Ondrej Holzman According to many, e-mail is an outdated way of communication, yet no one can get rid of it and uses it every day. However, the problem may not be in email as such, although many will certainly disagree, but in the way we use and manage it. I have been using the Mailbox application for over a month and I can say without torture: using e-mail has become much more pleasant and, above all, more efficient.
It must be said in advance that Mailbox is not a revolution. The development team, which bought Dropbox due to its success shortly after the release of the application (then only for iPhone and with a long waiting list), only built a modern e-mail client that combines well-known functions and procedures from other applications, but often completely neglected in e-mail. But until a few weeks ago, it didn't make sense for me to use Mailbox. It existed for a long time only on the iPhone, and it made no sense to manage electronic messages in a diametrically different way on the iPhone than on the Mac.
In August, however, the desktop version of Mailbox finally arrived, with a sticker for now beta, but it is also reliable enough that it immediately replaced my previous email manager: Mail from Apple. I have of course tried other alternatives over the years, but sooner or later I always end up going back to the system app. The others usually did not offer anything essential or ground-breaking in addition.
Managing e-mail differently
In order to understand Mailbox, you need to do one fundamental thing, and that is to start using electronic mail in a different way. The basis of Mailbox is, following the example of popular task books and time management methods, to reach the so-called Inbox Zero, i.e. a state where you will not have any mail in your inbox.
Personally, I approached this method with less apprehension, because I was never used to a clean email inbox, on the contrary, I regularly went through hundreds of received messages, usually unsorted. However, as I found out, Inbox Zero makes sense when properly implemented not only between tasks, but also in e-mail. Mailbox is closely related to tasks - each message is actually a task that you have to complete. Until you do something about it, even if you read it, it will "light up" in your inbox and demand your attention.
You can do a total of four actions with the message: archive it, delete it, postpone it indefinitely/indefinitely, move it to the appropriate folder. Only if you apply one of these steps will the message disappear from the inbox. It's easy, but very effective. A similar management of e-mail could definitely be practiced even without Mailbox, but with it everything is adapted to similar handling and it is a matter of learning a few gestures.
Email inbox as a to-do list
All incoming e-mails go to the inbox, which is transformed into a transfer station in Mailbox. You can read the message, but it does not mean that at that moment it will lose the dot indicating an unread message and will fit in among dozens of other emails. Inbox should contain as few messages as possible and be in anticipation of new ones, without having to wade through old, already solved "cases" when receiving them.
As soon as a new email arrives, it needs to be dealt with. Mailbox offers various procedures, but the most basic ones look roughly like this. An email arrives, you reply to it and then archive it. Archiving means that it will be moved to the Archive folder, which is actually a kind of second inbox with all mail, but already filtered. From the main inbox, in addition to archiving, you can also choose to immediately delete the message, at which point it will be moved to the trash, where you will no longer be able to access it, for example via search, if you do not explicitly wish to do so, and thus you will no longer be bothered by unnecessary mail.
But what makes Mailbox such an effective tool for managing e-mail are the two other options for handling messages in the inbox. You can postpone it for three hours, for the evening, for the next day, for the weekend, or for the next week - at that moment the message disappears from the inbox, only to reappear in it as "new" after the selected time. In the meantime, it's in a special "postponed messages" folder. Snoozing is especially useful when, for example, you can't reply to an email right away, or you need to get back to it in the future.
You can postpone new messages, but also those to which you have already replied. At that moment, Mailbox replaces the role of the task manager and it is up to you how you use its options. Personally, I tried several times to connect the mail client with my own task list (in my case Things) and the solution was never ideal. (You can use different scripts on Mac, but you have no chance on iOS.) At the same time, emails are often directly linked to individual tasks, in order to fulfill which I needed to find the given message, either to answer it or its content.
Although Mailbox does not come with the option of linking an e-mail client with a task list, it at least creates one from itself. Postponed messages will remind you in your inbox as if they were tasks in any to-do list, you just need to learn how to work with them.
And finally, Mailbox also offers traditional "filing". Instead of archiving, you can save each message or conversation to any folder in order to quickly find it later, or you can store related conversations in one place.
Easy to control like alpha and omega
Control is key to the easy and efficient operation of the aforementioned procedures. The basic interface of Mailbox is no different from established e-mail clients: the left panel with a list of individual folders, the middle panel with a list of messages and the right panel with the conversations themselves. Of course, we are talking about the Mac, but Mailbox is not particularly out of place on the iPhone either. The difference is mainly in the control - while in other applications you just click everywhere or use keyboard shortcuts, Mailbox bets on simplicity and intuitiveness in the form of "swiping" gestures.
Equally important is that swiping your finger over the message also transfers it to computers, where it is an equally convenient solution with MacBook touchpads. This is the difference, for example, against Mail.app, where Apple has already started to apply similar principles at least in the iOS version, but on Mac it is still a cumbersome application with old mechanisms.
In Mailbox, you drag a message from left to right, a green arrow appears indicating archiving, at that moment you let go of the message and it is automatically moved to the archive. If you drag a little further, a red cross will appear, it will move the message to the trash. When you drag in the opposite direction, you will either get a menu to snooze the message or put it in the selected folder. In addition, if you regularly receive e-mails that you don't want to deal with during the week, but only at the weekend, you can set their automatic postponement in Mailbox. The so-called "Swiping" rules for automatic archiving, deletion or storage can be set for any messages.
Power in the little things
Instead of complex solutions, Mailbox offers a simple and clean environment that does not distract with any unnecessary elements, but focuses the user primarily on the message content itself. In addition, the way in which the messages are created creates the feeling that you are not even in the mail client, but are sending classic messages. This feeling is particularly enhanced by using Mailbox on the iPhone.
