
Show HN: Mimestream, a native macOS email client for Gmail - njhaveri
https://mimestream.com
======
njhaveri
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 features like multiple accounts, a unified inbox, system
notifications, swipe actions, dark mode, (some) offline support, tracker
prevention, multiple keyboard shortcut sets, and more.

Mimestream differs from other email clients because it uses the Gmail API
rather than IMAP, so it supports more Gmail-specific features like categorized
inboxes, Gmail's search operators, first-class labels support (apply multiple
via ⌘L, set colors, etc), synced aliases, synced signatures, etc. I'm planning
a lot more work in this area, including server-side filter configuration,
Google Drive support, G Suite directory autocomplete, and more.

The app is a traditional email client that makes direct connections to Gmail
and stores your data on your Mac. There are no intermediary servers with
access to your account or copies of your messages. Mimestream is free for a
limited time during the public beta, but will eventually be a paid app by the
time it gets to the Mac App Store.

I hope you enjoy trying out the beta, and I look forward to hearing your
feedback!

~~~
robenkleene
This is a great point: "There are no intermediary servers with access to your
account or copies of your messages." A number of popular email clients use
intermediary servers and that's a complete deal breaker for me. I'd argue that
should be a deal breaker for almost anyone. I'm not a security expert, but as
far as I can tell, for most people the single biggest security vulnerability
is an attacker gaining access to their email. Using a mail client with an
intermediary mail server essentially doubles the surface area attackers can
exploit.

~~~
dvtrn
I never quite understood what the value add was for email-client developers to
use intermediary servers. Is it to gather usage telemetry or something else?

~~~
mappu
Pessimistically for telemetry, but I suspect some of them are Javascript apps
in a lightweight shell that have actual technical difficulties making a TCP
IMAP connection.

~~~
njhaveri
Yeah, I think difficulty making an IMAP connection is one reason. I think the
biggest reason has been to decorate more features on top of the backing email
service, like adding Snooze support to an arbitrary IMAP account (so the
server can un-snooze a message at the scheduled time).

That being said, there are security/privacy implications to that model, and I
wouldn't personally use an app that works this way. That's why Mimestream was
built as a traditional client.

------
dugmartin
Interesting to see the Gmail API being used for a general purpose email client
when Google has a very visible note on the overview page that says:

> Note: The Gmail API should not be used to replace IMAP for full-fledged
> email client access. Instead, see IMAP and SMTP.

I'd be a little worried they will disable API access for the client due to
this.

[https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/guides](https://developers.google.com/gmail/api/guides)

~~~
judge2020
They did perform the audit in collaboration with the author[0], so chances are
it's fine, but you never know when a new manager might come in and flip the
script for what's acceptable use of the api.

0:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24426342](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24426342)

~~~
njhaveri
This is something I asked about a few years ago when it was first introduced,
and the vague answer I got is that the warning exists because the Gmail API is
not as optimized as IMAP for some common email client tasks. (Indeed, for
better performance, I would like to switch a few tasks to use IMAP instead of
the Gmail API someday).

Google did vet Mimestream as a general-purpose email client before approving
API access, and on the paperwork for that process "general purpose email
client" was the app category that I selected, so I'm hoping all will be OK, or
else I will be really scrambling to implement new protocols :P

------
jkarneges
Nice to see a native app and not something Electron-based.

I wonder about native app viability these days though. Years ago I used native
email apps like Outlook, KMail, and Thunderbird, but lately I just use the
websites made by the service providers (Fastmail for personal, Gmail for
work). As an open standards person I find my behavior kind of depressing, but
the websites just tend to work better.

~~~
sjroot
SwiftUI will make the native application development experience much easier
for Apple platforms. It still has a little ways to go, but once it's the "de-
facto standard" for new apps, you will certainly see an explosion in
innovative native development.

Hoping other platforms follow suit. Preferably using SwiftUI...hey, I can
dream right?

~~~
monsieurbanana
> Hoping other platforms follow suit. Preferably using SwiftUI...hey, I can
> dream right?

This makes it seems like it's up to those other platforms, but it's really all
about Apple's decision, right? (in which case I'll eat my metaphorical hat if
this happens)

------
mronge
I've been using the beta for a while and I'm happy to see it land here on HN.
The two things I love most about Mimestream are:

1\. It's wicked fast (seriously) 2\. It has Gmail style shortcuts

The only thing I wish it had was a generic IMAP support for some of my other
accounts. Either way I've been liking it!

~~~
njhaveri
Thanks! IMAP account support is something I would really like to add (and
Mimestream already uses IMAP for some specific operations where it is a better
fit), but from past experience I know that it is complicated ;)

I'm also really keen on adding support for JMAP and Office 365 I the future.

