[HN Gopher] Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox
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Show HN: Shortwave: Enjoy Your Inbox
I'm thrilled to finally be able to show everyone what we've been
working on for the last 2 years. We're re-inventing the email
experience to help you email smarter and faster, so you can get
more done, and maybe even actually _enjoy_ your inbox. When we
launched Firebase here 10 years ago, HN was tough but fair, and I
expect no less this time around! I hope you'll check out what we've
built and share your feedback. I'll be around here all day and am
happy to answer any questions. Let us know what you think!
Author : mayop100
Score : 129 points
Date : 2022-02-15 17:06 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.shortwave.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.shortwave.com)
| [deleted]
| agentdrtran wrote:
| Why no delete button?
| mayop100 wrote:
| It's coming! Very top of our to-do list!
| BasilPH wrote:
| I would be really interested in this if it had a focus mode, that
| hides e-mails and delivers them to me in batches. I loved
| Tempo[1], but unfortunately they ran out of money, which shows
| how tough this space is.
|
| [1]: https://www.yourtempo.co
| rockwotj wrote:
| Shortwaver here! We've had a few former tempo users switch over
| to Shortwave and are enjoying the product. We have a few
| features with bundles that we really want to build that would
| allow you to replicate a Tempo like workflow of triaging your
| email in batches.
| etcet wrote:
| I am one of those Google Inbox refugees and this definitely
| piques my interest. The pricing does not really make sense for
| personal user ($9/mo for a email client).
|
| Could you elaborate on the free plan 90 day limit? If I snooze an
| email for 100 days, will I ever see it? Please try to convince me
| that this limit will not be annoying enough that I should take
| the risk of linking my Gmail account.
| mayop100 wrote:
| Your email will still come back, and you'll see it in your
| inbox, but you won't see it in _search results_. And emails
| from more than 90 days before you signed up won 't be imported.
| dash2 wrote:
| I think the problem is that when you need to search for an
| email, you really need to know if you got anything or not.
| And for most of us, we can't wade through the 100s of emails
| we get a day. So this would really cut me off from my old
| email, which I think is a showstopper. Otherwise, it looks
| nice and interesting.
| buttocks wrote:
| Feedback: Email is _just fine_. It is mature and should just be
| left alone. It is not something that should be reinvented.
|
| The next thing should _not be email at all_. It should be
| something fundamentally different, not another iteration of
| email.
|
| Seeing some downvote criticism on this comment, let me clarify.
|
| I understand the value in working on an established set of
| federated protocols. Everyone has an email address and this is a
| very convenient way to start. But it was invented decades ago and
| has had many kludges bolted on to it to deal with problems or to
| very slightly improve the user experience. Who's instead going to
| be more bold and go for a greenfield project to do asynchronous
| personal communications?
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| I don't get the down-votes on this comment either. (Other then
| maybe HN is not really the place where folks like to "leave
| things alone...".)
|
| Email is a fact of life and it is not going anywhere, but in
| general I would prefer communicating over the Matrix protocol.
| There is plenty of innovation and development still needed in
| the messaging space, but continuing to view email as the core
| technology to build on top of is unnecessarily limiting. (Note
| that this is not a criticism of the Shortwave team as we all
| need great email clients! I am just concurring that there are
| protocols that are fundamentally better than email...)
| sigmaprimus wrote:
| I wonder if this is true or not, personally I don't use email
| enough to invest in a product like this ATM but have been
| kicking the idea of starting a home based business up for a
| while now and think something like this would fit quite well.
|
| Saying Email is just fine or whatever is along the lines of the
| re-inventing the wheel argument yet every once in a while
| someone does exactly that and the world is a better place for
| it!
|
| * _Edit*_
|
| The one thing that makes me a bit nervous is signing up with my
| google account, I wish there was more information on the
| security behind doing this, in other words am I handing the
| keys to the kingdom over to a 3rd party by doing this? Is my
| google account subject to any vulnerabilities this app may or
| may not have? These questions make me reluctant to "Sign Up"
| especially for a trial.
