
Sylpheed – a simple, lightweight but featureful e-mail client - generic_user
http://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/
======
SwellJoe
The screenshots on the page don't really do it justice. I mean, it's not the
most beautiful email client in the world, but it doesn't look like 2001.
Because it uses GTK it looks like the rest of your desktop (assuming your
desktop is GNOME).

I always end up going back to Thunderbird, for a variety of reasons. But, I
try a bunch of other stuff every now and then. Sylpheed is not bad, but it's
not got anything I don't get from Thunderbird, and Thunderbird is more
actively maintained and has more capabilities. (I keep trying Evolution, and
_hating_ it, every single time. It's huge and thinks really hard about every
single action and continues to be buggy. I don't know how something has been
in really active development for decades and still has weird quirks and
misbehavior without any actionable error messages.)

~~~
Yetanfou
What Claws [1] (a Sylpheed fork) has over Thunderbird is noticeable the moment
you start it: speed. While Thunderbird is still busily indexing its bits,
Claws has you reading your first message.

Another thing it offers is an easy way to edit the 'From' address without
needing to go through the hassle of creating an identity. For those who, like
me, use special addresses any time they need to contact a commercial or
governmental entity this makes life a lot easier.

Just like Thunderbird, Claws supports extensions for things like PGP support,
Sieve filter support, etc.

Due to its speed and relatively low memory footprint Claws is a good choice
for low-memory and/or low-cpu devices.

[1] [http://www.claws-mail.org/](http://www.claws-mail.org/)

~~~
dotancohen
To edit the From address in outgoing email with Thunderbird, try the Virtual
Identity extension.

The really nice thing about Virtual Identity is that it remembers which From
address you use for each To address. Additionally, if you reply to someone
that you've not written to before, VI uses the incoming mail's To address as
the outgoing mail's From address.

~~~
Yetanfou
I've tried Virtual Identity several times, several versions, but it always
ended up making it impossible to read or send mail. When the extension was
active I could not open messages (got empty windows), disabling the extension
made everything right again. When it works Virtual Identity works well, but
unfortunately it rarely works - at least for me.

------
morimoritokyo
Sylpheed is my all-time favorite e-mail app.

In late 2001 I brought a Vaio C1 [1] back from Japan. 192 MB ram, Transmeta
Crusoe processor that could burst to 600 MHz. Running Windows ME _everything_
was slow out of the box, but with Linux (Slackware), a minimal window manager
(forget if it was XFCE, Enlightenment, or something else), and Sylpheed it
just flew. Even with huge numbers of messages everything was snappy. It was
amazing.

I switched from Linux to Mac in 2009 and migrated to Mail.app at the time.
It's not terrible, but even on recent hardware it feels more sluggish than
Sylpheed did on that underpowered ultraportable in 2001.

Good to see that it's still getting occasional updates 16 years later.

1\.
[http://www.sony.jp/ProductsPark/Consumer/PCOM/PCG-C1VSX/](http://www.sony.jp/ProductsPark/Consumer/PCOM/PCG-C1VSX/)

~~~
rntksi
With MacOS, I particularly love MailMate.

It's been with me for years, and I love how it handles the flow of editing
mail messages. You take care of the contents, it takes care of formatting. If
you've ever tried LaTeX, it's a similar concept.

~~~
h1d
Used mailmate when Mail.app was slightly buggy some years ago but then got
tired of mailmate being buggy as well (iirc, takes seconds selecting multiple
mails, changes column width after showing mail folders on/off, message
signature inserting unnecessary new line and crashes randomly and never had
those fixed in a year or something), I switched back to Mail.app in Sierra,
seems responsive and trouble free so far.

------
uzoodoo
How does it compare with Claws Mail [0]?

I've always assumed Claws is the more full-featured fork of Sylpheed, but
seeing that they've diverged over a decade ago and are both still in
development I'm curious how they compare.

[0] [http://www.claws-mail.org/](http://www.claws-mail.org/)