~~~
colinhb
Excited that you're considering JMAP! Hopefully it solves some of the pain-
points of implementing IMAP and makes it easier to deliver a great UX. If e.g.
Mimestream can deliver as good a UX with a Fastmail account (or Cyrus IMAP or
Dovecot installation) as it does with a Gmail account, I think it will help
the independent email ecosystem. (Though there is a big headwind, so I
understand focusing on Gmail now.)

Edit: downloaded the beta. Will give it a shot with my work G Suite account.

~~~
njhaveri
I am really excited about adding support for JMAP – I participated in the IETF
WG for it, gave some feedback, and think it's a very well-designed protocol
that should be really efficient at syncing email. It would probably be one of
the most fun features for me to add to the app, but yeah, there's still a lot
of work left for the Gmail account experience first.

------
comex
Nice! More than once I’ve gotten my hopes up after seeing screenshots of a
spiffy new macOS email client, only to learn that it was Electron-based. At
the time, I was using the Gmail web app but searching for a native
alternative. Since then, I’ve settled on Apple Mail for the time being, but
better Gmail integration is an enticing feature and I’ll definitely be trying
Mimestream out.

------
Zaheer
The simplicity reminds me of Sparrow for Mac [1]. One of the best email apps
ever made!

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_(email_client)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparrow_\(email_client\))

~~~
leokennis
When I was still on Gmail in 2012 or so (?) I really really loved that app!

Actually, I’d easily pay $25 or even more for a similar app, for Fastmail.

~~~
jpwgarrison
Mailmate at [https://freron.com/](https://freron.com/) is fantastic. My only
gripe is that it is Mac-only, so I can't use it on my work desktop. (linux)

~~~
jdhawk
what do you use on linux?

~~~
jpwgarrison
A mix of mutt for triage and reluctantly, the gmail web interface. I think I
have tried every real client available and been disappointed in many different
ways?

~~~
jdhawk
> I think I have tried every real client available and been disappointed in
> many different ways?

same. Hoping there was some obscure winner.

------
wkirby
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?")

~~~
njhaveri
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](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](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/140922183)
:(

~~~
wkirby
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?

~~~
njhaveri
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.

~~~
jasongill
The way that other platforms have done it is by using custom labels - so the
messages just get labeled as "snoozed until tomorrow", and at 9am the client
simply grabs all those and moves them back to inbox and deletes the label.
That's how Mailbox did it, for example.

Once Snooze is added, I'll happily buy this app for $20+ - I've been waiting
for something like this since Inbox and Mailbox were killed off.

------
ymolodtsov
It looks really interesting, immediately downloaded and would be glad to pay a
subscription if it works for me.

I have two asks:

1\. Glad you're supporting Gmail shortcuts, but sad to say they aren't working
in a second keyboard locale which I have (as basically any non-Anglo-American
user would). Gmail provides two columns for keyboard shortcuts in settings so
I went and manually adapted all keys. Or maybe Mimestream could support that
automatically, for instance Superhuman has no issues with the language I'm
using. Currently I just can't use any keyboard shortcuts unless I switch my
input to English.

2\. I specifically dislike unified inbox, could there be a setting to revert
the side bar, so instead of the top level Inbox with folders for my accounts
it would be top-level accounts with folders for each?

Thank you for working on this!

~~~
njhaveri
#1 - oops, I filed a bug to fix this up. Thanks for pointing it out.

#2 is something I'm hearing more about... I'll plan on offering this in the
future.

------
dtarik
I've been looking for an initiative like this for so many years! Not even a
month ago, I spent an afternoon looking all over the internet for somebody
trying to build a native mail client for MacOs. Since DéjàVu from the lead dev
of Sparrow, nobody it seems nobody has tried to do this. I haven't yet tested
Mimestream but I already praise you for trying to do it! I will definitely
give it a try and pay for it!

------
caillou
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=...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-here/?hl=en)

Did you ever consider adding a Markdown to HTML email option?

This is especially helpful when sending formatted code around!

~~~
tta
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.

~~~
njhaveri
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.