| o_____________o wrote:
| Always eager to try new mail clients. when is multi-account
| support landing?
| rockwotj wrote:
| Shortwaver here - we'd love you have you give Shortwave a try!
| We already support multi-account for our iOS app. We would love
| to bring this to the web/PWA soon!
| groby_b wrote:
| I'll be blunt: Anything that promises me a "more enjoyable"
| inbox, and then advertises with cat pictures and what-do-we-do-
| for-lunch threads is missing the mark for me.
|
| I don't _want_ more fluff in my inbox. I especially don 't want
| anything that helps people "email faster". It's not productive,
| it just makes more noise. E-mail is a medium for half-baked
| thoughts quickly dashed off to put them on somebody else's plate.
|
| Find a way to _reduce_ e-mail, to help people write more well
| thought out messages, and I 'll be absolutely delighted.
| mayop100 wrote:
| Keep in mind that the alternative to sending an email is not
| sending nothing... it's usually to send a text, or a Slack
| message, or something else that is even less thought through.
| We try to consolidate all of your communications in one place
| and give you the tools to write thoughtful things.
|
| Don't be confused by the fun examples. Everyone likes cats
| (those are my actual cats) so we put them in the post, but you
| certainly can send more important emails :)
| groby_b wrote:
| I didn't say it was an _easy_ problem to solve. Any
| hypothetical fix to the dumpster fire that is my inbox would
| need to increase both friction of sending in the first place
| and the value of using the tool anyways.
|
| And so, no, I'm not confused by the fun examples. I'm fairly
| clear that they're actively detrimental to me. (I may just
| not be your audience)
| smallerfish wrote:
| I realize building on gmail gives you an acquisition audience :)
| and also that hosting your own email infrastructure is hard, but
| I think it'd be a far more compelling offering if this was
| standalone. Google have created the opportunity by cutting the
| free tier for grandfathered plans - lots of people are looking
| for alternatives to gmail. In all honesty I'll probably pay $6/mo
| to gmail for now, but I'm unlikely to stick with them long term.
| Come up with a compelling standalone platform that's better than
| Hey or Fastmail and I'll be interested.
| owaislone wrote:
| It doesn't have to be one or the other. It can start with Gmail
| and later offer a hosted solution as well.
| Hard_Space wrote:
| For me the killer feature would be to entirely withhold incoming
| mail from specified email addresses or email domains until
| weekday working hours. No bolded 'pending' folder, no indication
| that you're being communicated with by business concerns in your
| leisure time...I'd pay an extra fee every year just for that one
| feature.
| jwngr wrote:
| Agreed! This is definitely on our list and we've got big plans
| here. Added your +1 to our internal task tracking this feature
| :)
| ehaughee wrote:
| Check out https://www.hey.com/. I've found once I categorized
| the majority of my regular senders to either go to paper trail
| or feed, I get so little actual mail. Then when I want to go
| see my feed for Patagonia's latest marketing mail, I can. No
| number says how many are there, nothing is bold. Just a click
| or two and I'm looking at my feed. It can even auto-delete
| after 30 days if you want.
|
| Despite the fact that it may sound like it, I am not affiliated
| with Hey, just a happy user.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| It seems so crazy to me that no major mail app has figured this
| out. Why can't I mute my work email after work hours?
| illnewsthat wrote:
| You can do that in Outlook.
|
| https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/manage-your-
| notif...
| lucb1e wrote:
| Just as one data point, this looks great but there is no way I
| could use a web mail client for security reasons (as a security
| consultant, we use PGP a lot and need a local email provider). In
| the comments I see it only works with Google servers to boot. I'm
| not sure if this will ever be for me as well, but I'd love
| something like paying a small fee for a version of Thunderbird
| with one or more of these features patched in.
| jwngr wrote:
| Shortwave cofounder here. We totally get that. Gmail is just
| the start for us. We plan to support more providers in the
| future and even become our own provider long-term. Read more
| about our company mission on our blog [1].
|
| [1] https://www.shortwave.com/blog/future-of-messaging/
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > Inbox Zero might be impractical every day, but Inbox Organized
| happens without breaking a sweat.