~~~
Yetanfou
[http://www.claws-
mail.org/faq/index.php/General_Information#...](http://www.claws-
mail.org/faq/index.php/General_Information#What_are_the_differences_between_Claws_Mail_and_Sylpheed.3F)

 _Back in 2001 Claws Mail (formerly Sylpheed-Claws) started as the bleeding-
edge version of Sylpheed, in order to act as a testbed for new features for
Sylpheed. The idea was to regularly resync with Hiroyuki 's main branch, and
vice-versa. Claws Mail then evolved into the stable, extended version of
Sylpheed, and in 2006 became an entity in its own right, in part due to
different goals and the fact that syncing both codebases stopped happening.
Claws Mail has many extra features compared to Sylpheed and is more powerful,
yet is just as fast, lightweight and stable._

~~~
uzoodoo
Well, considering that was written a decade ago, it doesn't really answer my
question...

[http://www.claws-
mail.org/faq/index.php?title=General_Inform...](http://www.claws-
mail.org/faq/index.php?title=General_Information&type=revision&diff=3029&oldid=1817)

------
dfox
For last few years (after geting bitten by yet another breakage when upgrading
evolution) I'm using claws-mail which is fork of sylpheed and it does
everything I need from email client (and in contrast to evolution it even has
usable windows version).

~~~
generic_user
I have about the same experience, but with Thunderbird. Once I got my accounts
set up in Sylpheed/Claws (I have used both) I found it did everything I
needed, Its extremely stable has minimal dependency and uses negligible CPU
and memory.

I can compile Sylpheed form sources it in a few minutes on any recent version
of Linux or BSD with little or no dependencies.

------
krick
Not unlike many others, I use Thunderbird and sometimes think about switching
to something else (main reasons are speed and usability). But I guess what
many of us need much more than better email client is better email workflow. I
have dozens of filters and always keep my inbox empty, and yet I think may be
the real thing is I don't really manage my emails properly. Maybe I just need
to set up this filter to delete stuff instead of moving it (I'm not really
keen on deleting stuff in general, always feels unsafe and shortsighted),
maybe I need some other system.

By the way, using Gmail web-interface (and Gmail is not the only mail provider
I use) feels almost as unsatisfactory, as Thunderbird: ok, filters and search
are a bit better, and it physically cannot hung-up my whole system under load,
but otherwise it is as needy and clumsy as Thunderbird. I remember receiving
several thousands of emails overnight because of some programmers mistake, and
deleting it was quite painful: I'd gladly tell Gmail "just delete all this
stuff" (by filter), but I didn't find any way to do so, I had to fall back to
slowly manually deleting my mail by 200-item batches.

Would be interesting to hear how other people manage their mailboxes.

------
vanous
HTML vs plaintext

The plaintext email only nature resonated with me for long time but many email
and chat services have gone rich text and it's great. Why I say that...I used
to use claws mail for many years for business email but being able to at least
make text bold or add an inline image is valuable. For personal email mutt is
great for me and Gmail too nowadays but for business to business, HTML is
required.

It took me a while to get Thunderbird to mimick Claws. Thunderbird is much
slower and crashing randomly frequently but is the best from the crowd.

 _Does Claws Mail allow me to write HTML styled messages?

No. A discussion has gone around over this topic, and the outcome was that
HTML mail is not wanted. If you really need to send HTML, you can of course
attach a webpage to an e-mail._

[http://www.claws-
mail.org/faq/index.php/General_Information#...](http://www.claws-
mail.org/faq/index.php/General_Information#Does_Claws_Mail_allow_me_to_write_HTML_styled_messages.3F)

~~~
zerocrates
Thunderbird's slowness and other quirks got me to switch from it to the
Windows mail app when I'm on Windows... suffice to say I don't recommend it.

It looks nice and all, but isn't necessarily all that much faster, doesn't
always render HTML email all that well, and has pieces of basic functionality
mysteriously missing (i.e., to this day it doesn't understand what the Reply-
To header is for).

Chalk it up as another in a long line of Thunderbird alternatives that just
don't measure up. I'd love to have something else I like (especially now in
the twilight of XUL) but it's just a tough space.

------
sigi45
Wow its ugly.

While people might or not might trust google etc. The spam filter and the ui
from gmail is just to good to switch to any offline client.

I'm only using thunderbird for pgp mails.

