Currently, the company is hinting at the possibility of grouping common emails such as receipts from Amazon and flight information, but they’re also listing future cards such as statistics, weather, and important messages. It’s a nice bit of “it just works” simplicity even Steve Jobs would appreciate. Making a modern email client that works with any service implies making that client available on any platform as well, and that’s not where Spark is at today. My “seen” emails … Smart Inbox is just one aspect of this effort, and it’s already useful and well designed – no matter your email provider. Spark: The Battle for Best Mail Client on Your Mac Each one revolutionary and shortsighted in its own way, always far from the utopia of email reinvention on mobile. Now that Spark for Mac has arrived, is it finally curtains for Apple Mail? However, I now dread having to open the app every morning. The Apple Watch app is one of my favorite Spark features alongside smart search and cards. When Apple introduced Mail for iPhone in 2007, they bragged about its desktop-class approach to email on a portable device. Everybody has their own comfort threshold in software, and read receipts cross that line for me. Simply log in with any one of your email accounts, and all the others automatically sync via iCloud, complete with signatures and other settings. I receive hundreds of messages on different services on a daily basis, and I feel bad knowing that someone else thinks I’m ignoring them. There are many things worth fighting for in life, but, ultimately, my refusal to use Gmail is no longer one of them. In the weeks I spent using Microsoft’s Outlook earlier this year, I enjoyed their similar take on important messages called Focused Inbox.2. The most important reason people chose Airmail is: This is why I believe Spark will soon receive a visual distinction for important messages with a new card – the feature is already in place with smart notifications. Spark for Mac review: A great mobile email client, also quite good on desktop Spark for Mac helps cut down on the amount of time users spend managing email with a … For example, MailChimp can track email open stats for our newsletter. Spark will be a cross-platform email client soon. The Readdle team told me they’ve built a complex language model to recognize human messages and automated ones; my tests indicate the claim is accurate. The lack of options wouldn’t be a problem for me – I do like the simplicity of the system and how pins work as flags – but I would have preferred to at least have notifications for snoozed messages. The idea of automatic email sorting is a solid one: we are inundated with a constant stream of messages on a daily basis, and yet most email clients tend to treat all messages equally, with the same notification settings and without any distinction for different kinds of email content they should be able to understand. Federico is also the co-host of AppStories, a weekly podcast exploring the world of apps, and Dialog, a show where creativity meets technology. Am I overthinking this? It’s a delightful touch that makes working with email on an iPhone easier. These features and design choices alone make processing messages in Spark faster than any other client I’ve used. No matter the service you use, the file you pick will always be attached to a new message in Spark. When you receive a message that contains a link, you can tap & hold the link to bring up a custom menu. I’m glad that Readdle is supporting both native iOS extensions and custom integrations, but I wish extensions were given more visibility. I had to train the app to move TestFlight emails from Newsletters to Notifications, but, overall, Spark was pretty good at assigning different messages to different cards. In terms of productivity, Mail retains a few advantages. When composing a new message, you don’t have to tap on individual ‘To:’ or ‘Cc:’ fields: just type something like “cc Stephen” and Spark will figure out how to properly configure that address in the Cc field. If you go with the bottom layout, you’ll have a toggle for smart inbox at the top next to a search button; at the bottom, you’ll see floating buttons for compose and a radial Path/Pinterest-like menu to which you can assign any shortcut you want. Mailbox. Google’s Inbox app allows me to choose whether a bundle is worth getting a notification from and how often I should be presented with any given bundle in my inbox. I’m lucky enough to know someone who gets a lot of work done every day on multiple devices. In Spark, pins are actually based on flags: if you open a message pinned in Spark in another client like Apple Mail, it’ll have a regular flag. Kiwi for Gmail. The app gives users access to two types of inboxes, smart and non-smart. I only have two quibbles about smart search and smart folders: you can’t build a filter that matches messages from multiple email addresses and there’s no syntax guide that you can read before starting a new search. Quick replies are nice, but each one of them carries a “Spark by Readdle” link at the bottom that takes you to the App Store, which is…uncomfortable for me. That’s why I feel uneasy about Spark having read receipts implemented this way – although I also know that other