~~~
rhodysurf
That would for sure get me to pay for it tbh never even thought of that as a
feature

------
Lightbody
This is really great. Way to go. I've always been a big fan of Mail.app, but
it's Google integration always felt clunky and sometimes even buggy. Within a
few minutes I can see how much snappier and more "native" this feels.

Kudos!

------
kristofferR
Great app, looks really neat.

One criticism though, the swiping is incredibly annoying right now. You have
to swipe an almost painful amount to archive emails without a click, it should
require less than half the swipe-distance of what it does now. Look at how
little swiping Chrome needs to go back to the previous page, and emulate that.

~~~
njhaveri
Yeah, I've heard this a few times now. This is the standard AppKit NSTableView
swipe action, but I agree it's not tuned very well – I'll look into improving
this this.

One tip: by default, the Delete key is mapped to Archive (though you can
change that in Preferences to be Trash if you prefer that). A little faster
than swiping.

------
wasd
I use Superhuman. I can see myself switching over to Mimestream. One of my
recent complaints is the lack of deep integration with GSuite. If you can
match the speed & shortcuts AND integrate deeply with GSuite, I think you have
something really compelling.

> The app is a traditional email client that makes direct connections to Gmail
> and stores your data on your Mac. There are no intermediary servers with
> access to your account or copies of your messages. Mimestream is free for a
> limited time during the public beta, but will eventually be a paid app by
> the time it gets to the Mac App Store.

I appreciate the thought behind this. However, it means you can't implement
some other features (pixel tracking, scheduled send, snooze) unless GSuite
opens up an API for them. Consider having a subscription which uses a 3rd
party server. I would be happy to pay for it.

~~~
arvindch
Reading the posted website, the app positions itself as privacy-first and
blocks 50+ pixel trackers.

------
meehow
What are the advantages (for users) of using Gmail API over IMAP/JMAP?

It sounds like huge disadvantage when email client works with just one
provider.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Since Gmail is monopoly-scale though, they have plenty of users to serve.
Gmail has a lot of proprietary features that don't work through IMAP. Most of
them could work with JMAP (like labels) but Gmail doesn't support that (yet,
at least).

~~~
philipwhiuk
Except labels does work via IMAP:
[https://developers.google.com/gmail/imap/imap-
extensions#acc...](https://developers.google.com/gmail/imap/imap-
extensions#access_to_gmail_labels_x-gm-labels)

~~~
ymolodtsov
That support is limited, Gmail API allows you to do much more with labels.

------
flarex
"Advanced Protection prevented your Google Account from signing in. This
security feature stops most non-Google apps and services from accessing your
data to keep your account protected."

------
rado
Awesome. More native apps, please. Don't pretend you can't notice the
difference. Thanks.

------
dylanz
I'm a Mailplane user as well and once (if) I move to Catalina I'd love to
check it out. What would you say are the benefits to Mimestream over
Mailplane?

~~~
CGamesPlay
I'm a second Mailplane user who would be interested in a native app, but I'm
on High Sierra and can't use this one.

Benefits: this app likely doesn't use 1 GB of RAM. That's pretty much my only
complaint about Mailplane (not blaming them; there's not much they could do
about that). The native UI is likely nice, but not going to be the main factor
causing me to switch.

------
ValentineC
Thanks for releasing this. I've been looking for a Mailplane alternative for a
while, ever since Gmail started becoming a resource hog when they forced
everyone onto their new interface.

Is there a chance you could recompile this to support 10.14?

I'll most likely not be upgrading from Mojave for the foreseeable future,
until my 2013 MacBook Pro stops working and I'm forced to get something new.

~~~
njhaveri
Sadly, no. Mimestream already uses SwiftUI for parts of the UI, and SwiftUI
requires Catalina. I plan to release an iOS/iPadOS version in the future, so
Mimestream will be investing even more heavily into SwiftUI. At some point
later this year, Big Sur will become a requirement, too. I sympathize with
those that remain on Mojave, especially those who need to run 32-bit apps, but
as a 1-man project, it seemed like a necessary tradeoff to make.

~~~
MilaM
This looks really promising and could be a good replacement for Mailplane.

One thing I don't like though is the Big Sur requirement as early as this
year. I'm also still on Mojave and will probably upgrade to Catalina in the
coming weeks.

------
heipei
What is the advantage of this over using the Gmail web ui? The Gmail web ui
works great for me, has keyboard shortcuts, push notifications, works on all
operating systems, supports multiple accounts with the /u/1/ subpath, etc.
What does this offer that I'd be willing to pay for it and lock myself in to
Mac OS exclusively?