|
| My experience is the absolute opposite. Organising mails is a
| strange game, and the only winning move is not to play.
|
| I get the information out of the emails as soon as I can, and put
| it into a system that is actually manageable.
|
| GTD had it right from the start. Thank you David Allen.
|
| You want harsh feedback ? I'll never pay for your system, because
| it would lead to more work for me on the long run, not less.
| Emails are not todo list: todo list are mostly signal, while
| emails are mostly noise. Your system organize noise, and
| automatically. This has no value to me.
|
| But you could build a system that I actually need. An inbox that
| I would enjoy.
|
| Indeed, I don't need a system that help me organise my various
| sources of informations and tasks. I have so many of them that
| would be terrible even if it worked, anyway. Managing 20
| organized systems in parallel is hell.
|
| I need systems that make it easy to extract the relevant
| informations from them, and put the result in one central
| organized place for action, and another one for archive. A system
| that filters noise, and get me in control. That's it.
|
| Eventually, my life is just that: being, doing and knowing. I
| don't need a system for the first. I don't want more than 2
| systems for the 2 last.
| [deleted]
| joefigura wrote:
| I've been using Shortwave in Alpha for about five months and I
| think you're reacting far too strongly to one line in the blog
| post. The product does a bunch of things that encourage an
| Inbox-zero workflow. Emails are organized as a to-do list, and
| the archive feature is way more prominent than in Gmail, so the
| most natural workflow is to go down your inbox and check things
| off. Most of the organization described happens automatically.
| And the organization helps getting to zero - all of the
| confluence notifications I get, for instance, are grouped in a
| single thread and I can scan and archive them quickly.
|
| I get to inbox zero 2-3 times a week, and that wasn't happening
| before when I was using the Gmail client.
|
| > I need systems that make it easy to extract the relevant
| informations from them, and put the result in one central
| organized place for action, and another one for archive. A
| system that filters noise, and get me in control. That's it.
|
| Yes! In my experience Shortwave is better at this than the
| client I was using previously. I think it actually addresses
| some of your issues with email.
| scrozier wrote:
| I think GP is correct. This essentially takes the idea of a
| lean to-do list and constantly barrages it with junk (email).
| I've used the Get Things Done ideas for years with a plain
| ol' email account and Microsoft To-Do. Each does its job
| well. When you try to make one thing do multiple jobs, it's
| often done poorly in both.
| noirbot wrote:
| This is also just a complete misread of the original Inbox Zero
| talk, and something Merlin Mann complains about every time he
| tries a new email app that does confetti when you hit "inbox
| zero". He himself is a deep GTD/David Allen acolyte anyway, but
| at this point people's misread of what "inbox zero" means is
| too mainstream and cargo culted.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| It's a modern Sysyphus scenario. I could do it, if I did
| nothing else, and it would not contribute to my doing any
| useful work and I'd be at the bottom of the hill tomorrow
| morning.
| user3939382 wrote:
| I've been keeping my inbox perfectly organized for years, and
| it is my todo list.
|
| If I want to add an item that didn't originate from a third-
| party email, I email myself.
|
| A pin/star means it's waiting for me to be done. No pin/star
| means it came in but I haven't assessed it yet, these tend to
| be on top.
|
| I get email notices for voicemail so it's a central funnel.
|
| I extensively use filters/labels to keep automated mail out of
| my main inbox. I aggressively unsubscribe from anything non-
| essential.
|
| Everyone has their own preferences but this works great for me.
| jdauriemma wrote:
| > Organising mails is a strange game, and the only winning move
| is not to play.
|
| I laughed out loud at this, because you are 100% correct.