services can already do this and it was just a matter of time before a commercial product figured this out. I prefer the structured inbox of Spark to uncategorized lists of messages found in other clients, and I find the card layout with inline message previews more readable than Google’s Inbox bundles as well. IMAP was effectively damaging the MacStories team with slow search, lack of push notifications, and the inability to try modern clients with useful features. I’m also hoping that integration with todo apps and services is on the roadmap – snoozing and pinning messages can’t be the only way to make them actionable. Here’s what he said: Not right now, and that’s nothing against Spark. They’re trying to improve upon every traditional aspect of email apps for iPhone, leaving desktop metaphors behind to offer what Apple Mail and other third-party apps never did. Icons are highlighted when there are new messages; otherwise, you can scroll (with your finger or the Digital Crown) to view your full inbox, pinned messages, archive, and sent mail. Each message is almost laid out like a web article – a large subject centered at the top of the screen, with a date on top of it and details underneath. There are some missteps – like read receipts, a simplistic calendar, and the lack of integration with todo services and apps. Yes. a message is opened) and therefore inform the sender that the message has been “read”. On the other hand, Spark is an impressive email app for iPhone. I’ll … Should I snooze it for later? Spark also allows you to snooze an email and come back to take care of it at a later time. I’m not saying that this is inherently a bad idea: Boxer has featured a similar option for a while now, and I understand the desire for nicely formatted responses that look good and only take one tap to express common feelings of gratitude. When you’re in a list of messages, you can use Force Touch to mark all as read; if you’re inside a message, pressing firmly will bring up buttons to mark as unread or pin. Smart notifications are the perfect example: whenever my Watch taps me with a Spark notification, I know that it’s from someone I care about thanks to the app’s smart engine. All this to say that, yes, I’ve had a complicated relationship with email, and it always comes down to apps. Users can access different options by swiping left or right. Copyright 2021 MacStories, Inc. All rights reserved. Airmail vs. I like email. Widgets are interesting: you can choose between two placements and you can customize the buttons that show up at the top or bottom of your inbox. Read our review of Spark. There was no iPad back then and Apple wasn’t allowing third-party email clients on the App Store. Furthermore, unlike Google, Readdle has added support for a unified inbox to Spark. Same for flight notifications and hotel emails. Since I started using Spark, I’ve never seen ugly formatted conversations with quoted responses in different colors that I always end up seeing in other apps. I do the bulk of my daily work on an iMac, so having the same application available on my iPhone and iPad is a must. Apple Mail for a basic, free client. At the end of the day, I have a business to run and a personal life to enjoy. Overall, smart search is a good example of Readdle taking a popular feature from other iOS apps and remixing it to work for email. Lastly, emails you've seen but haven't moved to another folder. Sparrow. This is the best email experience on every platform, and has a variety of productivity features that make it my go-to. I think Spark is really powerful and has some very cool features, but I cannot switch to it right now, because if I really want to take advantage of what it’s capable of, I need to have it everywhere. In the months I’ve spent using Inbox, I’ve come to depend on the automatic sorting in Updates and Low-Priority, which separates the wheat from the chaff and lets me see important messages at a glance. In those three years, third-party developers had also started chasing the white whale of email reinvention with proprietary features that locked users into silos – the snooze features of Mailbox are a good example. I can even set separate notification options for each bundle, which is a nifty way of dealing with incoming messages. The new Spark feels like the first product that may finally solve email communication and assignments for the MacStories team. Would it be okay to send a thumbs up emoji as a reply? In this screencast tutorial I cover another one of my favorite Mac Apps and that is Spark by Readdle Software. Take a closer look at some of the key features of Spark: Unified Inbox – See all of your important email at a glance, with a unified inbox which knows the difference between a personal email, a notification and a … Do I want to reply to this right away or can I archive it? While in Inbox emails are automatically sorted in bundles for common message types such as purchase receipts and travel updates, Readdle built a ‘Card’ system for Spark, limiting it, however, to three types of messages. For users who don’t have the need for multiple accounts in Evernote and Dropbox, those apps’ pre-installed extensions usually do a better job than Spark’s custom integrations, and I wish there was a way to turn off custom services completely and always use the share sheet. Personalization and feature additions will have to evolve in tandem as Spark grows. This is why, for example, a message snoozed in Mailbox won’t be scheduled in Outlook, and so forth. It’s rated by Apple, who have given it an Editors’ Choice award. It may not be perfect, but it’s what we need today. Kiwi for Gmail: Best Gmail app for Mac. Spark is currently available for iPhone, iPad, Mac and Android. Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This marks Ukrainian developer Readdle’s second full-fledged macOS application after PDF Expert, an excellent document viewer/editor that finally got me to kick the Preview habit for good. Using Spark’s Smart Inbox with cards and smart notifications has been a nice break from Google’s lack of unified inbox, which forces me to constantly jump between accounts and deal with different levels of bundle training. I’m also a fan of the interface adorning the message viewer. Spark by Readdle, a new email app for iPhone released today, wants to enhance email with intelligence and flexibility. Spark for Mac takes most of its user interface cues from the iPad version, which adheres closely to the triple pane layout established by Apple Mail. Twitter: @viticci | Both these inboxes are accessible from the application’s menu. Google has a more granular approach to email categories, and it comes with a handy Low-Priority bundle that, as the name suggests, collects (and can be trained to collect) messages that aren’t important to you. The designation "Best of the App Store" by Apple tells you a lot about the Spark Mail app, which offers numerous useful features. Google also has a similar feature in their Gmail app called Priority Inbox. The set-up of spark mail for Mac can’t be any easier. At the bottom, there’s a tab bar with the usual shortcuts to mark as unread, reply, archive, and actions. At the top, Spark features buttons to pin and snooze a message. I appreciate how Readdle built native integrations through accounts in Spark, but they’re mostly redundant in the age of extensions on iOS 8. Hopefully in the next version. Spark needs an ‘Important’ card. Canary Mail for a security-focused email client. Spark has the potential to a be a financial success for Readdle as well. Read receipts make me even more uncomfortable, and I deactivated them as soon as I knew how they worked. What can I say – sometimes I get emotional about the tiniest details of software. Spark takes a lot of info and gives it plenty of room to breathe. Airmail for a feature-rich alternative to Apple Mail. Spark . Our smartphones and tablets have a much deeper understanding of our schedule, files, location, contacts, and most used apps than they did eight years ago – a knowledge certainly superior to any desktop computer. Like any other customization, you can change the look of the app from the settings or by hitting the appearance button in the sidebar. That’s why I prefer the top widget: shortcuts are always visible in a top toolbar with no menu to expand and the app feels faster to use. Making a modern email client that works with any service implies making that client available on any platform as well, and that’s not where Spark is … Spark wants to make email smarter and flexible. Easy to … When comparing Microsoft Outlook vs Spark, the Slant community recommends Spark for most people. When you’re writing a new message, you can tap & hold in the body field to show the copy & paste menu and then choose ‘Attach’ to insert an attachment from a variety of sources supported by Spark (more on this later). Inbox may have more bundles and Google has the resources to scan your email and present relevant information in Google Now7, but you still have to be willing to use Gmail and be locked into Google’s ecosystem. I’ve used Spark for the past 3 years. The flip side is that, unlike Inbox, Spark doesn’t let me set per-card notifications. The foundation is solid: Readdle has looked at the direction taken by popular email clients in the past few years and leveraged their expertise with integrations in Documents 5 and PDF Expert to make a fresh email client for iPhone that helps you navigate your inbox, find messages quickly, and integrate with cloud services and iOS extensions. I asked my friend Myke (who was also a Spark beta tester) about his email workflow, and I found his perspective unique and helpful when compared to how I work on iOS. If you’re already using Spark for iOS, you’ll absolutely love how easy it is to get started on Mac. Email: viticci@macstories.net. Part of Readdle’s plan with Spark is to extend it with more card types in the future, which are already advertised as ‘coming soon’ in the app’s settings. Customizable toolbar actions, contact avatars, and a sleek new look with support for Dark Mode add up to a winning update for Spark, which remains one of the best free alternatives to Apple Mail. Spark excels at bringing order to the chaos of your inbox and providing tools to help you quickly triage common types of email individually, or in bulk. He founded MacStories in April 2009 and has been writing about Apple since. You can also tap the sender’s email address to copy it, create a new message, or create a new