Mimestream review: this is the Mac app Gmail users need

A very powerful factor I can inform you about Mimestream, the e-mail app for Mac that simply came out of a yearslong beta, is that it lastly made me cease going to Gmail.com. 

I’ve tried a number of e-mail apps through the years, and so they all have no less than one deadly flaw. (Some have a number of.) Search is the most typical perpetrator: only a few apps can search by messages as quick or in addition to Gmail, which is why I’ve dumped every little thing from Spark to Edison to Apple Mail to Newton through the years. However some apps have a tough time discovering contacts, others do bizarre stuff with inbox group, and don’t even get me began on those that appear one way or the other unable to remain on-line and really ship all my messages. For years, I’ve downloaded apps hoping for higher, extra native e-mail instruments than Gmail’s cluttered mess of an interface, and for years, I’ve ended up begrudgingly returning to the cluttered mess. 

Mimestream is totally different. The app, created by a small staff led by Neil Jhaveri, does nearly every little thing Gmail does no less than in addition to Gmail does it. (Jhaveri is a former Apple engineer who spent a bunch of years engaged on Mail and Notes. Man is aware of his apps.) In lots of instances, that’s as a result of it does it precisely the best way Gmail does it — Mimestream makes heavy use of Gmail’s personal API for every little thing from mail retrieval to look. 

In a method, Mimestream isn’t actually an e-mail app as a result of it doesn’t do IMAP and POP3 and all the usual e-mail app stuff. It’s a Gmail app. It doesn’t even assist Outlook or different e-mail suppliers but as a result of Jhaveri and his staff have been so targeted on constructing a greater option to do Gmail. (He says they’re engaged on Outlook assist, although.) As an alternative of all of the sidebars and tabs and advertisements and autoreply recommendations, Mimestream simply provides you your e-mail. Your inbox on the left, your open message on the correct. It appears to be like extra like Apple Mail than Gmail. It’s quick, it’s clear, it’s not terribly visually thrilling — however that’s most likely for the perfect with regards to e-mail.

I’ve been testing the app for greater than a 12 months, and there’s nothing about Gmail I miss. Mimestream carries over the identical keyboard shortcuts, the identical labels and filters, the identical every little thing. Its search is quick and wonderful — as a result of it’s simply Gmail’s personal search introduced in a brand new method. Mimestream has the undo ship function that has saved me numerous instances, it helps all my e-mail aliases, it lets me reply to calendar invitations. In nearly each method, it does Gmail significantly better than Gmail.

That stated, there are many issues I’d prefer to see Mimestream add, beginning with Home windows and cell apps. I additionally want Mimestream made it simpler to hyperlink to an e-mail — proper now, you may copy the hyperlink to any message, however that hyperlink then simply opens Gmail when it truly must open Mimestream. It must assist Outlook and different suppliers, too, particularly if it desires to be individuals’s essential e-mail consumer. And Mimestream will finally want a option to replicate Gmail’s plug-in construction as a result of there are a number of energy customers who gained’t wish to ditch Boomerang or Mailtrack.

Jhaveri says Mimestream is engaged on a number of that stuff. Finally, one in every of his targets is to promote Mimestream licenses to companies, which makes supporting plug-ins and Outlook all of the extra vital. He’s additionally satisfied Mimestream Cellular may be nice.

Within the meantime, Jhaveri figures the primary greatest use case for Mimestream is individuals who have a number of Gmail accounts. You possibly can add all of your accounts to Mimestream and both flip by your particular person inboxes or see all of them in a unified record. Mimestream additionally helps Gmail’s inbox classes, so you may see your Promotions and Updates individually should you favor. 

You possibly can handle it even additional, too: if in case you have a bunch of labor addresses or a number of totally different emails you utilize for private stuff, you may group these underneath what Mimestream calls “Profiles” and see all of your associated messages collectively.

Mimestream additionally does some helpful Mac-specific stuff which you can’t get from the Gmail net app, like integrating with Focus Filters and the native notification system so that you could have one profile ship alerts throughout the workday and one other accomplish that on the weekends.

Mimestream has some particular common particular person enchantment, nevertheless it’s priced very very similar to a instrument for companies and energy customers. It’s a subscription app and can value $50 a 12 months or $5 a month, although you may get your first 12 months for $30 throughout the launch. That’s quite a bit to pay for a better-looking Gmail! It’s nowhere close to the $30 a month value for a service like Superhuman, although, and it’s according to different productiveness apps like Fantastical or Todoist. Different e-mail apps, comparable to Spark Premium, are about the identical value, too. A couple of dollars a month, Jhaveri reckons, is a good value for a greater e-mail life. However finally, for a lot of customers, Mimestream is competing with free. And free is tough to beat.

Personally, I’ll be paying for the annual subscription with out a lot second thought. I spend hours a day in my e-mail, and it’s the supply of a lot of the knowledge I would like minute to minute and everyday. As Gmail continues to be overrun by advertisements, Meet icons, and have creep, I’m pleased paying a couple of bucks a month for a greater reply. Mimestream is the perfect of Gmail, minus the worst of Gmail. That’s the app I’ve been searching for.