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| How about a nice game of chess?
| alberth wrote:
| Love the War Games reference.
|
| https://getyarn.io/yarn-
| clip/5d7f5bc3-4ceb-4d18-87f7-a146f9c...
| xyst wrote:
| So true. I found that if an issue is really important, then
| they will find a way to contact you or it resolves
| automatically. If I really need to get a context, I'll search
| for the recipient's name and get instant context on the
| "issue".
|
| My solution is just to never delete any e-mails. Inbox zero
| is a complete waste of time for me.
| bsimpson wrote:
| This layout and color palette are strongly evocative of Inbox.
| Without knowing anything about your company, I'd presume you're
| trying to recreate Inbox.
|
| Is that intentional?
| mayop100 wrote:
| Many of us were Inbox users and miss it! We're trying to do
| more than Inbox did, but we were certainly inspired be it :)
| fareesh wrote:
| People have more than 1 unread email? In the regular inbox?
| really?
| brandonmenc wrote:
| My inboxes are all in the 100,000s of messages.
|
| I have a few broad search filters (example, at work: internal
| email vs outside email.) I star or bookmark things I need to
| come back to (and then un-star them afterwards.) I use text
| search to find everything else.
|
| I treat it like a giant single chat history.
|
| I have never not been able to find an email when I need to, and
| I never miss a message.
|
| Life is too short to waste time trying to maintain "inbox
| zero."
| gab007 wrote:
| Not for me, but.. A honest question - now, when G suite legacy
| free edition is closing down, here's a chance to offer a service
| that's not "piggy-backing" on gmail (or any other provider).
|
| You could "re-create Inbox" by providing email hosting with
| same/similar features - already lined up on your page.
| martin-adams wrote:
| Wouldn't that be a huge effort though, as you'd have to
| essentially implement deliverability and spam all from scratch,
| all while trying to convince gmail users to switch. I tried Hey
| and found that it just wasn't going to work for me as they
| wanted to 'own' my email.
| creeble wrote:
| Interesting, can you expand on why Hey 'owned' your email? I
| guess no access outside their app?
| mosselman wrote:
| I am trying this out and I like the grouping and 'marking is
| done' feature. To be honest, you can't do much worse than the
| default gmail interface and ui, there is so much low hanging
| fruit there.
|
| What I liked less is the tiny print and tiny UI elements of
| shortwave in general. I 'solved' this by zooming in a lot, but in
| general it is hard to see at a glance who e-mails are from, which
| seems like a pretty important thing.
|
| The focus of the design seems to be about being pretty, not being
| functional as much as I'd have liked. Again, better than gmail in
| aesthetics, but the typography could use some attention.
| rpadovani wrote:
| > We collect information that alone or in combination with other
| information in our possession could be used to identify you
| ("Personal Data") as follows:
|
| > Email Data: we collect your email address and the contents of
| any emails and messages you draft or receive in our Service, as
| well as associated metadata (such as the time sent).
|
| I understand the technical need, but no thanks, I would prefer
| some local client. Especially given that:
|
| > In certain circumstances we may share the categories of
| Personal Data described above with the following categories of
| third parties without further notice to you: [...]
|
| > we may share Personal Data with vendors and service providers,
| including providers of hosting services, payment processors,
| email communication software and email newsletter services,
| customer relationship management and customer support services,
| and web analytics services.
|
| So you (could) share my (business) emails with more or less
| everybody in the world?
|
| Hard pass.
| [deleted]
| mayop100 wrote:
| [Founder & CEO here] We will _never_ sell your data, track you,
| or advertise to you. We only share this information as
| necessary to provide the service (for example, by storing it on
| Google Cloud Platform).
| shanxS wrote:
| Is it possible to store the data, extracted from my data,
| your service needs in my Google Cloud somewhere or will it
| expose your secret sauce?
| samwillis wrote:
| Always great to see people innovating on email clients, everyone
| is different and would have they own best way to manage their
| email for themselves. So any new option is always good.
|
| Out of interest, you have started with Gmail which is
| understandable but do you have planes to support order email
| services or even just plain IMAP?
|
| I know Gmail is complicated as it doesn't really do IMAP properly
| and so it better to use their api, so you have to chose one of
| the other to start. But I hope you have plans to support IMAP.
| mayop100 wrote:
| We would very much like to support other services in the
| future.