~~~
tienshiao
It uses way less memory for me with a handful of accounts. Five tabs of Gmail
probably used a couple gigs of memory when left open for weeks.

It's only been a day but 5 accounts in Mimestream is only using 350 megs of
memory versus 1 tab of Gmail using 1.4 gigs of memory.

------
Brajeshwar
Will check this out. I had tried multiple email clients and settled on the
default macOS Mail. I try to stay with the default Apps that comes with the
OS, even if that meant learning the shortcuts and spending a little more time
understanding their nuances, and making use of all available features or
ignoring some.

As another comment pointed out, can we have the ability to do like Priority
Inbox or allow us to just show Unread + Flag (like Mail)?

After using emails for 20+ years, I'm pretty immune to all the jazz that comes
with emails, and can survive pretty well. The only thing that I need now it
the ability to see "Unread + Flagged". Please refer to my screenshot for how
my Mail typically looks like -- [https://public.oinam.com/photos-
oinam/brajeshwar-apple-macos...](https://public.oinam.com/photos-
oinam/brajeshwar-apple-macos-mail-2019nov.png)

------
HeadHonchoSP
The only thing I want to ask, at least from a marketing perspective, why
Mimestream. The name doesn't really tell what the app is, and if it wasn't
mentioned in the title I would assume it is something that has to do with
streaming. Just a minor gripe, otherwise looks great, keep it up.

------
narenkeshav
To the author : There are times where I would like my mail to be delivered at
specific periods of time in the day rather than disturbing with any new email.

Or perhaps a snooze button for specific period of time. Do you have any
intention of such features?

Besides, the application is great. Good work.

~~~
ivanr
I would love to be able to send an email tomorrow. I like to respond to some
emails to get them out of the way, but the more email I send, the more I get.
I would therefore love to be able to slow down the exchanges. Gmail has only a
limited-time undo, with delay that's too short and almost entirely useless.
I'd be quite happy with a default, say, 5-minute delay and undo.

Similarly, it would be awesome to hide inbound email until I want to see it
(while I am still able to use my mailbox to send email and respond to already-
received messages.)

EDIT: Ah, it turns out Gmail can schedule email sending. Thanks @llarsson!

~~~
llarsson
No, Gmail has scheduled send, too. Hit the downward arrow in the right part of
the Send button and you can schedule sending the message.

------
amree
Can we have a link based on the email, e.g: "View Pull Request" if it's PR
email? This has been implemented in Canary Mail.

You can expand it further for JIRA, GitLab and others. Just a suggestion to
create unique selling spoint for Mimestream

------
statictype
Looks like exactly what I’ve been looking for. I tried a bunch of these -
AirMail was good but buggy. Superhuman is good but expensive.

The only snag here is that I haven’t updated to Catalina.

Will be trying this out when I finally upgrade (possibly directly To Big Sur).

------
leggenda47
Hello! I downloaded and opened the app and it looks great! I saw I had 5k+
social and promotion messages so I right clicked and marked all as read. That
however crashed the app and even if I open it again it crashes again.

~~~
njhaveri
Oh no! A few people reported this crash today, I'll be fixing it hopefully
tomorrow!

You can reset your cache by running these this in Terminal: rm
~/Library/Containers/com.mimestream.Mimestream/Data/Library/Application\
Support/Mimestream/Mimestream*

rm -rf
~/Library/Containers/com.mimestream.Mimestream/Data/Library/Application\
Support/Mimestream/Attachments

------
ethanliu
Would you please add the "Quote Select Text" on reply? It used to be a great
Gmail Lab add-on.

Another feature request is to support the vertical split layout, it's more
comfortable for tall screens.

------
jarym
Downloaded and installed. First impressions, very positive. I like clean UIs
and the GMail web interface has become cluttered over time.

Excellent work guys. I hope pricing is reasonable and perhaps there's a family
package or something.

------
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?

~~~
njhaveri
Thanks! I will definitely be adding shortcuts for jumping to a label and
search suggestions pretty soon. I plan to eventually add tabs and calendar
integration, too.

Sadly, superstars aren't yet possible with the Gmail API, but please star this
Gmail API issue to express your interested:
[https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/166654165](https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/166654165)

------
acherion
Great work! I look forward to using this.

Not sure if this has been mentioned in the comments yet (I came across this
post 100+ comments later), but one thing I miss terribly after leaving AirMail
was the ability to write markdown in email. I absolutely loved the split-pane
window when writing an email, and see it update in real-time as I write my
markdown'ed email.

