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Airmail review - finally an adequate replacement for Sparrow

Michal Ždanský
26

When an e-mail client came to users for the first time Sparrow, it was a bit of an epiphany. Perfect integration with Gmail, great design and friendly user interface - this was something that many users were looking for in vain in other applications, be it Mail.app, Outlook or maybe Postbox. But then came the morning. Google bought Sparrow and practically killed it. And although the app is still functional and can be purchased in the App Store, it is abandonware that is becoming slow and will never see new features.

From the ashes Sparrow rose Airmail, an ambitious project of the developer studio Bloop Software. In terms of appearance, both applications are strikingly similar graphically, and if Sparrow was still actively being developed, it would probably be easy to say that Airmail largely copied the look. On the other hand, he's trying to fill the hole that Sparrow left behind, so it's more to his advantage in this case. We will move in a familiar environment and, unlike Sparrow, development will continue.

Airmail is not an entirely new app, it debuted in late May, but it was still nowhere near ready to follow in Sparrow's footsteps. The app was slow, scrolling was choppy, and the ubiquitous bugs left users and reviewers tasting like a beta version. Apparently, Bloop Software rushed the release to get Sparrow users as soon as possible, and it took them another six updates and five months to get the app to a state where the switch from the abandoned app can be recommended.

The client offers several display options, however, most of them probably use the one they knew from Sparrow - i.e. in the left column a list of accounts, where for the active account there are expanded icons for individual folders, in the middle a list of received e-mails and in the right part the selected e-mail. However, Airmail also offers the option of displaying a fourth column next to the left one, where you will see other folders/labels from Gmail in addition to the basic folders. There is also a unified inbox among the accounts.

Email organization

In the top bar you will find several buttons that will make it easier for you to organize your inbox. In the left part there is a button for manual update, writing a new message and replying to the currently selected mail. In the main column, there is a button to star, archive or delete an e-mail. There is also a search field. Although this is very fast (faster than with Sparrow), on the other hand, it is not possible to search, for example, only in subjects, senders or the body of the message. Airmail simply scans everything. The only more detailed filtering works through the buttons in the folder column, which are only visible when the column is wider. According to them, you can filter, for example, only e-mails with an attachment, with an asterisk, unread or only conversations, while the filters can be combined.

The integration of Gmail labels is done brilliantly in Airmail. the application displays including colors in the folder column, or they can be accessed from the Labels menu in the left column. Individual messages can then be labeled from the context menu or using the label icon that appears when you move the cursor over an e-mail in the list of messages. After a while, a hidden menu will appear where, in addition to labels, you can move between folders or even between accounts.

The integrated functions of task books play a special role. Each task can be marked as To Do, Memo, or Done. The color cast in the list will change accordingly, unlike the labels, which are only visible as a triangle in the upper right corner. However, these flags work like classic labels, Airmail creates them itself in Gmail (of course, you can cancel them at any time), according to which you can better manage your agenda in the mailbox, however, this concept is largely unsolved. For example, it is not possible to show only the To To emails of the left column, you have to access them as you would other labels.

Of course, Airmail can group conversations just like Sparrow could, and then automatically expands the last email from the conversation in the message window. You can then expand older messages by clicking on them. In the header of each message is another set of icons for quick actions, i.e. Reply, Reply All, Forward, Delete, Add Label and Quick Reply. However, for some reason, some buttons are duplicated with the buttons in the upper bar, within one column, specifically for deleting mail.

Add account and settings

Accounts are added to Airmail through a fairly cluttered set of preferences. At first, the application will only offer you a simple window for entering your name, e-mail and password, while it will try to set up the mailbox correctly. It works great with Gmail, iCloud or Yahoo, for example, where you don't have to deal with the configuration in any way. Airmail also supports Office 365, Microsoft Exchange and virtually any IMAP and POP3 email. However, do not expect automatic settings, for example with the List, there you will need to set the data manually.