|
| Rather than using IMAP, we integrate with Gmail's APIs from our
| servers. This allows us to have a new client-server protocol
| that supports a bunch of new stuff -- like faster real-time
| updates, better latency compensation and offline handling,
| bundled inboxes, more interesting triage flows, emoji
| reactions, presence, etc.
|
| The downside of this is obviously that we have to do a customer
| integration with Gmail to do this. But fortunately it's not too
| complex, and we intend to support other services in the future.
| And maybe, in the _long term_, improve the protocols so this
| integration can be more standard.
| jtsiskin wrote:
| It's not a business critique at all; it's just always a
| little sad to see awesome tools built that only work for the
| dominant player in the space. Just another few inches in the
| moat which makes it harder for an new startup to compete.
|
| It may make total sense and be the most rational choice for
| your business, it's just unfortunate various systems have
| made this the case
| dudus wrote:
| I must say I loved it. In 10min I cleared my inbox which I was
| postponing for a few weeks.
|
| I actually love that this is tied to Gmail. The integration means
| I can move back at any time by just deleting my shortwave account
| so it's very low risk for me. Also it's top notch, it imported
| all my aliases and signatures.
| rockwotj wrote:
| Thank you for the kind words!
| rabscuttler wrote:
| This looks great, congrats - it's great to see innovation and
| creativity in the email space.
|
| I've just got through my first week with Superhuman, which I've
| found really productive, particularly the keyboard shortcuts.
| Your marketing copy seemed to make a few references to that
| product if I'm not mistaken. Aside from the price ($30/m for
| Superhuman vs $9/m for Shortwave) would you save me the trouble
| and outline what you see as key differentiators?
|
| It seems like you're targeting enterprise / teams which looks
| great for a work account but less useful for a personal one.
| jwngr wrote:
| Thanks! Our keyboard shortcuts are pretty extensive too [1].
| Let us know if there's a shortcut missing that you'd like to
| see!
|
| Beyond price, there are a handful of examples [2], but I'll
| focus on two big things that set Shortwave apart:
|
| (1) An opinionated triage flow. Bundles group together related
| senders to make your inbox more scannable, while our triage
| actions (Pin / Snooze / Done) and drag 'n drop allow you to
| treat your inbox like the to-do list that it is. [3] We lean
| into the fact that inbox zero is not a realistic goal for many
| email users.
|
| (2) Team features. We bring Slack-like channels into your email
| inbox and give you the notification controls to make that
| possible. [4] Shortwave eliminates the boundary between your
| team and the rest of the world. And things like emoji
| reactions, mentions, and a chat-like interface make it feel
| unlike any email client you've used before.
|
| [1] https://www.shortwave.com/docs/references/shortcuts/
|
| [2] https://www.shortwave.com/features/
|
| [3] https://www.shortwave.com/docs/guides/101/
|
| [4] https://www.shortwave.com/docs/guides/team/
| owaislone wrote:
| The product looks great. One question: does it sync everything to
| shortwave servers? If I download the desktop app, will everything
| still be synced to the servers? I'd be fine with most of my email
| being copied by a service like this but thinking of emails like
| OTPs, account resets, bank/credit card and social security
| authorizations makes me a bit too uncomfortable. I wish this had
| a denylist of some sort to never some sync mail.
| mayop100 wrote:
| Good question. Yes, we do sync your mail to our servers. We
| need to do this to provide many of the features we have.
|
| We are taking security very seriously and are doing everything
| we can to dot our i's and cross our t's. Our engineering team
| is ex-Google / ex-Firebase engineers with lots of experience
| building high security, high reliability data systems at
| Google.
| owaislone wrote:
| Can I request a feature? I'd love Shortwave to ignore a
| specific folder or label in Gmail. I can then label stuff I
| deem extra sensitive and it would never leave Gmail. This
| would give a lot of people peace of mind when trying
| Shortwave.
| owaislone wrote:
| Just tried it and have a bug report: back button is
| completely broken. I opened a category/group then openened an
| email, clicked mouse side button (which is bound to back
| button of browser) and it took me to a completely random
| email thread. No matter how many times I try it, it takes me
| back to the same thread. I never opened the thread before I
| was taken there by the back button.