~~~
feld
Gmail's UI is terrible. Where do people get the opinion that it's good? It's
slow, nonintuitive, requires I click a button to see updates new emails on a
thread, the filtering/labels are terribly limited... I could go on

~~~
tyingq
Fast flexible searches and spam filters that work better than anything else
I've tried. I put up with other issues for these two things.

I don't use an offline client because I use a home desktop, phone, and work
desktop that aren't the same os.

~~~
bigbugbag
That's because you have not tried the antispam solution that you have to pay
for. To me gmail and its spam filter is a curse, I self host my own mail
server and despite it being up to date to the latest recommended best
practice, sometime for no apparent reason and for a limited period of time
gmail will silently drop my legit emails into the spam folder of my recipient.
I've grown to really dislike gmail for not caring about smaller servers who do
their best to do it right.

~~~
tyingq
I have heard people complain about false positives, but I check from time to
time and don't see any.

I am using the paid Gmail product, no idea if that makes it any different.

I assume the volume they deal in would make a Bayesian filter more effective.

------
popey456963
Must admit I am somewhat jaded with current mail applications and actually
creating my own. Sylpheed is wonderful and the one I currently use, it's fast
and works. My problem is with the GUI. Every single linked email client in
this thread looks like it has come from 2005 and, unsurprisingly, most of them
were created around then.

Hoping that maybe by using some more modern libraries, and aiming for a
material design-esque client, I might be able to make something easy to use
and reliable.

~~~
self_awareness
I've upvoted you, because I think we need more e-mail clients. Actually, I was
thinking about creating one myself as well.

~~~
popey456963
Would you perhaps consider working together instead of on two separate
projects? Half the workload for both of us to get the same final product!

~~~
self_awareness
I'm currently involved in writing a hex editor for big files (i.e. disk
images), because I felt world needed one as well :), I already have a
significant amount of code, it would be a waste if I'd switch projects now.
Thanks for asking though. Working solo is hard, both for motivation and the
amount of work that needs to be done. If I wouldn't have my current project I
would definitely pair up with someone!

------
Fice
I used Sylpheed a lot in the past. Very fast, clean, simple and reliable. But
switched to Notmuch (with Emacs UI) years ago for its great flexibility and
programmability, and due to my general preference for using Emacs modes over
separate applications.

~~~
bigbugbag
I'm considering switching to notmuch in emacs, is there any advice or specific
thing I should know beforehand ?

~~~
ymse
Know that all other mail clients will feel inadequate ever after. If you are
forced to use something else at work, you might quit and end up homeless.

------
narga
Sylpheed is lack of good HTML render engine. That's why I still not change to
Claws or Sylpheed because its. This time is 2017, and I don't want to read and
imagining about the figure that was appeared as text description in email.

~~~
Yetanfou
I don't use this myself but in theory it should work:

    
    
      $ apt show claws-mail-fancy-plugin
      Package: claws-mail-fancy-plugin
      Version: 3.14.1-3+b1
      ...
    
      Description: HTML mail viewer using GTK+2 WebKit
       This plugin for Claws Mail allows rendering of HTML email messages
       in the message window.
       .
       It uses the GTK+2 port of the webkit library to render HTML.
       .
       Supports printing HTML mails when html2ps package is installed.

------
darklajid
Trojita is my client of choice so far, I might have to reevaluate that again?

~~~
bigbugbag
IIANM Trojita is limited to a single imap account which makes it almost
useless to me, as I would have to have an additional email client for the
other accounts.

Last time I checked trojita was still a work in progress with missing features
and was not ready for production and daily use. Is it ready now ?

~~~
ac29
I like trojita and used it for several months recently. It does a lot right,
but the biggest reason I stopped using it is a lack of an address book, or
some other form of email address autocomplete. Having to lookup old emails to
figure out someones email address is just a deal breaker -- especially because
the search isn't all that great either.

------
mintplant
As a point of comparison: why should I switch from Thunderbird to Sylpheed?

