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Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail

mimestream.com

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Re: Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail

#41

Post by tomovo »

njhaveri wrote: post #2

Hi HN! In the past, I spent over 7 years working on Apple Mail, and today I am really excited to share a new email client I'm building: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail. Mimestream is written in Swift, and uses AppKit+SwiftUI for a clean, stock appearance. It's designed to be fast, lightweight, and use a minimal amount of disk space. Mimestream's advantages over using the Gmail web interface includes…

Screenshot on homepage shows Finder menubar, although the app is active. Looks a bit off.

Re: Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail

#43

Post by njhaveri »

tta wrote: post #35
caillou wrote: post #22

I have been using the gmail web app exclusively for one reason: I use the following Chrome Plugin to convert Markdown to HTML emails: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-here/?hl=... Did you ever consider adding a Markdown to HTML email option? This is especially helpful when sending formatted code around!

This is doable via a shell script (+ pandoc): # 1. Put markdown on clipboard # 2. Convert to hex out=$(pbpaste | pandoc -f markdown -t html -s | hexdump -ve '1/1 "%.2x"') # 3. Convert to an applescript data class osascript -e "set the clipboard to «data HTML${out}»" # 4. Paste rich HTML You can use something like Alfred or Keyboard Maestro to trigger that script with a keyboard shortcut.

Very clever! Thanks for sharing!

As a programmer, having native markdown support in the app is something I wish for almost every day (especially for code blocks). It's something I plan to add.

Re: Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail

#44

Post by darklion »

vslira wrote: post #21
darklion wrote: post #11

The application itself looks absolutely amazing, and the authors should be commended for it. That said, the FAQ mentions that the for-profit model is designed to avoid ads in the client and to "take a strong stance on privacy", which is a little bit disingenuous given that the client exclusively relies on an email service provided by the world's largest advertiser and email data miner. Yes, Mimestream itself isn't us…

> In order to build a sustainable business that can continue to innovate and improve our products, Mimestream will eventually transition to being a paid app. Come on, they're explicitly saying that they're charging for the service. It's pretty clear that when they're talking about privacy the caveat is that they won't suck your data into another sink (them) _other than google itself_, being the provider of gmail and…

> I'm all for privacy and informing the user but they're hardly playing word games here.

I'm not saying they're playing word games. I'm saying the strong ethical stance on privacy is diluted by the underlying service they built their product on.

If I built a new automobile refueling station that dispensed diesel and gasoline, but used the fact that the pumps themselves ran on solar energy to claim "I strongly believe in 100% renewable energy", well yes, in one way you're living up to your ideals, but in another larger way, you're really not.

Re: Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail

#45

Post by m_b »

njhaveri wrote: post #17
m_b wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi, i browsed through the website but didn’t find a comprehensive comparison with Apple Mail. Why not just using the default macOS email client?

There are two main differences: 1. Mimestream uses the Gmail API (instead of IMAP), so it supports more Gmail features: Gmail categorized inboxes, first-class labeling support (apply multiple, change color, etc), use all the Gmail aliases you have set up, use the signatures you set up in Gmail, and conduct server-side searches with Gmail search operators. A lot more is coming on this front, as the app is still in dev…

Thanks for answering, i have a Gmail account that i barely use and i didn’t knew about all these features.

Re: Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail

#46

Post by njhaveri »

wkirby wrote: post #42

Looks great. Missing 4 Gmail features that I dearly miss from the web UI: - Snooze - Scheduled Send - Undo send - Missing attachment warnings ("you said see attached but have no attachments, did you mean to attach something?")

Undo Send is definitely planned! The missing attachment warning is a great idea, I just added this to the backlog.

Unfortunately, Gmail API support is lacking for Snooze: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/109952618, but I will eventually add the ability to do a Mimestream-local snooze (which makes more sense once there is an iOS companion app)

Same for Scheduled Send, see https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/140922183 :(

Re: Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail

#47

Post by wkirby »

njhaveri wrote: post #46
wkirby wrote: post #42

Looks great. Missing 4 Gmail features that I dearly miss from the web UI: - Snooze - Scheduled Send - Undo send - Missing attachment warnings ("you said see attached but have no attachments, did you mean to attach something?")

Undo Send is definitely planned! The missing attachment warning is a great idea, I just added this to the backlog. Unfortunately, Gmail API support is lacking for Snooze: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/109952618 , but I will eventually add the ability to do a Mimestream-local snooze (which makes more sense once there is an iOS companion app) Same for Scheduled Send, see https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/…

Thanks for the prompt reply. Will Mimestream-local snooze necessitate introducing an intermediate server to track across platforms, or will you use something like iCloud sync to keep track?

Re: Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail

#48

Post by njhaveri »

tomovo wrote: post #41
njhaveri wrote: post #2

Hi HN! In the past, I spent over 7 years working on Apple Mail, and today I am really excited to share a new email client I'm building: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail. Mimestream is written in Swift, and uses AppKit+SwiftUI for a clean, stock appearance. It's designed to be fast, lightweight, and use a minimal amount of disk space. Mimestream's advantages over using the Gmail web interface includes…

Screenshot on homepage shows Finder menubar, although the app is active. Looks a bit off.

Oops. Thanks for pointing this out, it's fixed now!

Re: Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail

#49

Post by njhaveri »

wkirby wrote: post #47
njhaveri wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Undo Send is definitely planned! The missing attachment warning is a great idea, I just added this to the backlog. Unfortunately, Gmail API support is lacking for Snooze: https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/109952618 , but I will eventually add the ability to do a Mimestream-local snooze (which makes more sense once there is an iOS companion app) Same for Scheduled Send, see https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/…

Thanks for the prompt reply. Will Mimestream-local snooze necessitate introducing an intermediate server to track across platforms, or will you use something like iCloud sync to keep track?

Definitely no intermediary server with access to your account. This idea would be to use iCloud to sync a set of snoozed server IDs, and only "hide" those messages from within the app, leaving those messages actually in the inbox on the server. No message data going into iCloud, either.

Re: Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail

#50

Post by pantulis »

This is great, I'm a heavy G Suite user (I have folders with tens of thousands of messages) and I'm enjoying the beta: it scrolls like butter!!!! (or has teh speedy, as greybeard Mac users would say)

I miss some things, like keyboard shortcuts for jumping to a specific label, superstars, search items suggestion (for specific GMail filters like has:attachment), but overall this is really good, and honoring the label colors is an excellent touch.

Some more advanced features that come to mind would be multiple tabs, deeper Calendar integration to display inline your schedule when receiving .ics attachment.

What will the pricing model be?

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