Reading Emails
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Hello Lemmy, I would like to know how do you all read email.
- What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
- What is something you don't like from the client?
- What is something you like from the client?
- What is something you don't like from the email service?
- What is something you like from the email service?.
- Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
- Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
If you have any other comment it would be appreciated as well.
On my computer I use the web interface and on my phone I use Thunderbird. One thing I do is to delete or archive any message that does not need any action, and it has been a blessing, my emails are so much easier to go through.
That's all, thank you in advance.
Outlook classic for work.
Outlook for iOS for work.
Sometimes I use the iOS calendar for both work and personal.
Personal is Gmail workspace web and iOS app.No complaints for outlook.
Gmail isn’t snappy. -
Outlook classic for work.
Outlook for iOS for work.
Sometimes I use the iOS calendar for both work and personal.
Personal is Gmail workspace web and iOS app.No complaints for outlook.
Gmail isn’t snappy.Interesting, I've heard so many people complain about Outlook, I guess its a matter of preference.
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What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
Mail on iOS, macOS
What is something you don't like from the client.
Searching is difficult because you have to keep fighting with it.
- What is something you like from the client.
The UI, its ability to block remote content.
What is something you don't like from the email service.
I’m confused by this part, are you talking about the email client or email provider?
I use primarily Gandi, and I don’t like their pricing model.
What is something you like from the email.
I love their spam headers and Sieve filtering.
Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
Not really, most my problems with email come from how it’s implemented on various servers (lack of encryption) and its support for HTML rather than something more sane, like Markdown.
Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
Not really, I just quickly work through the emails.
Technically, email supports markdown, it’s just not used by anyone. Email was invented many years before markdown, so it’s probably just more of a legacy thing than anything else.
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Hello Lemmy, I would like to know how do you all read email.
- What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
- What is something you don't like from the client?
- What is something you like from the client?
- What is something you don't like from the email service?
- What is something you like from the email service?.
- Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
- Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
If you have any other comment it would be appreciated as well.
On my computer I use the web interface and on my phone I use Thunderbird. One thing I do is to delete or archive any message that does not need any action, and it has been a blessing, my emails are so much easier to go through.
That's all, thank you in advance.
"All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less." — http://mutt.org/
-
Hello Lemmy, I would like to know how do you all read email.
- What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
- What is something you don't like from the client?
- What is something you like from the client?
- What is something you don't like from the email service?
- What is something you like from the email service?.
- Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
- Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
If you have any other comment it would be appreciated as well.
On my computer I use the web interface and on my phone I use Thunderbird. One thing I do is to delete or archive any message that does not need any action, and it has been a blessing, my emails are so much easier to go through.
That's all, thank you in advance.
Mostly Mac Mail. Does what it says on the tin. Wish it had tagging support though. Flags aren’t descriptive enough.
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Interesting, I've heard so many people complain about Outlook, I guess its a matter of preference.
I use Outlook for work and personal. I've gotten used to it and old habits die hard I guess.
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Hello Lemmy, I would like to know how do you all read email.
- What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
- What is something you don't like from the client?
- What is something you like from the client?
- What is something you don't like from the email service?
- What is something you like from the email service?.
- Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
- Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
If you have any other comment it would be appreciated as well.
On my computer I use the web interface and on my phone I use Thunderbird. One thing I do is to delete or archive any message that does not need any action, and it has been a blessing, my emails are so much easier to go through.
That's all, thank you in advance.
I use Outlook - I have an M365 account. Actually, I have several, since I have accounts for all of my clients and they all use M365.
New Outlook is terrible. It is like Microsoft asked themselves, is there a way to remove the most useful parts while poorly trying to mimic Google with a cartoon flair? And they were able to achieve this lofty goal.
I use the old Outlook as a result and have figured it out well enough. I have several accounts in the app, which is nice. The search is terrible, but can be improved if you ask Copilot for search formulas. I can setup .oft templates so others can send mails I write. I can easily set up branded colors and fonts. So it is fine.
Androids version of Outlook is shameful, but I have to use it.