contact for it. This is why I keep read receipts turned off for iMessage and why I hope Apple will add per-contact read receipts in iOS 9. CloudMagic. Customizations. Once the free app has expanded to multiple platforms, I can see how the company could start charging for premium accounts with more ‘smart’ features, additional advanced settings, or perhaps extra cards as in-app purchases. For now. To truly reimagine email – for many, still an essential component of a daily workflow – a mobile client would have to bring the intelligence and versatility of a mobile-first world to the stale nature of email protocols.1 In other words: why can’t email apps be smarter and work on any platform for any email service? Featuring an intuitive user interface that retains what’s great about Apple Mail, Spark for Mac is built with productivity in mind. I’ve started using Spark on my Apple Watch to see what’s new in my Personal card when I have 30 seconds to spare – it’s a nice way to see what’s happening in my email without drowning in it. Starting at $5/month, with an annual option available. I like how this menu looks, but I’d rather have faster access to sections than a nicer layout with cute transitions. But a few iOS features have yet to be implemented, such as connected cloud services and sharing extension support. A long swipe in either direction archives your message. Spark is also inferior to solutions like CloudMagic and Dispatch when it comes to turning emails into tasks. There are a ton of cool stuff in Spark Mail but I won’t go over each one of them. Flexible filtering system. Club MacStories offers exclusive access to extra MacStories content, delivered every week; it’s also a way to support us directly. Spark for collaboration on emails. I could see them being better if there was a way to customize them and get rid of the link, but I’m not sure. I thought that the idea of email on my wrist would be ridiculous, but there’s nothing absurd about acting on important information when it’s convenient. As soon as you start using Spark, the app will analyze messages in your Sent folder and try to recognize signatures you’ve recently used. What I particularly like about Spark’s Watch app is how a complex technology turns into simple, effective interactions on your wrist. Inbox is fast, has push notifications, supports filters, and is trying interesting things with location snooze and inline previews of attachments and YouTube links. Can Readdle’s extendable, David-sized client for iPhone hope to replace the Goliaths of big companies and their walled ecosystems? Perhaps I’ve spent too much time comparing Spark to Google Inbox, but I believe that’s necessary as there are obvious similarities between the two. Edit. The dynamic nature of smart folders married with the intelligence and speed of smart search is a perfect match for Spark. If you choose to have multiple signatures in your list – say, for work and personal email – you can swipe at the bottom of an email to switch between them. I need a mobile-class email client. Thankfully, time zones are properly translated to your locale when you tap on them in Spark. I find that unsettling – and maybe features like this have been possible for years12 in dedicated newsletter services, but there should be a detailed explanation in a consumer product like Spark. Because of the local processing that happens on your device, search is fast at returning results from several years ago – and, even better, it knows how to associate multiple email addresses to the same contact (useful for people who have used multiple addresses over the years). By default, a short swipe left in Spark pins an email while a short swipe right marks it read (this can also be customized). CloudMagic has native integration with Todoist and Wunderlist to make messages actionable and set reminders for them, while Dispatch sports excellent share sheet compatibility and native support for Todoist and other iOS todo apps like OmniFocus and Things. Therefore, it offers three options: no notifications, alerts for every incoming message, and smart notifications. And if you want to quickly act on messages, you can do that as well: scroll, and you’ll find buttons to reply (with dictation, quick replies10, and emoji), archive, snooze, and delete.11. It is indeed preferable a simple mail client that doesn't loop your credentials and all your e-mails through a third party server (rise suspicions especially because that app is free, it s the case of other nice GUI Apple mail replacers like Spark), but 11 euros is a terrible price, no matter how many features it offers. Cards will automatically sort and display messages from all your accounts, and you can even customize a card’s behavior for multiple accounts by tapping & holding its title. I’ve never seen anything like Spark’s smart search and smart folders in email clients for iPhone before, and those two have been nice additions to my workflow. I’m now at the point where, each day, I wake up to at least fifty new emails, some more important than others; I receive about a hundred more before I go to bed – and the cycle starts anew every day. Ideals are important, but I’ll leave this email fight to someone else. 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