change the appearance of the sidebar. Sorry!
Two things:
As is true for some other clients, it sends all your received emails through its servers, and there have been concerns about the security of that method.
Minor item: Don’t like that, by default, it adds an “Airmail” IMAP folder to an Exchange setup. (Can be disabled, but you have to know to do it in advance.)
Besides that, it gets a lot of downvotes for being buggy, although I personally didn’t find that the case in the few months I used it in 2017. You probably should be guided more by recent reviews, of course, since they’ll give you a more accurate picture of the app’s current quality.
I didn’t know about (1). That’s concerning. It is buggy, but in small ways. Much better than it was a number of years ago. Mostly around the rules, which are really powerful, but can be buggy to set up and change. But I really like the power compared to Mail.app.