| scrozier wrote:
| I know that people use their inboxes as to-do lists, but I no of
| no one who likes it or does it well. Use a plain ol' email
| account and a decent to-do list. I've been doing it for years and
| get to inbox zero daily. Feels so good. :-) Putting lipstick on
| the email/to-do list pig is a step in the wrong direction.
| peakaboo wrote:
| We need this but not for Google. What's the point of a nice inbox
| when you are getting spied on and sold to advertisers?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| One has nothing to do with the other. I would like a nice inbox
| for my Gmail, despite not caring about being spied on and my
| info being sold. I'm not alone, judging by the amount of folks
| that wax nostalgic about Google's Inbox.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| It seems like an absolutely critical flaw to build a business
| entirely dependent on another company's proprietary service,
| which also is technically a competitor.
| rockwotj wrote:
| Shortwaver here! There are a number of other companies that
| have started out exclusively on Gmail like us. It's also a risk
| to stand up a new SMTP service while trying to stay off SMTP
| blacklists, greylists, and keeping mail out of spam filters.
| Building on Gmail has allowed us to prove out our product
| market fit more quickly without spending as much time on
| getting these deliverability issues solved. However, in the
| future we'd love to have our own SMTP service as an option in
| addition to Gmail.
| [deleted]
| jbverschoor wrote:
| No thank you.. all these apps either want gmail way too many
| gmail permissions, and/or are hosted.
|
| I know the other solution is (currently) IMAP, but that's just
| fine.. You could use the messageids to create the extra
| functionality. Some solutions use IMAP folders, which is a pain
| in the ass. Also... I'm trying to get rid of gmail lol
|
| Congrats on launching though, but it's not for me.
| TIPSIO wrote:
| Love email apps! Congrats.
|
| Honestly, it will be really hard get me to leave Front. I have
| never used a more productive app for my personal workflow -
| especially with a team.
|
| This is seriously super awesome though. Some misc.
| feedback/comments:
|
| - Front has Team Comments (private and between email messages)
| that are pure gold for collaborating responses and sharing drafts
| / notes.
|
| - What you all have here with Grouping or "Bundles" is top shelf.
| Especially the interface and speed of things. I actually tried to
| get Front to add this in some one off survey two years ago. This
| allows such a better UX layer of organization than Tags/Folders
| or Merging emails. Seriously bravo and perfect.
|
| - It's not clear if there's a way to manually create a Bundle.
| For example, I once asked a client to send me 15 photos, they
| sent it over 15 emails. I would like to manually "Bundle" and
| merge those emails basically forever. Edit: Apparently you can
| drag to do this... superb.
|
| - Team Inboxes are really useful and I am trying to figure out if
| Bundles kind of replaces this.
|
| - Don't care for Workspaces at all from what I can tell. Maybe my
| team is too small though. Just don't care for chat that much /
| use other stuff.
|
| - Beyond Bundles, an almost Trello style organization for flow on
| "Bundles" could be useful as another layer. Attaching a
| screenshot of how I do it in Front from start of project to end
| of project life: https://imgur.com/a/eJ73oDF
|
| - Front is a total mess when it comes to Tags vs Folders and
| Emojis. What you all have here is really gorgeous. Prop to design
| team as you can tell this was extremely thoughtful.
|
| - Personally don't care for the gif or emoji stuff since email
| (to me at least) has always been a formal form of communication.
| mayop100 wrote:
| Thanks for the detailed thoughts! And for the kind words in
| here :)
|
| Re: team features -- we have Workspaces and Channels that let
| you solve many of the same use cases as Front. Check out our
| guide here including a quick video intro:
| https://www.shortwave.com/docs/guides/team/
|
| To clarify -- while you can use Channels / Workspaces for
| general team chat, the main purpose is to _help you collaborate
| on emails_ , like Front does. Front is more focused on the
| support use case. We're trying to build something a bit more
| general purpose, for people like founders, PMs, UX researchers,
| biz dev, etc to bring visibility to their external emails to
| their teammates.