~~~
fnj
Why switch? I'll tell you why I switched from Thunderbird to Claws.

I got sick of Thunderbird's pathological memory leaking. I start by email
client when I log in and leave it running indefinitely (days-weeks).
Thunderbird continually started out at 1 GB but grew over time _without limit_
, even if only sitting idle, collecting mail. After a couple of days it would
be creeping north of 6 GB. Several times it drove my PC into pathological
swapping, making the PC impossible to use and extremely difficult even to get
control of to shut down.

Claws is currently using 0.1 GB, even after running for a week.

~~~
chengiz
Thunderbird user for over a decade here, on both Linux and Windows, and have
not seen this happen, ever. Firefox, I'd agree and it still does on Linux.
Never had a problem with Thunderbird other than the disappearing Outlook
calendars.

------
self_awareness
I'm yet to see a mail client that allows me to _rename_ all contacts that have
a specified email, then search by using those changed names. I mean, I don't
want to get e-mails from "F4taL ErRoR <error404@gmail.com>", I want to get
e-mails from "John Smith <error404@gmail.com>". Some clients kind of allow me
to do that kind of aliasing, but then indexing and searching for those aliases
don't work. Claws mail is one of them, Thunderbird as well.

------
soufron
I've used Sylpheed for years and I miss it. I stopped using it because I
switched to OSX at some point. But it's a beautiful piece of software.

~~~
rmind
brew install sylpheed

It is compiled and linked using the native X libraries on OS X, so it looks
quite decent. There are versions using XQuartz, but I have had problems with
the font rendering.

------
hexmiles
slighty off topic, but there are mail client that support at-rest encryption?

For varius reason i need to run a mail client from a usb key, and i could't
find a client that support the ability to encrypt the mailbox (also with
addressbook and for windows). Veracrypt and similar solution are not
applicable in my case.

~~~
mike-cardwell
If your client supports PGP, you can always implement something like:

[https://www.grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incomi...](https://www.grepular.com/Automatically_Encrypting_all_Incoming_Email)

~~~
hexmiles
i will look into that, it seem a step-up from my current setup. Thanks

------
drvortex
I cannot understand the relevance of an email client, now that browsers can do
email. It may be my workflow, so I will ask:

Is there any scenario where an email client would be necessary - i.e. a
browser based solution will not work?

~~~
r3bl
> Is there any scenario where an email client would be necessary - i.e. a
> browser based solution will not work?

Here's one: multiple email accounts that you need to check on a regular basis.
I would lose my mind if I had to track my emails across three different web
interfaces.

------
fabiofzero
Wow, this brings back memories! I used Syplheed Claws when I was still running
Mandrake - before it was merged and became Mandriva.

------
screed
last version for macOS 18 Apr 2014

------
dim13
Does it still misses RFC 2177?

~~~
popey456963
Pretty sure most applications don't need to support RFC 2177 to still be
efficient. Long-polling for most IMAP servers requires one packet every nine
minutes (to the best of my knowledge), which is literally nothing. It would
take months of being run constantly to even get up to a megabyte of data being
transferred. Some rough back of the envelope calculations:

\- 10 minutes per poll, 1440 minutes in a day, 144 packets per day.

\- 50 bytes per packet, 1,000,000 bytes to a megabyte, 20,000 packets
required.

\- Roughly 140 days of time, or 5 months to reach a single megabyte.

Aren't there some optimisations that are so minuscule it isn't worth
implementing them?

~~~
kwhitefoot
Of course but it so satisfying to reduce the overhead further. The struggle to
reduce a megabyte of overhead by half a megabyte is great while knocking half
a megabyte off a gigabyte is often trivial.

I'm not arguing that anyone should try shaving the megabyte of course.

------
yeahGreat
Not to be confused with:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silpheed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silpheed)

