I typically use Spark for email. I like that I can set up 4 distinct “swipe” gestures on an email as opposed to apps like Outlook that only allow two. My go to swipes are:
Archive
Delete
Snooze
Report Spam
This means I can deal with emails by swiping, without having to open them first which is a nice little time saver.
When I’m feeling more “stock”, I sometimes give the iOS Mail app a go. I really like the VIP lists and setting things up so only VIP emails send a notification — everything else is on an “as I check it” basis. When I saw the new features they added to Mail in iOS 16 I thought I’d give it another go. They missed a few big opportunities if you ask me.
You now have the ability to snooze emails, so I snoozed one — or as they call it “remind me about this later”. I hit the button to be reminded of the email in a few days and……nothing happened. Well, the email was marked, showing that something had happened, but it remained in the Inbox. The ENTIRE point of reminding me about an email later is that it isn’t on view for a week in my inbox. It goes away, and comes back. How did they botch this one? As I googled the issue, I saw a post where someone claims this new snooze feature only works on the device you snoozed it on, other devices won’t see it. Not sure if that was an earlier beta post and maybe not as true anymore but why they couldn’t have it behave like it does in literally every other app is beyond me.
For every step forward they take, it’s 2 steps back it seems.
There’s not much choice with the send later feature as it is not part of any email protocol: either your computer needs to be running (Mail.app) or the app/service has to store your message somewhere in the meantime for the feature to work (Spark), in which case people raise all sorts of privacy concerns (and which Apple probably wanted to avoid by implementing Send Later as they did).
For those relying on Gmail or Workspace, there’s a native Send Later in Gmail though.
Why couldn’t “send later” be integrated with Mail in iCloud? Wouldn’t it be just as private as it is now but not be dependent on a particular computer being up and running? I admit I’m out of my “tech league” here.
Apple could probably make it an integral part of iCloud Mail and iCloud Mail only for this to work while your computer is off. To support other accounts in this way (Gmail/Workspace, Microsoft 365, and others) they would have to store bits and pieces of data related to those accounts (including the message which is to be sent later) which, I suppose, they don’t want to do.
I’m not sure how send later is implemented in Spark (which I use), but when it’s time for the scheduled email to be sent, Spark’s server has to talk to your email service’s server and has to authorise itself somehow for the email to be accepted and relayed. Whether they store authorisation tokens for this to work or they use some other method, I’m not sure. With all the complexities surrounding email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC) they also probably need to be sure their relaying server which actually does the sending for you does not end up being blacklisted for spam or bad credentials. Apple probably doesn’t want to go down that route.
I don’t think most people realize that when you snooze an e-mail, and you don’t have to have a device up and running for it to work, it means your message is being stored on someone else’s server.
That’s probably fine with most people if that someone else is your email provider (Google if you use gmail, for example). But if it isn’t, just be aware that the contents of your message is being stored and handled by someone other than you, your email service and the intended recipient. I don’t know of any other way it can work.
If you’re someone who is big on end to end encryption in notes or other apps, that could be a problem.
They could. But they would have to implement an API on the iCloud server and then make calls to that API from the Mail App. And those calls would only work for iCloud email accounts. If you have one iCloud account, one work account, and one gmail account, well then the “send later” feature would only work for the iCloud account. And then users would complain that gmail also offers a API for that and soon they would be adding code to support every API out there from every service which offers one. Each service works differently and the feature would appear to be inconsistent from account to account. And then there are the accounts which have no such API at all. Sounds like a customer satisfaction nightmare. Instead, they implemented the feature in the only way that it can behave consistently across all email accounts.
I’ll be keen to see how Apple Silicon devices which are barely powered off while in sleep state handle send later.
I imagine in they’re charging and connected to wifi it may work reliably most of the time. Can anybody running the beta do some tests? I’m happy to be a recipient of send later emails if somebody would like to test.