In terms of email management. I get somewhere between 75 and 150 each day, so I just tackle them as they come in. It I can't take action right away, I mark it unread so I come back to it later.
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Interesting, I've heard so many people complain about Outlook, I guess its a matter of preference.
Outlook has literally decades of continuous improvements while remaining backwards compatible. It’s also catered exclusively to enterprises. It’s also a money maker on its own and not adware supported.
It’s old style software.
The new modern outlook might force some other startup to be birthed into existence that maintains that classic interface.
I actually look forward to modern outlook as it dump so much legacy code bloat. I can’t wait to be running ARM or even risc-v and letting it all run in a browser or PWA. We’ve reached the end of x86 and Outlook classic is one of the few apps preventing its transition.
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Hello Lemmy, I would like to know how do you all read email.
- What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
- What is something you don't like from the client?
- What is something you like from the client?
- What is something you don't like from the email service?
- What is something you like from the email service?.
- Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
- Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
If you have any other comment it would be appreciated as well.
On my computer I use the web interface and on my phone I use Thunderbird. One thing I do is to delete or archive any message that does not need any action, and it has been a blessing, my emails are so much easier to go through.
That's all, thank you in advance.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Dude, my email handling is a huge mess, no matter what angle we're looking at it.
Let's start with my private email on my private devices, as I have full freedom of doing whatever the fuck I want:
For more than 20 years up until about a year ago, my strategy was to keep everything in my inbox. That's it. No custom folders, no labels, no filters. And I had been using the web UI, as it was clean, convenient and the search function was good, I always found everything I needed. I only deleted those emails that didn't carry absolutely any value to me, like some promotions that didn't automatically end up in Spam. I kept even registration confirmations just so I know when exactly I signed up on a website. This worked very well. At some point I created another account at a different provider, just to be able to pick a username that didn't suck (as much as the previous one I made as a kid), and used that one for professional purposes only (job seeking basically).
Then as my long and painful degoogling process started last year, I signed up to proton (I should've done tuta instead), and I decided I wanna be more organized, because I've read how cool it was. I created a few aliases strategically: one I'd never share with anyone else other than financial institutions (I blew it right away with PayPal, because PayPal does share it with all webshops where you pay with it), I made one for personal communication (friends and family only), and a few others. Also, for a while I wanted to keep my old accounts to make sure I won't miss changing my email somewhere important.
So I ended up with a crazy lot of email addresses, therefore I started to use Thunderbird on desktop and on mobile, but on mobile I also have to use proton mail, because there's no proton bridge for mobile. But still, two email clients are manageable.
And I also started to create a meticulously designed folder structure in all my accounts, plus set up filters for every kinds of emails I regularly receive. I processed thousands of emails, and there are tens of thousands more in my inbox, and I'm so damn drained of dealing with them, I basically gave up. Now I have a half-baked solution, everything is all over the place.
I receive an email, I open it on my phone, but then I decide to deal with it later, and I forget to mark it unread. Then, when later comes, I try to open it on my computer, but I forgot which folder it was in (I have hundreds of folders by now), and it wasn't marked as unread, so it wasn't easy to spot. Also, generally, when I just receive an email, even if it's clearly marked as unread, it's still hard to spot, because the list is quite long on the left side when even just one account is not collapsed. I'd have to scroll a lot to actually see it.
Also, there are many emails that could fit in multiple folders. I hate that so much.
Thunderbird considerably slowed down due to the hundreds of filters, even though I have a pretty beefy desktop PC.
At work I don't have much choice. We're using Outlook and it sucks so much. I tried to do the same organization there, and even though I have much fewer emails there, I sucked at it the exact same way. It's also a half-finished mess.
On top of that, Outlook filters don't even work properly. You cannot apply the same condition twice within one filter (e.g. subject contains X AND subject contains Y), and those that I set up just simply stop working after a while. Some folders don't indicate the count of new messages, some do. It's the shittiest email software I've ever seen.
Overall I really like Thunderbird, it's very flexible and it works well, I just suck at organizing my emails efficiently. Maybe I should just go back to the inbox-only mode, that one worked well.