I am on the web-client for Gmail for now, and although there are browser
plugins for MD, they feel quite clunky to use. It would be great if you could
consider MD support in composing emails!

~~~
njhaveri
Markdown support has been a major theme from the feedback I've gotten today by
email and here. In addition, I find myself personally wanting it all the time,
at least so I can insert code blocks. I definitely plan to add this in the
not-too-distant future!

~~~
SpelingBeeChamp
Keep in mind your audience here. I don't want to discourage you from adding
markdown support, but I suspect that the overwhelming majority of your users
won't know what markdown is, let alone actively want it.

------
dwrodri
I don't know if this is the right place to ask this, but I'm looking to tech
myself iOS app development, and I'm wondering what y'all think of SwiftUI.
Generally, I am quite the fan of iOS's visual defaults and I have prior
experience doing backend work, but I'm quite unfamiliar with UI design.

After watching WWDC2020 this spring, I'm pretty convinced that Apple has set
itself up with what looks like one of the cleanest IDEs for building user-
facing ML applications and I'd like to give it a try.

~~~
allenu
I'm have about ten years experience with macOS and iOS development. I have not
yet taken the plunge to do SwiftUI development exclusively, but from what I've
seen, it's the future of UI development on iOS and macOS. If you're interested
in iOS development, definitely learn it.

It uses a declarative language to describe the UI, so I think it should be
much easier to learn than the previous imperative paradigm.

For the most part, you can get away with the standard "visual defaults" as you
call them on the platform. You can easily create a complete app without having
to customize any UI, although it obviously adds to the look and feel if you
do.

------
bonestamp2
First of all, this app is awesome. I started to make some serious progress on
clearing up my email backlog.

One suggestion: I really love the iOS gmail app feature to quickly switch
between all mail and show unread mail only. I'd love a button or an option
under the "go" menu to jump to unread mail. I know I can type "label:unread"
in the search, but a one/two click method would be awesome!

------
sgt
Very excited to try this, I've registered. I cannot run it at the moment as it
requires 10.15 or later. I am running Mojave and not planning to upgrade
before Big Sur.

------
garblegarble
This looks really nice!

Does it support e-mails with winmail.dat? That's been my biggest annoyance
with Airmail, I end up having to go to the gmail web interface to view any
e-mails with winmail.dat

------
prashaantt
I held off from updating to Catalina last year and hope to go directly to Big
Sur this year, so I can’t try this out yet but I just gave my email to your
website, hoping I’d receive updates on the progress.

While we’re on this topic, do you have any plans to add custom integrations
with 3rd party services like Todoist and Bear? That’s one reason I’ve switched
to Spark and I’d be extremely happy to pay you for it.

------
sixhobbits
This looks great! Just a note that I signed up from my phone but couldn't go
through with the direct download. When I tried again from my laptop I got an
error[0].

Would have been useful to be able to reuse my email address from desktop but
using a different email seemed to work fine.

[0]
[https://static.ritza.co/uploads/mimestreamerror2.png](https://static.ritza.co/uploads/mimestreamerror2.png)

------
vimy
Looks great. I'm currently using Canary mail because the Apple mail data loss
bug still isn't fixed after almost a year! Canary mail doesn't feel as
polished as Apple mail so I'm happy to see a potential replacement.

[https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/10/11/mail-data-loss-in-
macos-1...](https://mjtsai.com/blog/2019/10/11/mail-data-loss-in-macos-10-15/)

------
ak255
For the love of god please don't make it subscription based, add the
'Important' category and you have yourself a customer.

~~~
ak255
Also if you need any design feedback don't hesitate to ask :)

------
gauravphoenix
When the app starts, it makes a HTTPS call to the ip address "104.248.78.24"
which is owned by DigitalOcean.

@njhaveri can you please clarify?

~~~
njhaveri
This is an HTTPS GET of
[https://mimestream.com/appcast.xml](https://mimestream.com/appcast.xml) in
order to check for the availability of beta software updates, using the
Sparkle framework that is popular amongst Mac apps.

~~~
gauravphoenix
Thank you!

------
avgcodemonkey
Loving the app so far - I love how speedy it is. I'm glad to see some
resurgence of Mac-assed Mac apps [1].

