I haven’t had a chance to download this yet, but hoping that it has native keybindings. (Cmd+N) on mac for composing a new email or something similar.
I know fastmail’s built in keybindings are robust, but I can’t keep track of them all.
Just a webpage with a bundled web bowser (electron).
This is like the worst of everything. A terrible noncustomizable browser and a poor email client glued together.
Don't hate on the tech stack.
hoping servo makes it better
Even discord is basically the same thing in the browser
In order to abide by QT's license, you have to follow the appropriate set of rules, depending on how you use it. You can use it LGPL, at which point you need to release the QT source you used and dynamically link it in your program. You can use it GPL but you have to release the source to your app. Finally, you can give QT money, and use it closed source. Okay, that wasn't that complex, but those are the rules if you want to use and distribute QT legally.
E.g., hotkey presses do not flash the menubar item: in Finder, Cmd-, flashes the app title menu; in Obsidian, nothing. Or the lack of overscrolling.
Agree.
> and a poor email client glued together.
Totally disagree. FastMail webmail is really good, probably the best webmail/mail client.
Actually, I would use this desktop app if it was compatible with IMAP.
Fastmail also have a decent API if you're keen to glue together a better client yourself.
- Block sender (whole domain)
- Report phishing
- Mark as spam
Because that stuff should be done on the server, not on the client and if you mark stuff as spam in Mail, it's on the client afaik.
Also creating masked mail addresses in the first place.
Also being able to make it your default app for email (and hopefully calendar?)
Thunderbird has had a good number of QoL improvements, and the calendar plugins etc are quite niec. Just if one day search could... uhh... work, that would be nice
Fastmail does, of course, probably consider its UI chops etc to be part of their value add. Just seems like if they also want to win over people who like native clients then "here's a bunch of shit that makes native clients also work very well with our offerings" is less of a lift while being more helpful overall. Maybe.
Or if you gotta have a spearate app+:
Safari > File > Add to Dock
+ which I do because it's so much easier to go to my mail instead of wading through browser windows and tabs. I've been using that way for a while now
I sometimes think we forget that Electron would have allowed them to ship this to customers super quickly, across all desktop platforms, and get a nice-looking application in to the hands of their customers (who probably have been requesting this for years).
There is already a fastmail desktop app. It's called thunderbird. And there are many more, for all possible tastes!
https://josephg.com/blog/electron-is-flash-for-the-desktop/
* Non-native UI toolkit
* Massive waste of resources (CPU, RAM, Battery, Disk). Consumption of 500 MB RAM for idle is the norm.
* Slow.
* Often issues with autonomous, local operation.
* Security -> Browser Engine
* Linux: Evolution, Geary, K-Mail, Claws, whatever TUI application you prefer. And Thunderbird.
* macOS: Apple Mail or Thunderbird.
* Windows: Please. Stop using Windows. You harm other people. Start with using Thunderbird :)
TUI :)
Electron is used, when a company wants to save on developer. All users pay with suffering from bad UI and their hardware resources. In this case it is something nobody asked for?
For email, I mostly don’t care whether it takes too much RAM, if the app is usable. I work with it, then I close it. That’s my workflow, at least. I believe I’m not alone in this. My iPhone is the mini server that gets all the notifications for the emails I need. (By being connected with the default email client.) So, if I want to reply from my laptop, I’ll open my app. Otherwise it’s closed.
That’s the beauty of open standards, everyone can choose their favorite tool for the job depending on their preferences and skill levels.
You paid them for services rendered. They’ve offered an additional service they didn’t previously for no extra charge. Now you’re upset, even though you’re still getting the same service you were previously at the same price?
Not certainly, because that’s not how paying a subscription works. You would have to contact them too discuss directly paying for a specific feature. But potentially!
I'm sure there was some deal that didn't get completed because of this.
There are so many good clients out there, and I'd rather have 1. The team focus on their core offering, and 2. the existing email client is for the same reason (limited developer time, and matureness) a much better choice for security
This is from August 2019
https://www.fastmail.com/blog/jmap-new-email-open-standard/
This announcement is a slap in our faces.