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Technically, email supports markdown, it’s just not used by anyone. Email was invented many years before markdown, so it’s probably just more of a legacy thing than anything else.
Oh, I understand all that. I just don’t like it.
-
Hello Lemmy, I would like to know how do you all read email.
- What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
- What is something you don't like from the client?
- What is something you like from the client?
- What is something you don't like from the email service?
- What is something you like from the email service?.
- Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
- Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
If you have any other comment it would be appreciated as well.
On my computer I use the web interface and on my phone I use Thunderbird. One thing I do is to delete or archive any message that does not need any action, and it has been a blessing, my emails are so much easier to go through.
That's all, thank you in advance.
- Thunderbird Stable on Desktop (want to figure out nightly tho), TB Beta on Android.
- Hard to say, as I only ever used gmail as "alternative". On that, the TB search on a gmail is worse than gmail's own client's search.
- Compared to gmail, that it's much less corpo and much more customizable.
- My provider (me) has no password reset flow. I have to manually generate a new pw for an account with doveadm (postfix uses saslauth with dovecot for auth) and edit /etc/dovecot/users.
- Basically, I'm the most privacy preserving and flexible provider you can think of. Except that the gov and pigs now just have to question my domain to get my address for any email I send. But oh well.
- Skins. So it can eg. look like Outlook. Would help me switch my grandparents from M$ to FOSS. My grandpa is of the "it doesn't work, so an immediate screaming meltdown follows"-type, and my grandma survives solely on knowing which button is where, because she's almost blind.
- All services have their own address, so I can block whole services and default others to eg. spam. Helps me keep the traffic low, and know where an email slipped to spammers/scammers. Though, that never happened in the 1-2 years I'm using it. The only spam is PayPal and Twitch (will change that) telling me that one of my 10 or so subscriptions is going to renew soon.
-
Hello Lemmy, I would like to know how do you all read email.
- What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
- What is something you don't like from the client?
- What is something you like from the client?
- What is something you don't like from the email service?
- What is something you like from the email service?.
- Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
- Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
If you have any other comment it would be appreciated as well.
On my computer I use the web interface and on my phone I use Thunderbird. One thing I do is to delete or archive any message that does not need any action, and it has been a blessing, my emails are so much easier to go through.
That's all, thank you in advance.
My ISP mail with a personal domain name in front.
A self hosted roundcube web client for desktop use, thunderbird on my android phone.In case of client failure I still have the ISP web mail as a backup.
With my own domain name and mail alias I can change provider at will.Oh yes and I run dovecot as an email backup on top of that.
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Dude, my email handling is a huge mess, no matter what angle we're looking at it.
Let's start with my private email on my private devices, as I have full freedom of doing whatever the fuck I want:
For more than 20 years up until about a year ago, my strategy was to keep everything in my inbox. That's it. No custom folders, no labels, no filters. And I had been using the web UI, as it was clean, convenient and the search function was good, I always found everything I needed. I only deleted those emails that didn't carry absolutely any value to me, like some promotions that didn't automatically end up in Spam. I kept even registration confirmations just so I know when exactly I signed up on a website. This worked very well. At some point I created another account at a different provider, just to be able to pick a username that didn't suck (as much as the previous one I made as a kid), and used that one for professional purposes only (job seeking basically).
Then as my long and painful degoogling process started last year, I signed up to proton (I should've done tuta instead), and I decided I wanna be more organized, because I've read how cool it was. I created a few aliases strategically: one I'd never share with anyone else other than financial institutions (I blew it right away with PayPal, because PayPal does share it with all webshops where you pay with it), I made one for personal communication (friends and family only), and a few others. Also, for a while I wanted to keep my old accounts to make sure I won't miss changing my email somewhere important.
So I ended up with a crazy lot of email addresses, therefore I started to use Thunderbird on desktop and on mobile, but on mobile I also have to use proton mail, because there's no proton bridge for mobile. But still, two email clients are manageable.