[1]: A term coined by Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire, (in my opinion)
the best Mac-assed RSS reader.
[https://inessential.com/2020/03/19/proxyman](https://inessential.com/2020/03/19/proxyman)

------
jedberg
Trying this now, but I'm stuck on authentication. My default browser is
Firefox, but I have Firefox specifically configured to block access to Gmail.
It would be great if I could choose the browser to use for login, or at least
be able to copy the URL so I can put into Chrome.

In the meantime I'll change my default browser for a moment and see how it
goes.

Edit: It worked switching default browsers.

------
sjroot
This looks amazing. I am so glad that you kept it as close to the native Mail
experience as possible.

My only question relates to payment. This is an app that I would gladly pay a
solid price to own (in the ballpark of $50?). I would _much_ prefer that over
a subscription model.

Because the site mentions eventual payment, but doesn't specify a pricing
model, would you be willing to elaborate on your intentions?

~~~
njhaveri
Thanks! So, I don't know exactly what the pricing model will be yet, but I
definitely hear your feedback on this topic, and I'm looking at pretty much
every option :) My intention is to build a sustainable long-term business, and
deliver a continuous/regular stream of updates (e.g. see the Release Notes at
[https://mimestream.com/releases](https://mimestream.com/releases)), so the
pricing model will need to support that goal.

~~~
antaviana
IMHO, if you are looking for long-term business, you need to go the
subscription-only route. Probably $19/year.

Don't offer permanent licenses, it will add complexity to purchase and
support. You do not want a users with a product of yours with a vulnerability
they are not entitled to update.

A subscription-only model will allow you to focus on only the last build which
everyone will be entitled to download, greatly simplifying your support.

You will be able to add features at your pace and will avoid the bloating that
results when you compete with yourself as is the case with a permanent license
model and (increasingly stupid) upgrades.

You will focus on quality not on corner case features to justify upgrades or
interface revamps for the sake of it, confusing your existing user base. If
you keep your quality high and the product is stable and reliable, your users
will stick.

We have been selling our desktop product (in our case B2B) as subscription-
only for 8 years and we couldn't be happier about the decision.

~~~
filoleg
I think they can do a pricing model similar to what Sketch uses, but given it
is an email client, I am not entirely sure of that myself (though still worth
exploring).

For those unfamiliar, with Sketch, you basically have a yearly subscription
and you continue receiving regular updates while you are subbed. Once your
subscription expires, you get to keep the version you paid for at the
beginning of your subscription period, but you stop receiving future updates
(aside from security ones and such, ofc).

With Sketch it makes sense, because each year they add a cumulative of lots of
new features and such, so people are motivated to renew the sub every year to
get those features. With an email client, however, there isn't much in terms
of "new features coming every year with updates" that people would be excited
to pay the sub for on regular.

However, I still think it is worth exploring and considering as a viable
possible option. With that model of "yearly sub, but you get to keep the old
version once the sub expires", you allow people (who don't wanna deal with
subs and just wanna use the barebones product to pay for once and forget) to
experience your product and give you money. And powerusers and those who just
want to support the project would be happy to pay the annual sub on regular
and receive new features as they come. With that in mind, I would think a
yearly $50-60 sub is pretty reasonable, but I am not an expert on pricing
things like that, so take it with a grain of salt.

~~~
dfinninger
This is very similar to Intellij's perpetual fallback license. When you unsub,
you are frozen on that point release.

I spent a while with a professional version until the community edition had
some features that convinced me to move over.

------
leptonstanja
I’d easily pay $100+ for a native macOS client for GMail that is not a poor
IMAP substitute like Mail, Thunderbird, or Outlook. But I’ll wait for v1
before I download anything outside of the app store ;)

------
mshick
Thanks for this fantastic app. I love the native Gmail features with this
level of polish, speed and OS integration.

I would love to see — and would definitely pay for — a similar approach to
Google Calendar. Unfortunately CalDAV-based clients only offer a fraction of
the web client functionality.

~~~
bfgmartin
+100

------
jonny383
Looks fantastic. I strongly urge you to reconsider building out an application
that serves only Google though!

~~~
SpelingBeeChamp
"Serves only Google" when talking about email is not as limiting as your
language suggests.

As of October 2018, Gmail had 1.5 billion users.

~~~
jonny383
I think you're missing the point I was trying to make. When Gmail decides to
ship their own native client on MacOS, this platform will become abandonware.

~~~
bonestamp2
Unless it's better or google disables the api. I say this because I use the
paid Apollo app for reading reddit and it's far superior to Reddit's own free
app. But I do agree that it's probably a niche user base compared to the OEM
app promoted by the service itself.