Once the account is successfully added, you can set it up in more detail. I won't list all the options here, but it's worth noting things like setting aliases, signing, automatic forwarding or folder remapping.

As for other settings, Airmail has a really rich set of preferences, which is perhaps a bit of a detriment. In general, it seems like the developers can't decide on one direction and instead try to please everyone. Therefore, here we find about eight list display styles, some of which differ only minimally. Additionally, there are three themes for the message editor. While it's nice to be able to turn Airmail into a copy of Sparrow thanks to the great customization options, on the other hand, with a huge amount of settings, the preferences menu is a jungle of checkboxes and drop-down menus. At the same time, for example, the choice of font size is completely missing in the application.

One of the Airmail settings tabs

Message editor

Airmail, like Sparrow, supports replying to emails directly from the message window. By clicking on the corresponding icon, a simple editor will appear in the upper part of the window, in which you can easily type the answer. However, if necessary, it can be switched to a separate window. It is also possible to automatically add a signature to the quick reply field (this option must be turned on in the account settings). Unfortunately, the quick reply cannot be set as the default editor, so the reply icon in the middle panel with the list of messages always opens a new editor window.

The separate editor window for writing an email is also not too different from Sparrow. In the black bar at the top, you can choose the sender and the attachment, or set the priority. The field for the recipient is expandable, in the collapsed state you will only see the To field, the expanded state will also reveal CC and BCC.

Between the field for the subject and the body of the message itself, there is still a toolbar where you can edit the text in the classic way. There is also the option of changing the font, bullets, alignment, indentation or inserting a link. In addition to the classic "rich" text editor, there is also the option to switch to HTML and even the increasingly popular Markdown.

In both cases, the editor splits into two pages with a scrolling dividing line. With the HTML editor, CSS is displayed on the left side, which you can edit to create a beautiful looking email in the style of a website, and on the right you write the HTML code. In the case of Markdown, you write the text in Mardown syntax on the left and you see the resulting form on the right.

Airmail also supports the insertion of attachments using the drag & drop method, and in addition to the classic attachment of files to mail, cloud services can also be used. This is especially useful when you send larger files that might not reach the recipient in the classic way. If you activate them, the file will be automatically uploaded to the storage, and the recipient will only get a link from which they can download it. Airmail supports Dropbox, Google Drive, CloudApp and Droplr.

Experience and evaluation

With each new update, I tried to use Airmail at least for a while to see if I could replace the already outdated Sparrow. I decided to switch only with version 1.2, which finally fixed the worst bugs and resolved fundamental shortcomings such as jerky scrolling. However, this does not mean that the application is already bug-free. Every time I start, I have to wait up to a minute for the messages to load, even though they should be cached properly. Fortunately, the upcoming version 1.3, currently in open beta, fixes this ailment.

I'd say the current form of the app is a great foundation; maybe the version that should have come out from the beginning. Airmail can easily replace Sparrow, it is faster and has more options. On the other hand, it also has reservations in some respects. Given the ambition of Sparrow, the application lacks a certain elegance that Dominic Leca and his team achieved. This consists not only in a well-thought-out design, but also in the simplification of some elements and operations. And exuberant application preferences are not exactly the right way to achieve elegance.

Developers are obviously trying to please everyone and add one feature after another, however, without a clear vision, good software can become bloatware, which can be customized to the smallest detail, but lacks simplicity and elegance of use and then ranks next to Microsoft Office or earlier version of the Opera browser.

Despite these caveats, it is nevertheless a solid application that is gentle on the system (usually below 5% CPU usage), undergoes rapid development and has excellent user support. Unfortunately, the application lacks any manual or tutorial, and you will have to figure everything out yourself, which is not exactly easy due to the huge number of presets. Either way, for two bucks you get a great email client that can finally fill the hole left by Sparrow. The developers are also preparing an iOS version.

[app url=”https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/airmail/id573171375?mt=12″]

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