Hi all, I’m wondering what you do for quick emails when you’re on your Mac? I use airmail and have a keyboard shortcut for composing a new message, which works fine when it’s open. But I often like to keep my email app closed when I’m working so I’m not sucked into it. Which brings me to my question/problem, is there a shortcut, workflow or an app that runs in the background (perhaps the menu bar?) that will allow me to send quick emails off via keyboard shortcuts without opening an email app and revealing everything inside my inbox? I can’t seem to find anything particularly useful.
I’ve got no suggestions for the present time, but my hope is that when Drafts comes to the Mac, it will have functionality like this, like on iOS.
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That would be great! I should up my drafts game now so I am ready.
I, too, am waiting for Drafts to come to the Mac. In the meantime, you could use a launcher like Alfred or Quicksilver to quickly fire off an email, I guess…?
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If it is just a “quick & dirty” e-mail, you could trigger it at the command line - take a look here, https://apple.stackexchange.com/questions/12387/how-to-send-an-email-from-command-line
Launchers like Alfred could be used to make that command line more convenient and accessible.
Keyboard Maestro also has a Send Apple Mail Message action that you could potentially utilise, and that does live in the menu bar. 
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I hadn’t even thought about using Alfred this way. I use Alfred all the time. I’ll what I can setup via that app. Thanks!
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This is great. Thanks. I haven’t used K.Maestro before but I see a lot of folks talking about it on here. I’m using Karabiner currently and really like it. I’ll check Maestro and see what it does.
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Sadly, I just learned that Let.ter, the app I was about to excitedly recommend, is dead. Heartbreaking since it was an elegant, very-low-overhead, single-purpose app designed to let you quickly dash off single emails. If you care to read more about it (you know, for nostalgia), here’s an old Lifehacker link about it.
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Just did a quick search and found QuickMailer in the Mac App Store. It’s a menu bar app for quickly sending emails. Hasn’t been updated in a few years, and it’s got mixed reviews… but who knows. Might be perfect for your needs. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/quickmailer/id471864867?mt=12
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What about just writing the text in a text editor and using LaunchBar or Alfred to send it?
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Thanks, I’ll take a look. And you’re right, the let.ter app looks like it was great!
Thanks for the suggestion, David. In fact, I was just reading the Alfred forums about how to do this! I think this is the route I’ll take.
I have tried using Drafts 5 on iOS for this purpose but it does not work properly with Spark or Airmail—though both programs are available via Drafts. When I use Drafts with either of them either the subject is missing or the content of the email. However, it works perfectly with Apple Mail. Has anyone else experienced this?
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let.ter was ok, but buggy. I bought a license and it was summarily abandoned. Apparently the developer is working on FoldingText for HogBay.
I have settled on writing an Alfred workflow to open mail in the background ( https://www.alfredforum.com/topic/9023-open-app-in-background/ ) and averting my eyes if my Inbox is visible.
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With LaunchBar, the email compose action is just ⌘␣ away!
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I use Email in Spark operation.
This is great! Thank you.
I see Spark not picking up line breaks, but the subject and body otherwise come through fine when trying the URL scheme.
e.g.
readdle-spark://compose?subject=The%20subject&body=Line1%0ALine2%0ALine3%0A
This should give 3 lines in the body but it gives just one. Even adding in carriag returns makes no difference 
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Several years ago, I wrote about using Mailsmith for this purpose:
It is especially-well-suited for the task because it understands the concept of a “Send Only” email account, which most other email clients (still!) do not.
The only downside is that Mailsmith is 32-bit, which means that you’ll get a warning message in Mojave, and it will presumably stop working in whatever OS Apple releases next. My hope is that by that time we will have Drafts for the Mac available, although Drafts won’t solve one of the biggest problems with using a text editor for this: lack of integration with your Contacts database.
I found that it was frustrating to try any solution which didn’t include some way to autocomplete email addresses as I started typing them.
(I feel compelled to mention that this problem is so much easier to solve on iOS, where you can just make a Shortcut to bring up a compose sheet without opening your mail application.)
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Yes, or highlight the text and use Popclip to prepare the email…
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