------
jooize
Makes me wish I use Gmail. I want a natively designed email app for IMAP.
There's one feature I desire: group by sender. Unibox does it, but the apps
jump around when loading email contents and aren't that fancy other than that
feature. The app I use must not use an intermediate server.

------
timwis
Cool! I use MailPlane but would be happy to try this out. I'd need two things
though: gmail-style keyboard shortcuts (or at least sufficient alternatives)
and a way to link myself to an email (so I can put a link to an email into my
task manager). Any chance those will be possible?

~~~
njhaveri
Gmail shortcuts (and Apple Mail shortcuts) are available as an option in
Preferences > General. Linking to a specific email in the app is something
that's on the roadmap, and I've gotten several requests for it (all mostly for
your use case of putting emails into a task manager app).

------
endlessvoid94
Loving this so far. I've always hated how Mail.app uses a gargantuan amount of
disk space for my gmail account.

Thanks!

------
duyluong
Thanks for making this app! I'm super excited to use it as it's much faster
than Spark. One thing I feel missing is ability to snooze the email and batch
mark as read. Do you have plan to add it?

------
genghizkhan
How does this compare to using twobird[0], which was launched recently by the
guys behind Notability? Anyone who's got experience with both clients?

[0]: [https://www.twobird.com/](https://www.twobird.com/)

------
blweiner
Just downloaded it and it looks very nice. One of my favorite features of
Gmail is multiples inboxes which I use for a GTD-like set up with "To Do"/"To
Read"/"Waiting For" etc. Any plans to add support for that?

~~~
njhaveri
Yes, this is definitely a planned feature!

------
gleb
Could you compare to Superhuman?

------
thomaspaulmann
It’s wonderful to see more native macOS apps popping up recently. Having a
great Gmail client is certainly one of the nicest I’ve seen lately!

What’s your stand on the latest changes announced at this year’s WWDC for Mac
development?

~~~
njhaveri
I'm very excited about the continued evolution of SwiftUI, as well as Apple
Silicon! I think these are both great moves for the Mac, and while there are
some aspects of the Big Sur UI I'm not totally sold on, I think these will be
refined over the coming years. I'm hoping for way more new Mac apps with
SwiftUI and Catalyst making it easier for iOS developers to write Mac apps!

------
saagarjha
Looks great! This question is entirely unrelated, but the picture of you that
you have on your site looks uncannily like the ones that they do for badges,
with the white background and all. Is it one of those?

~~~
njhaveri
Haha... It's definitely in that style, but no, it's not my former badge photo
:)

------
smoyer
I was really hoping this was a very quiet video streaming service ... I'm not
a MacOS user so I can't take it for a test-drive but I'd like to say
congratulations on launching!

------
radiospiel
This looks fantastic - any chance of an OSX 10.14 version though?

~~~
sgt
I commented on the same problem. I am very eager to upgrade to Big Sur but I
absolutely do not intend to run Catalina yet, so I'll stick to Mojave (10.14)
for now.

------
nbap
I love the simplicity; form follows function.

Is there a way to get rid of the badge counter on the dock icon? I somewhat
feel anxious/FOMO when the counter is there.

~~~
njhaveri
Thanks! You can disable this in System Preferences > Notifications >
Mimestream > Badge app icon

------
devin
No shade being thrown as I recognize this is a beta, but I seem to be crashing
with regularity. I submitted reports, but was wondering if I'm alone.

~~~
somishere
Ditto. Now opening for ~3s before crashing. Possibly coincidence but began
after marking all messages in an inbox category as read (there were tens of
thousands).

[edit] logs forwarded

------
deagle50
Is the local cache encrypted on disk? Really nice app.

------
riobard
Is there a plain text composing mode? Or is it by default plain text if I
don't turn on the rich text toolbar?

~~~
njhaveri
Right now, it's WYSIWYG HTML composing only. Got a ton of requests for plain
text (and markdown) composing support, and I definitely plan on adding it,
though it might take a few months at this point.

------
lalo2302
Hey it looks amazing. I'll try it out. Did you do your landing page by
yourself? Or are you using a template/service?

------
philips
Looks great! Given how bad Gmail is on iPad Safari and how bad the Gmail iPad
app is there is probably a market there if you port.

~~~
njhaveri
Thanks! Porting to iOS/iPadOS is something I would really love to do, but I
still have a lot of work left on the Mac client. I'm curious to hear more what
your pain points are with Gmail on iPadOS – I've been using the Gmail iOS app
on my phone lately, and aside from the nonstandard UI, my experience has been
fairly positive.

