and my return to Airmail for iOS has ended. I continue to get the Push Services error on my IMAP accounts. Spark doesn’t have this problem. Still using Airmail on the desktop though as it offers more share options to other apps…
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Yes, Airmail really is king of interoperability. [insert usual lamentation about its general state…]
Well this seems to be the Airmail and Spark thread.
How do you guys manage deep links? Are you using both the mobile and desktop version of Spark/Airmail, or just foregoing them completely?
I ask because I’m in a weird spot for work emails, where Gmail on Chrome (I know) is my preferred desktop environment and Spark on iOS/iPadOS (open to Airmail too).
Unfortunately, this means I can’t work with any common deep links since Gmail doesn’t have one (although I work around it with Choosy on Mac) and Spark has its own separate set — but Spark for Mac is a no-go for me.
A workaround could have been to use Mailmate or Mimestream (or even Mail.app) on Mac and Mail.app on iOS, but the latter doesn’t support Aliases for Google Workspaces which I use all the time.
Hopefully WWDC tomorrow has some Mail.app improvements, but yeah. Any suggestions otherwise?
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I absolutely need deep links. They’re how I process my email: sending tasks to OmniFocus and leaving nothing in the inbox.
You can do this in exactly five ways that I know of after researching this extensively
- Use Apple Mail. Downside: you can’t create the links on iPhone unless you use the now deprecated app Dispatch.
- Use Spark with those scripts on Mac. Downside: on iOS, Spark sends your emails to your task manager inbox, which is the dumbest thing.
- Use Newton. Downside: expensive, and sometimes character encoding goes wrong, but links work everywhere.
- Use Airmail. Downside: … it’s Airmail. (I have however a confession to make. I’m using it again. I know. But the deep linking scheme is the most robust on the market. If you’re willing to put up with Airmail being Airmail, then it’s the best solution on that front.)
- Use Gmail and design a shortcut to convert mail.google.com into the Gmail app URL scheme for iOS when you need to access them. I used to have one but I have not used Gmail in years so it probably does not work anymore, but it can be done.
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Thanks for the detailed suggestions! I only need a hyperlink in Drafts and/or Things to refer back to, so all of these should do the trick for my use case.
Regarding Apple Mail on iOS, the old (fairly lame) way of invoking Siri to “Remind me of this” still works and creates a deep linked Reminders.app task—granted it’s pretty unintuitive since it’s limited to just those two service and needs a lot of copy/paste.
I could honestly make do with it if only it just supported aliases for gmail accounts!
I’m open to Airmail a shot again on iOS and Mac. It was really unstable on both platforms when I last tried it in 2018; unreliable sync on iOS (also not great at searching) and being a resource hog on Mac. I think the M1 should be able to handle the latter now, but search is a big thing for me and may still be a question mark.
I’m a little surprised you’re using it again, given your grievance with it just from browsing the email threads on MPU, but I guess it really is a love-hate relationship. 
Finally, regarding Gmail deep links, they wouldn’t happen to work across platforms right?
The googlemail:// link on iOS wouldn’t open the email thread in Gmail on the Mac’s browser, while the mail.google.* on Mac just opens iOS’ browser instead of the Gmail app.
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I’m a little surprised you’re using it again, given your grievance with it just from browsing the email threads on MPU
I am too. And I can’t keep rolling my eyes at how this app is managed. But it has the best task integration on the market and I find that’s really what I need. I guess I know where it falls short, having used it so much (and raged so much at all its long lasting bugs), so I’m skirting those areas (don’t trust its send later feature).
Maybe I could just do this in Apple Mail… 
One thing is sure, if I could get to an Apple Mail link easily on iPhone (not a fan of the Reminders trick), I would certainly drop it.
Now… where is my copy of Dispatch…
regarding Gmail deep links, they wouldn’t happen to work across platforms right?
Nope. But the way I went around that is design a Shortcut that would convert those URLs to Gmail apps deep links. Depending on where I was, I would either open the link as is or share it to the Shortcut, which would route me to the native app. It was rather seamless.
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Whoa, any chance I could get in on that Gmail URL to deep link Shortcut?
I’ll try running that side-by-side with Airmail to crown my personal victor, which may very well be the former since I genuinely like web Gmail on Chromium.
As you said, Airmail has its cans of worms, but it just offers so much too. Kind of like Drafts, but less polished of course.
Spark has served me well, but it’s time to bridge the deep link road block (again, just a personal non-preference for the Mac app).
It seems like both of us, and probably many others, are just a couple of additions away from settling in to Apple Mail. Fingers crossed for this coming week’s announcements!! 
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Amen! I really hope Apple Mail gets at least a bit of love. Please give us URL schemes easily accessible…
As for the Shortcut, I’ve dug it up but I honestly don’t even remember how exactly it was supposed to work and take inputs. It dates back to Workflow so there are probably much better ways to do this (if it even still works) and I don’t even know if the URL scheme is the same. Anyway, here goes, hopefully it can at least serve as a basis for something that works in 2021.
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and I have ended my AirMail use on the Mac… it really is just crappy software. I guess Spark wins by default. Congrats to Spark.
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Well, laugh at me, as I am now finding myself… gravitating to Apple Mail. 
(The Omni email drop provides a message:// back link in the notes field when you forward an email. This was not the case last time I tested…)
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when I read this, I thought oh wow, maybe they added a share sheet… you tricked me. the omnifocus integration is the bare minimum for me that gives Spark the edge for now.
out.
I just want Mimestream’s beauty with Spark’s functionality. So if Spark would allow theming, and make GMail keyboard shortcuts available on iPadOS as well as on macOS, that’d be nearly perfect.
Is that so much to ask?
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Actually what makes me consider it again is:
- You can get email URLs with the Omni Mail Drop. (You can too with mail to Things I believe.)
- It’s the snappiest app there is
- It can be reasonably complemented with Mailbutler (send later)
- I’m going to be mostly on Mac including in mobility when I get a new MBP so I mostly need to process email on phone, and only for truly urgent stuff, where I can trying getting by with Mail Drop or (gasp) Dispatch
- I’m certainly going to move to iCloud+ when they open custom domains and I think I’ll have a better experience in Mail
My app of choice seems to change as I constantly tackle the email problem and fiddle with the workflows and discover what I can live or without. Following the cycle of the past years, this means I’ll be using Spark again in three months, before going back to Airmail in January 2022. 
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Well I finally gave Airmail a second chance today, and… it’s pretty great.
Blows Spark out of the water in terms of customization, as it did years ago as well, but now it has the stability to match.
I hope the performance keeps up because there’s just so much to like and even more options to tune in to my needs.
Does it really have the stability now? I’ve been burned several times in power features that just crumbled when pushed.
macOS or iOS? which one are you talking about?
when someone makes the “Airmail is great now” post, the image in my mind is a shady drug dealer whispering out of a dark alley, “pssstt… I got something really good… here… just try a little bit…” 
that said, unless Airmail duplicates Spark’s omnifocus integration, its a nonstarter.
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unless Airmail duplicates Spark’s omnifocus integration, its a nonstarter.
I guess you mean the other way around? Like Newton and Dispatch (
) do?
Spark to Omnifocus. its very clean.
Ah. I find it extremely lacking! You can only send a message to the inbox, not access the deep link… Airmail on the other hand allows you to copy the deep link directly and customize all field tasks when sharing a message to OF.
Or have things changed recently in Spark?