
Mailspring: A fork of Nylas Mail by one of the original authors - Operyl
https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring
======
bengotow
Hey folks! Mailspring maintainer here — glad to see this on Hacker News. For
anyone just catching up, here's the tldr on Mailspring:

\- It's a fork of Nylas Mail with the entire mailsync codebase (~40k lines of
JavaScript) replaced with a new C++ core based on Mailcore2. It uses roughly
half the RAM and CPU of Nylas Mail and idles with almost zero "CPU Wakes"
thanks to new C++11 features, which translates to great battery life. You
might not even notice it's an Electron app.

\- It still has the same great pro features, like snoozing and send later, but
_doesn 't send your email credentials to Mailspring servers_. All of these
features have been re-implemented to run locally on your computer.

\- The pro features still cost money ($8/mo). The goal is to use revenue from
subscriptions to pay maintainers (myself, possibly other folks!) to maintain
Mailspring indefinitely and/or put bounties on popular feature requests.

\- The roadmap and website are still being assembled, but there's some really
cool stuff in the works. Launching it and polishing the new C++ sync codebase
is just step 1.

~~~
shakna
Really like it so far, but there is one nitpick that is bugging the hell out
of me.

I can't "snap" or maximise the window on Windows (Win7). Because I have a
decent sized screen I often just maximise to half screen for most
applications, but not having the standard resize tools is frustrating. Edit:
This only happens if I have the Reading Pane enabled.

Running version 1.0.1-ba1d6734.

Is this something being worked on? Or just a bug hitting me? Or just not
something other people have asked about?

~~~
bengotow
Hey! This is a bug—should be fixed in 1.0.2 later today:
[https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/17](https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/17)

------
Lazare
I used and loved Nylas Mail (aka N1), so I'm going to be taking a close look
at this.

For the record, my needs in a mail client are: GUI, very clean UI, pretty
themes, good search, works with gmail, ideally supports snoozing emails (a key
feature if you like to pursue Inbox Zero), if at all possible should be a
desktop app for OS X and Windows, and I wouldn't be adverse to open
notifications and such. Also, I'm explicitly fine with their being an extra
server in the mix; this is more-or-less required for snoozing emails to work
properly[1], and I'm not really concerned about privacy.

If that describes you, you might like Mailspring too. If not (and I suspect
that'll be the case for the median HN visitor), then probably not. :)

Edit: Totally forgot, I also have a strong need for supporting multiple email
accounts. A merged inbox view that will automatically use the correct email
address/signature for replying to an email based on where the original email
was sent is critical.

[1]: At least, every implementation of email snoozing I've seen had relied on
a third party server. And once I got addicted to it with Dropbox's much-
mourned Mailbox app, I've found it very hard to use a mail client without it.

~~~
chrismorgan
At FastMail we’re hoping to implement snooze next year, as a first-party
solution that doesn’t need the support of a client or third-party server.

There is no established convention or standard for representing snooze over
IMAP. There’s not yet any consensus on how to represent it in JMAP, the
emerging standard that we’re backing (and which our web UI will be using
fairly soon), either. It’ll be a FastMail-specific JMAP extension at first,
but it could well be standardised (though not in the core spec) after that.
We’ll see how things go.

~~~
breakingcups
Which other parties are currently backing JMAP?

~~~
chrismorgan
I haven’t been working on the JMAP stuff (I only started working there this
year and I’ve been focusing on our new product Topicbox), so I’m not aware of
all the details; but JMAP standardisation is going through the IETF, so you
can see things that are happening with it at
[https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/jmap/documents/](https://datatracker.ietf.org/wg/jmap/documents/)
and
[https://github.com/jmapio/jmap/issues](https://github.com/jmapio/jmap/issues).

------
discreditable
I gave it a shot. The app is pretty but has some weird things that will keep
me on Thunderbird.

* No plaintext support.

* No "Simple HTML View"—my favorite Thunderbird feature.

* No plaintext view.

* Sets a "Sent from Mailspring" signature that isn't straightforward to remove.

* I don't want to track others reading my mail. It's creepy and I'd rather that functionality not exist in my client. It's enabled by default.

* UI is slow enough for me to notice elements pop-in when I open new windows.

~~~
dmix
> * No plaintext support.

Strange, wasn't this one of those security focused clients? or am I mistaking
it for something else? This is a big oversight as I find it's the ideal format
for PGP emails and I find it forces me to keep things simple and minimal.

~~~
callahad
You're probably mistaking Mailspring for Mailpile
([https://www.mailpile.is/](https://www.mailpile.is/))

~~~
dmix
I was, thanks.