After all, using Mailbox in conjunction with an iPhone and a Mac is incredibly effective, because no client can compete with Dropbox's application, especially in terms of speed. Mailbox does not download complete messages like Mail.app, which it then stores in increasing volumes, but downloads only the absolutely necessary parts of the texts and the rest remains on Google or Apple servers1. This guarantees maximum speed when downloading new messages, which is why there is no button to update the inbox in Mailbox. The application maintains constant contact with the server and delivers the message to the mailbox immediately.
Synchronization between iPhone and Mac also works just as reliably and extremely quickly, which you will recognize, for example, with drafts. You write a message on your Mac and continue it on your iPhone in no time. Drafts are very cleverly handled by Mailbox – they do not appear as separate messages in the drafts folder, but behave as parts of already existing conversations. So if you start writing a reply on your Mac, it will stay there even if you close your computer, and you can continue writing on your iPhone. Just open that conversation. A minor disadvantage is that such drafts only work between Mailboxes, so if you happen to access the mailbox from somewhere else, you won't see the drafts.
There are still obstacles
Mailbox is not a solution for everyone. Many may not be comfortable with the principle of Inbox Zero, but those who practice it, for example when managing tasks, may quickly like Mailbox. The arrival of the Mac version was key to the usability of the application, without it it would not make sense to use Mailbox only on iPhone and/or iPad. In addition, the Mac version has been opened to the general public for several weeks from closed beta testing, although it still retains the beta moniker.
Thanks to this, we can encounter occasional errors in the application, the quality and reliability of searching in old messages is also worse, however, the developers are said to be working hard on this. Just to search the archive, I was sometimes forced to visit the Gmail web interface, because Mailbox didn't even have all the emails downloaded.
However, many will find a fundamental problem when starting Mailbox itself, which currently only supports Gmail and iCloud. If you use Exchange for email, you're out of luck, even if you like Mailbox more. As with some other e-mail clients, however, there is no danger that Dropbox will give up on its application and stop developing it, on the contrary, we can rather look forward to the further development of Mailbox, which promises a more pleasant management of otherwise unpopular e-mail.
- On Google or Apple servers because Mailbox currently only supports Gmail and iCloud accounts. ↩
Um. Until it can do Exchange, it's useless to me.
I use it daily and I am quite satisfied.
But it's true that I always turn on either the native Mail client or the Gmail web interface for searching, because Mailbox is pretty unreliable in that regard (hopefully yet).
Sometimes it also displays the PDF attachment incorrectly, for example from Česká Spořitelna, the payment confirmation that is in PDF is automatically displayed as full text in the body of the email, and the email also appears as without an attachment.
Otherwise, however, he helped me beautifully sort through the pile of emails that I have accumulated over xx years, so I am satisfied. Linking multiple accounts also works great.
I also use it on iPad/iPhone and I'm waiting for Exchange, so for now Airmail Beta on Mac, which I warmly recommend.
Unfortunately, with that restriction on Gmail, it's somewhat useless if you're using corporate mail...
I have a question, is it possible to sort mail (even manually) into different folders, i.e. e.g. by addressees or manually created folders?
If not, does anyone know of one?
I'm mainly concerned with the iOS environment.
Thanks
Yes, using filters. You create mailboxes with the names of recipients and or groups and using filters, where you enter parameters for each extra filter, then e-mails go where you want and are sorted automatically.
I'm sorry my mistake. I forgot to say that Gmail and iCloud are not enough for me.
I would like something universal. I tried boxer and he can't do it.
I think the filters in Mail.app on Mac can be applied to any mailbox. But they are executed only when the application is launched and emails are loaded (they do not run on the server)
Not only because of Exchange, I stay with the system Mail and the MailHub add-on – the add-on will significantly help with sorting and organizing messages and can even set a reminder for a specific message. Actually, it can do the features described here and something more. In fact, I still have to find an add-on that would display email attachments separately from the body of messages and the ability to open Word and Excel documents directly in the client window with the option to copy the content (as is the case with MS Outlook) and I would have nothing that I would miss in Mail: -)
Isn't there something similar to MailHub for iOS?
The beginning with this app was rather awkward for me. But when we were able to sort the emails in a short time, I'm starting to enjoy this app.
It just bothers me that I can't set up my other e-mails that I have assigned to gmail during odes.
very slow on iphone 4 (iOS 7). In contrast, the classic Mail.app is super fast. So I reverted back to the classic which is tuned with the system.
Is there a way to work with Flagged emails from Mail.app in Mailbox? It would be useful for me to achieve sync with a relatively new folder that would heal the flagged role. In the current workflow, I sort emails into flagged and last
It seems to me that the app eats quite a lot of battery (ip5s with ios7). Does anyone have a similar experience?
why do I see 2700 emails above the icon? can't the app tell the difference between read and unread?
This is the inbox zero principle. A message is considered resolved only when it is moved to the archive. There is no point in distinguishing between read and unread messages, but only counting the messages in the inbox.
I've been using the app for about a month and my initial enthusiasm is gradually turning to disappointment. The idea is great, but the app is still quite unsolicited. I am especially bothered by the following – when there is a large number of emails, it is incredibly slow on the iPhone 4s with iOS 7.1, when I click on a message in a thread with a large amount of conversation, it randomly starts scrolling somewhere in the middle of the text, and I cannot attach any attachments on the ipad air (after clicking the appropriate button nothing happens). The highlight today was when I worked on my email on the iPhone, saved it in the draft, returned to it after some time on the iPad, finished writing, sent it and then found out that the draft had been sent, without additional edits. I'm pretty sure I sent the whole message though. So I'm looking for a proven alternative. Has anyone solved a similar problem?