I’m not a customer of Fastmail, because the laws in Australia are very anti-privacy and Fastmail is at their mercy. But my mail provider has exactly the same problem: a lame web app.
This is not a “technical person” complaint. These so-called apps look and behave worse on macOS.
My main problem is that I have to put a lot of effort to not use gmail for my business because most of third-parties (like CRMs) work only/better with gmail.
Fastmail team, how about a Gmail compatible API ?
Nothing wrong with offering an option for people who prefer a desktop app, you don’t have to feel like you are the target audience for everything.
# Why Electron?
Because it lets us build an app that works well across all major platforms with the resources we have available. Building an email/contacts/calendar app is a huge undertaking. Doing it from scratch on each platform is just not feasible for us.
With Electron, we can maintain a single code base across all platforms so we can move faster, and keep feature parity everywhere. More than that though, we believe it lets us build a really great experience on each of these platforms, while offering a consistent UI for our customers across all their devices. Honestly, we can never out-native Apple because by definition whatever they do is "native", even if it sucks (Liquid Glass on the Mac is … not great UX). If that's your primary consideration, you will always be better with Apple's own Mail app, so it's pointless us trying to build something in that space. (And instead we work to also make Fastmail the best service to use Mail.app with — which we believe it is!)
# Why would you use this instead of the webmail?
If you prefer to keep Fastmail in your browser, great! You can do so. But we hear from many customers that they would rather not have their email mixed in with their tabs. With a separate app you can see it in the dock, Cmd-tab to it, make it your default email app system wide etc. It also lets us integrate with the system, like the Mac menu bar and native context menus.
# Why would you use this instead of an IMAP client?
If you've ever used the Fastmail web interface you probably already know the answer, but for everyone else…
1. It's a lot faster. Compared to Apple's Mail.app for example (which is a good IMAP client!):
- It resyncs way faster when you open the app, and uses a lot less data (JMAP is so much more efficient).
- Moving between messages is quicker. With Mail.app there's often a slight lag between clicking a message and it rendering. In Fastmail, it's usually instant.
- Add private memos to emails
- Mute conversations to ignore replies
- Pin important messages to the top of your inbox
- Schedule messages to send in the future (and not need your laptop to be online then for it to work)
- See related emails when you open your contacts.
- Add events straight into your calendar
- And much more (https://www.fastmail.com/features/).
# And finally…
This is just a choice. We hope this is something that some of our customers will love, but we're not backing away from our commitment to open standards and encourage everyone to find what works best for them.
I'll try to answer any other questions as I can.
So I use Thunderbird and K-9 Mail, and occasionally the Fastmail web UI to manage masked e-mail addresses etc. That is my happy path.
I want to be tied to Fastmail because of your stellar support and good service, not because I am trained to use your UI.
By the way, fastmail.com is now in full advertising mode for this new app. It's hard for potential customers to see that you support IMAP just fine. Please show potential customers that the app is just one option as you say; not a requirement. Your website currently does not communicate that message clearly.
I don't use the web interface much, instead I use Apple's Mail.app. My only issue is that external email accounts (gmail) take some time to be fetched periodically. When I open the web interface and click on the tag, it instantly pulls the new mail in from the external account, but if I fetch in the Mail.app, it doesn't refresh the external accounts. So, for things that have a very short time period (confirmation codes), I still end up needing to open the web interface. I wonder if this would still be the case with the new desktop app?
I will take some time to set it up over the next days and try it out!
Any idea how far out the Linux version is?
This is just their webapp wrapped in an off-the-shelf browser engine. Hardly any development resources needed. It could have been quickly put together to tick a checkbox for some big client, the revenue from whom could help them work on features that actually matter more. None of us needs to use it. But somebody must have needed it, so here it is.
It's much faster than Thunderbird so far for me, and more convenient than a browser tab for me, and I'm especially liking the interconnections among mail, contacts, and calendar.
The app on my macOS system is using 700MB RAM; is that for Electron? The majority of RAM is showing as GPU rendering; is that for font smoothing?
The only thing I miss is the official API for the scheduled sending feature.
That's the only thing I would open the webpage app to do.
tomekw•2h ago
kalleboo•2h ago
SG-•1h ago