------
BugsJustFindMe
There are no Linux download links. The download page just shows image
placeholders.

But if you send an invalid download request like ".../download?platform=foo"
then you get back a handy JSON error string indicating that the Linux
downloads are:

[https://updates.getmailspring.com/download?platform=linuxDeb](https://updates.getmailspring.com/download?platform=linuxDeb)
and
[https://updates.getmailspring.com/download?platform=linuxRpm](https://updates.getmailspring.com/download?platform=linuxRpm)

Maybe Ben or someone will see this and comment why the links aren't there,
since it looks like the github repo has issues filed for this.

~~~
bengotow
Hey folks! bengotow here—the linux version is /almost/ ready, though the
debian and rpm packages above should work. I'm working with some folks at
Canonical to get the app packaged as a Snap (Snapcraft.io) so that Linux users
will finally get autoupdates and I can ship a single format to everyone. Back
when I worked on Nylas Mail, we had a ton of trouble with Linux because users
would download a .deb or .rpm and then never update it, so I was hoping to
stop distributing those entirely.

Feel free to grab the version from the link above, just come back and switch
to the auto-updating snap when it's ready!

~~~
sethhochberg
Just wanted to express thanks for continuing to support Linux reasonably well.
I regularly use all 3 major platforms and hated that webmail was one of the
only ways to get a somewhat-consistent interface across them; this is one of
the things that drew me to Nylas in the first place before issues with a self-
hosted sync engine pushed me away.

I'll definitely be checking out Mailspring.

------
crispinb
Do a favour folks for your non-technical friends. Show them how to turn off
image loading by default in their mail client. And how to check link
destinations in emails before clicking on them.

People need to know how to protect themselves from abominations like 'Open
tracking' and 'link tracking'.

~~~
KGIII
I normally suggest reading in plain text, as the default. This may not work
for everyone, but I find no use for rich format emails.

It's much better today, but there used to be quite a few vulnerabilities via
rich formatted emails.

------
gravypod
Can this so plaintext and operate without contacting a third party? There are
a few "features" in this that worry me. One being the Open Tracking.

The client looks great and I'd like to use it but I frankly don't know what
I'm getting. With Thunderbird other solutions you know what it's doing and
how. Some of the features of this are a little strange for someone like me.

~~~
bengotow
Hey! Mailspring maintainer here—the app doesn't support plaintext emails (at
least not out of the box), but it's likely we'll add support in the future.

A lot of the features in the app, like read receipts and link tracking, are
targeted at sales and business folks that send a lot of email and care about
it being read. You can use the app without using them though! Unlike Nylas
Mail, Mailspring implements all mail sync on your computer - your email
credentials are not sent to the cloud and things like "unsnoozing" happen on
your machine, not on a server. (Note that for many people, this is actually a
/bad/ thing - if enough folks complain we might add the cloud sync stuff as an
opt-in!)

~~~
e12e
> the app doesn't support plaintext emails (at least not out of the box)

What does that mean - only support gpg/smime encrypted email, or only support
the html-part of a multipart message, with no option to edit/send or view the
plain/text part? (ie: you can't communicate with any sane mailinglist using
this)?

[ed: and does it work with text/plain at all - or does it effect not support
email, sending empty text/plain parts?]

~~~
vhbit
afaik atm it doesn't allow to send a plain text email (but it can display
them), the only "output" format supported is HTML.

------
_kwmj
Nylas (like other apps e.g. Airmail) kept the password on their servers (Nylas
ID, now it's Mailspring ID) so basically they had (could have) access to all
my data even when it's not lying on my computer.

I asked them about it and they never replied. I wish it was just a native (or
not) IMAP client and I definitely want out of those Link and Open Tracking
features.

(Edit):

There's a GitHub issue related to it -
[https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/33](https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/33)

The dev is very clear about it

\--- but for now Mailspring needs to target paying customers with great pro
features so I can continue working on it full-time. The Mailspring ID is a
core component of these Pro features and a lot of exciting stuff on the
roadmap, like team templates, read receipt analytics and shared folders.
Unfortunately, it doesn't make sense to remove the Mailspring ID and make the
mail client better for you, because it pulls us further away from doing a
great job on the pro features for paying users that will ultimately make this
a long-lasting open source project.

Hope that helps! I'm going to flag this as a wontfix for now, but I welcome
everyone's thoughts and feedback here. \---

So no, not an email client I would like to use.

~~~
bengotow
Hey folks! Just to be clear, Mailspring does /not/ send your email credentials
to the cloud - all the mail sync is done locally, and your passwords are
stored in your system keychain / keyring. I spent a good chunk of time re-
implementing things like snooze and send later to work without a backend
server.

That's actually mentioned a few sentences before the quote above in that
GitHub issue ;-) The Mailspring ID stores metadata for things like read
receipts and link tracking, but that's pretty much it!