And I also started to create a meticulously designed folder structure in all my accounts, plus set up filters for every kinds of emails I regularly receive. I processed thousands of emails, and there are tens of thousands more in my inbox, and I'm so damn drained of dealing with them, I basically gave up. Now I have a half-baked solution, everything is all over the place.
I receive an email, I open it on my phone, but then I decide to deal with it later, and I forget to mark it unread. Then, when later comes, I try to open it on my computer, but I forgot which folder it was in (I have hundreds of folders by now), and it wasn't marked as unread, so it wasn't easy to spot. Also, generally, when I just receive an email, even if it's clearly marked as unread, it's still hard to spot, because the list is quite long on the left side when even just one account is not collapsed. I'd have to scroll a lot to actually see it.
Also, there are many emails that could fit in multiple folders. I hate that so much.
Thunderbird considerably slowed down due to the hundreds of filters, even though I have a pretty beefy desktop PC.
At work I don't have much choice. We're using Outlook and it sucks so much. I tried to do the same organization there, and even though I have much fewer emails there, I sucked at it the exact same way. It's also a half-finished mess.
On top of that, Outlook filters don't even work properly. You cannot apply the same condition twice within one filter (e.g. subject contains X AND subject contains Y), and those that I set up just simply stop working after a while. Some folders don't indicate the count of new messages, some do. It's the shittiest email software I've ever seen.
Overall I really like Thunderbird, it's very flexible and it works well, I just suck at organizing my emails efficiently. Maybe I should just go back to the inbox-only mode, that one worked well.
I signed up to proton (I should've done tuta instead)
What makes you say you should've signed up for Tuta instead?
I have Tuta's highest tier right now and I barely use it. The apps feel like low grade mobile app assignment work at uni or something. Definitely not professional. They feel like web apps disguised as mobile apps.
What has you feeling like Tuta would be better?
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Hello Lemmy, I would like to know how do you all read email.
- What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
- What is something you don't like from the client?
- What is something you like from the client?
- What is something you don't like from the email service?
- What is something you like from the email service?.
- Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
- Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
If you have any other comment it would be appreciated as well.
On my computer I use the web interface and on my phone I use Thunderbird. One thing I do is to delete or archive any message that does not need any action, and it has been a blessing, my emails are so much easier to go through.
That's all, thank you in advance.
wrote last edited by [email protected]mu4e with Emacs
It's great because:
- process a big bulk of emails quickly
- renders emails in a consistent format, lowering mental overhead
- can link to individual emails in my notes
- many mail providers through the same interface
- custom views crossing many (or some) mailboxes and providers
- emails available offline
- tracking pixels and the likes don't work
- can search/filter through many mails quickly
It's bad because:
- requires Emacs, high learning curve
- first setup was cumbersome for Gmail
- rendering emails as text loses some information (rarely a problem, can view the email as html)
- no backlink from email thread to my notes yet (should be ok to write)
- I use another interface on mobile
- I send emails as plain text which is weirdly rendered in some clients (mostly fine, emitting html possible)
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Technically, email supports markdown, it’s just not used by anyone. Email was invented many years before markdown, so it’s probably just more of a legacy thing than anything else.
It does support markdown???? I always thought it didn't.
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Hello Lemmy, I would like to know how do you all read email.
- What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
- What is something you don't like from the client?
- What is something you like from the client?
- What is something you don't like from the email service?
- What is something you like from the email service?.
- Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
- Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
If you have any other comment it would be appreciated as well.
On my computer I use the web interface and on my phone I use Thunderbird. One thing I do is to delete or archive any message that does not need any action, and it has been a blessing, my emails are so much easier to go through.
That's all, thank you in advance.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Outlook with a 365 account.
Like about the application: The close button actually closes the application not minimising it to a tray icon.
Dislike about the application: Vaguely gestures at it
Dislike about the provider: it's run by M$
Like about the provider: I don't have to deal with Exchange anymore. -
It does support markdown???? I always thought it didn't.
The protocol supports anything. You can send an email in PDF format. And I don’t mean with a PDF attachment, I mean the email itself is formatted as a PDF.