~~~
philips
The GMail app has no keyboard shortcuts- pretty important for iPad users.

~~~
jeffbee
> keyboard shortcuts- pretty important for iPad users

I admit I cannot see the logic of this statement. Explain?

~~~
InvaderFizz
A lot of iPad users use the iPad like the Surface these days. Touch +
Keyboard.

------
aborsy
A similarly named technology offered by many email clients is S/MIME.

Does it support end to end encryption with PGP or smime?

~~~
njhaveri
Mimestream doesn't support S/MIME or PGP yet, but this is something I'd love
to add someday!

------
summitsummit
this looks amazing! pretty excited to try it. signed up for the newsletter and
downloaded it. however...

> Read, compose, send, and permanently delete all your email from Gmail

anything you can say to make me feel better for allowing this level of power
for a beta app from a random person on the web? i'd really like to try it out.

------
mathiswrong
really really amazing. Super snappy and minimalist. +1 for snooze and send
later features.

------
cridenour
This looks really nice and runs great. Does the GMail API let you tap in to
the "Important" tag?

~~~
njhaveri
Yes, it does! Flagging messages as important/unimportant is already supported
in the code, but the feature is currently disabled in the UI. I plan to enable
it once I add sections support to the Inbox to match up to Gmail's Priority
Inbox feature.

~~~
bonestamp2
On this note, the notifications are popping off about every 10 minutes for me.
It would nice if I could set notifications to only show for "important"
emails.

PS - Thanks for the app, it's already an improvement in some ways over the
gmail interface... looking forward to even more!

------
BrilliantThings
Will Mimestream support Gmail Templates? They're essential for my workflow.

------
njkleiner
Does it support sending from a custom domain connected to Gmail, like the web
interface?

~~~
njhaveri
Yes, Gmail aliases are supported and automatically synced (e.g. I have my old
ISP email address set up as an alias). G Suite accounts on custom domains are
also supported.

------
agambrahma
Sweet! I would switch to this right away, if I hadn't already discovered
MailMate.

------
samat
I'd kill for it were I using gmail, but I am with fastmail and mail.app now ;)

Still, great job!

------
anibalin
Fantastic job. Works great.

------
nguyenkien
@njhaveri: It's seem the sign up button on top not working

~~~
njhaveri
Try again? I've been having serious trouble with my email list service
(Mailjet).

~~~
nguyenkien
The bottom button still work

------
housemeisterb
Any plans to add a menu bar toggle/counter?

~~~
njhaveri
I've heard this requested a lot in the last 24h, will add this.

------
qaq
Any chance sorting can be supported?

------
TenJack
Does this have the Snooze feature?

~~~
aikinai
In a different comment the developer mentioned that the Gmail API doesn't
support snooze, so he'll have to implement it manually later.

------
brentis
+1 for outlook 365

------
howmayiannoyyou
I rely a several add-ons for Gmail. As such, can't use this.

~~~
samatman
The author is on the thread, and has been very responsive to input.

This comment isn't useful to me, or him, without specifics.

------
darklion
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 using my data, but there's a bit of induced
cognitive dissonance in taking a strong privacy stance for a Google-specific
product.

~~~
vslira
> 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 all.

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

~~~
darklion
> 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.

------
c1yd3i
Uh, where's the source code? If I'm trusting you with my mail, you should be
trusting me with the source code.

~~~
saagarjha
This looks macOS-only, which is largely closed-source. Are you sure you're
complaint is directed the right way?

------
ricardobeat
> Instead of using the IMAP protocol, Mimestream utilizes the Gmail API

That's sadly a step in the wrong direction. JMAP
([https://jmap.io/](https://jmap.io/)) has been around for a while and it is a
shame google refuses to adopt it.

~~~
ymolodtsov
So Gmail doesn't support it and yet it wrong for this developer to go this
route?

Being snobby about protocols isn't useful and comments like that should be
sent to Google instead.

~~~
ricardobeat
Wasn't supposed to come across like that. The sad part is that Google has
enough grip on e-mail to halt adoption of any standard; GMail has been around
for 16 years, you'd expect _some_ kind of standard to come out of it to
support modern e-mail features. Developers not having a choice doesn't make it
less wrong.

JMAP has been around for 5+ years, and specs published last year by the IETF:
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8620](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8620) and
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8621](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8621)