|
| You can manually group threads with drag-and-drop to create
| custom bundles today. You can't _yet_ have those filters apply
| to future emails, but we 'd very much like to do this (and a
| bunch of other powerful bundle features).
| derekzhouzhen wrote:
| Neat. However, is Gmail backing this? Otherwise, Gmail could mess
| it up badly any time, right?
| dang wrote:
| > When we launched Firebase here 10 years ago,
|
| _Show HN: Firebase, a scalable real-time backend_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3832877 - April 2012 (137
| comments)
|
| (I'm marking this off topic so it will go to the bottom of the
| page and hopefully not distract from the new thing.)
| edf13 wrote:
| Why do we need/want inbox zero?
|
| Isn't that a false promise of modern life? Inbox zero isn't
| possible or even necessary
| dmd wrote:
| I fail to hit zero fewer than three times a month. It's
| absolutely possible.
| jwngr wrote:
| "Inbox Zero" is 100% not the goal with Shortwave and you won't
| see it in our marketing. Not to be too cheeky, but "Inbox
| Organized" is the goal. We want to help you treat your inbox
| like the to-do list that it is, not necessarily smash every
| email that enters your inbox. Read more about our workflow in
| our docs. [1]
|
| [1] https://www.shortwave.com/docs/guides/101/
| ssss11 wrote:
| Yeah I've given up on inbox zero. Inbox is my filing cabinet
| and that just works.
| brimble wrote:
| I've found it's both achievable and a worthwhile way to operate
| _if and only if_ nearly all of your emails come from humans,
| and not very many of them.
|
| As soon as transactional emails and marketing mailer scripts
| start to take over, or long-running CC noise, it's hopeless and
| fighting it's not worth the time. Forget about it and rely on
| search. Maybe auto-categorize some senders you want to break
| through the noise, but anything past that isn't a good use of
| time (though it may be satisfying, which is enough
| justification if you're into that kind of thing)
|
| Failing that, skimming the inbox for important messages you
| missed then hitting archive-all at the end of the day can do
| it, but it's sort-of cheating and I'm not sure how valuable it
| is. Periodically auto-archiving anything older than X hours can
| be nice, but won't (often) get you to Inbox Zero.
| josephwegner wrote:
| I'll add in a vote for IMAP support. I am anti-Google in almost
| all regards. Currently I use FastMail as my email provider, and
| Mail.app as my client. I pay for FastMail, and similarly I would
| very gladly pay for a good cross-platform mail client. I'd sign
| up for a yearly subscription, even!
|
| I do recognize that IMAP is not as rich a data source as GMails
| API, but I'd encourage you to not feel limited by that. I don't
| mind using hosted email, as long as the revenue source is coming
| from my wallet, rather than ads.
|
| I even had spec'd out building an OSS self-hosted server that
| ingested email via IMAP and then stored metadata in its own
| database - this had the benefit of being as rich as GMail APIs,
| but me as a user still getting to own my data.
| lf-non wrote:
| There is mailspring which I have been using for some time - it
| has a nice modern interface which imho is much better than
| thunderbird as well as most of the web interfaces of self
| hosted email. Based on electron though, so ymmv.
|
| https://getmailspring.com/
| jlkuester7 wrote:
| +1 for MailSpring! It is easily the best desktop email
| application I have ever used!
| bin_bash wrote:
| It took me a few tries to move off of Gmail onto FastMail and I
| still miss the Gmail iPhone app. I haven't found anything I
| prefer.
|
| I suspect I'm not the only one and that a good desktop + mobile
| app would increase the number of people migrating away from
| Google. I frankly never would've seen myself use a third party
| client while I was still on Gmail.
| mayop100 wrote:
| Noted!
| billyjobob wrote:
| Fastmail created https://jmap.io/ as an open alternative to the
| GMail API.
| bberenberg wrote:
| I think the challenge I have with all of these email apps is
| always consistent. Gmail is a foundation, I use tools on top of
| it. Especially once I hop to mobile, do you have a clear strategy
| for integration with common extensions like HubSpot?
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