The default that’s required to be supported by every client is
text/plain, and the standard on top of that istext/html, but you can providetext/markdowninstead if you want. If the client doesn’t support displaying markdown, it will probably let the user save it like it was an attachment. But, since you don’t really know what client the other user is using, the only really safe thing to send istext/plain.You can also provide both markdown and plain text (and even just use the same text, since markdown is perfectly readable) inside a
multipart/alternative. Then every client should be able to display it. -
Hello Lemmy, I would like to know how do you all read email.
- What email clients (or web UI) do you use? And on what platform?
- What is something you don't like from the client?
- What is something you like from the client?
- What is something you don't like from the email service?
- What is something you like from the email service?.
- Is there a feature you would like your client implemented?
- Do you have any particular method or workflow of going through and extensive inbox?
If you have any other comment it would be appreciated as well.
On my computer I use the web interface and on my phone I use Thunderbird. One thing I do is to delete or archive any message that does not need any action, and it has been a blessing, my emails are so much easier to go through.
That's all, thank you in advance.
I use Thunderbird on both desktop (Linux) and mobile (Android). I currently have five accounts in a unified inbox:
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Gmail (2 accounts): 'professional' one I give to people and the other one for generic account signups - currently migrating away from both of these.
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Mailbox.org: the replacement for both my gmail accounts as mailbox.org allows aliases. They are completely EU based and don't sell your data. Costs a small fee of €15 a year.
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Zoho: for my own domain which is public and attached to my various projects as a developer contact address
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Microsoft 365
: Had to add this one literally today because I'm going back to uni in September. Hate that they use microsoft, but thankfully the uni enabled IMAP/SMTP instead of only allowing Microsoft's proprietary OWA protocol.
As for general usage, I treat my inbox like a to-do list. Once I've completed all tasks relating to an email, it gets deleted if it's not important or archived (usually if it's anything to do with money like a receipt or invoice). I usually only have at most 3-4 emails in my inbox at once.
The only thing that annoys me about Thunderbird is that occasionally if I delete a message, it will leave a blank 'ghost' message where the old one used to be that has a date of 01/01/1970 which only goes away when the program is restarted.
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I use Thunderbird on both desktop (Linux) and mobile (Android). I currently have five accounts in a unified inbox:
-
Gmail (2 accounts): 'professional' one I give to people and the other one for generic account signups - currently migrating away from both of these.
-
Mailbox.org: the replacement for both my gmail accounts as mailbox.org allows aliases. They are completely EU based and don't sell your data. Costs a small fee of €15 a year.
-
Zoho: for my own domain which is public and attached to my various projects as a developer contact address
-
Microsoft 365
: Had to add this one literally today because I'm going back to uni in September. Hate that they use microsoft, but thankfully the uni enabled IMAP/SMTP instead of only allowing Microsoft's proprietary OWA protocol.
As for general usage, I treat my inbox like a to-do list. Once I've completed all tasks relating to an email, it gets deleted if it's not important or archived (usually if it's anything to do with money like a receipt or invoice). I usually only have at most 3-4 emails in my inbox at once.
The only thing that annoys me about Thunderbird is that occasionally if I delete a message, it will leave a blank 'ghost' message where the old one used to be that has a date of 01/01/1970 which only goes away when the program is restarted.
I feel you, I also had to use either gmail or outlook in university. At the moment I'm trying to clean the mess of all the accounts I have signed up for.
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The protocol supports anything. You can send an email in PDF format. And I don’t mean with a PDF attachment, I mean the email itself is formatted as a PDF.
The default that’s required to be supported by every client is
text/plain, and the standard on top of that istext/html, but you can providetext/markdowninstead if you want. If the client doesn’t support displaying markdown, it will probably let the user save it like it was an attachment. But, since you don’t really know what client the other user is using, the only really safe thing to send istext/plain.You can also provide both markdown and plain text (and even just use the same text, since markdown is perfectly readable) inside a
multipart/alternative. Then every client should be able to display it.Thank you for sharing this knowledge.