~~~
_kwmj
Thanks for replying here.

My bad. I somehow missed it.

Since you are here:

\- What if I am sending an email to a person who doesn’t use Mailspring? Can
the tracking still be achieved? I am don’t know the technical details of how
email works but I believe it can’t be done unless the mail client adds
something to the mail being sent. Right? So how does it work with Mailspring
IDs?

\- Can I opt to not track my mails/activities and not be tracked too?

\- What all the meta data leavea my local system and goes to Mailspring? Is
there a complete list somewhere? Also how are they stored on your serves?

Apologies again for posting incorrect info about your OSS.

------
herewegoagain
What makes this better than Apple's Mail? Not familiar at all, just asking.

~~~
tb303
read receipts + link tracking. if you use it for work, it's incredible. all
the other solutions are heavy-handed CRM style plugins for gmail.

canned responses + simple mail-merge style things

downside:

because it's not gmail, search is...not as good as gmail. nothing is.

------
frutiger
Browsing through mailcore2 [1], it looks like this would not support arbitrary
IMAP flags. So far I have found only a handful of mail clients that can
support them: MailMate, MailTags (brittle extension for Mail.app), and support
for flags through folders if you happen to use Gmail as a server.

1:
[https://github.com/MailCore/mailcore2/blob/f708ce74e23b61ec6...](https://github.com/MailCore/mailcore2/blob/f708ce74e23b61ec6e5ae958eba0b8bcd8831a1e/src/java/com/libmailcore/MessageFlag.java#L5-L19)

EDIT: added reference.

------
c036
I like the UI and some features of Nylas, and thus Mailspring. But the fact I
need a third party server worry me. I would love an open source native mail
client that do all the syncing locally

~~~
Operyl
The syncing is done locally, no credentials are sent to Mailspring for your
email accounts.

~~~
tjoff
But you are still reliant on your server for some other reason?

------
tsukasagenesis
Really happy to hear it ! I try nylas when they get out, but i'm not fine to
let them keep their email.

I tried then to use their engine but they deliberately let it die/non working,
so I did go back to thunderbird.

It's amazing guys, I was waiting for it since a long time, I have no problem
to pay for the app but not for lose my email hosting !

------
scblock
Is it just me or is the "onboarding" process too stupid to understand being
run on a computer behind a proxy? I can't find any settings so I just get a
fairly pointless failure message.

------
naasking
SMTP authentication may be buggy. I can't connect to an AppRiver account via
IMAP and SMTP, but am able to connect to a more traditional Linux-based
IMAP/SMTP setup.

~~~
bengotow
Yeah—something is definitely up with SMTP auth on Linux. I have a few test
accounts it seems I can connect on Mac which are not working on Linux... stay
tuned.

~~~
naasking
I've installed a few updates, but it still doesn't work. Now mail fails to
sync with the accounts I had setup, particularly with my NAS sitting right
across my desk on a direct LAN connection.

Too bad, I've been wanting to replace Thunderbird for awhile and Mailspring
looks promising, but doesn't seem quite ready yet.

------
the_common_man
I wish the license was MIT. The author could then have simply made some sort
of an open core model instead of resorting to this ID business.

~~~
bengotow
Hey! Mailspring maintainer here—could you elaborate on the "open core model"?
I'm not sure I follow. If it'd generate more than $~10k/mo in revenue and
would allow me and others at F376 to sustainably work on Mailspring
indefinitely, it might be a great alternative to the Mailspring ID and pro
features.

~~~
bdcravens
Open core is generally a base free (as in speech and beer) version, and
extended version/plugins that aren't. See Sidekiq and Hashicorp's products.

------
_tomasz
MailSpring is looking great, I've heard great things from one of my coworkers
about Nylas Mail so I'll have to give this a try ;)

------
jbrooksuk
I've been waiting for this! Very exciting!

Couple of things I'm seeing:

\- The Markdown composer isn't working.

\- I can't install plugins.

------
petre
Wants me to create an account on their service. Why would that be necessary
for a MUA?

------
Tree1993
What's mailspring ID? Why do I need such a thing?

~~~
helb
[https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/33#issuecomm...](https://github.com/Foundry376/Mailspring/issues/33#issuecomment-334632126)

------
la_oveja
> Linux Snap Coming soon!

Soon™

