Who here uses a desktop mail client for personal mail? ie, not something in a browser, something dedicated they have installed.

Feel free to reply with details as to why, and which client.

Boosts appreciated!

@phildini apple mail. I find the idea of webmail-only extremely bizarre because the #1 best thing about email is that it’s the communication medium you can interact with while fully offline. if you are going to be interacting online and interruptible in real time, why not just put it in Slack or Signal or something

@glyph @phildini I was about to say nearly the same, funny!

@glyph Interesting wording from @phildini about “desktop client”.
I chose web with that wording, but…
Normal email interaction is:
- get notifications of email in phone, using a client that can be used offline if necessary
- filter and sort in phone
- short responses on phone
- do in depth reading of important email on desktop
- do longer replies on desktop
- use multiple desktop computers
So, on desktop, I need syncing and only most recent emails, usually. Thus web wins

@brianokken @phildini I can’t quite parse this. what do you mean “syncing”? that’s usually a word I would use to refer to a client capable of offline behavior

@glyph @phildini Yeah. I kinda meant that if I used a desktop client it would need to sync with same client on multiple machines.

@brianokken @phildini I remain confused; that is the function of an email client, to sync :). Is the implication here that syncing has been too slow or unreliable for you on some desktop client, and thus you want the up-to-the-minute always-load-everything-from-server web client experience, as opposed to the maybe-it's-stale-but-it-will-catch-up IMAP experience?

@glyph @phildini I guess it’s probably pilot error on my part. My memory of when I was using a POP client I’d have it download and delete from the server. That worked great with 1 computer. Then when I tried to leave stuff on the server I’d delete something only to have it show up again.

@brianokken @phildini Ah. So it's been like… 30 years since you gave a desktop client a spin, I take it :).

(I don't know that it would really solve any problems for you, web clients are fine. But if you're curious, things have improved a LOT in the intervening decades.)

@phildini mutt.

Why? In parts inertia. It's served me well for decades.

I started using it to filter HTML emails through lynx, because way too many senders misbehave, either omitting text/plain, or claiming their HTML is that.

It's also good at e.g. listing archive content, or converting word to text, etc.

In other words, it shows me information without distracting me with "where did it download that attachment now?"

@phildini #mutt only because it seems to be the only one that allows to rebuild broken threads (or just link related mails).

@phildini

I only use webmail because I use three different machines (and a phone) and don't want to have to sync copies of my entire email history to all of them. Even if the storage is manageable, I can't stop picturing all the unnecessary network traffic*.

* Although I realise that this may all balance out if I use webmail on more than one machine at a time ...

@dhobern @phildini you don't need to have a local cache, you could access it all via IMAP only.

@mdione @phildini

True - but the main advantage I could see for a non-browser client was being able to work offline.

@dhobern @phildini agreed. I do have sync'ing done, but it's client/server only, where I also have a webmail for emergencies, and the phone has an IMAP only client that I barely use.

@jmtd @phildini didn't neomutt merge back into mutt a few years back?

@jmtd @phildini ah, no, it's just the sidebar:

> Notably, the Sidebar patch has now been adopted by upstream Mutt.

@phildini I'm in the extremely niche category of "still reads all my email on Unix servers directly from the mail spool", not using IMAP. Currently I use MH and the GNU Emacs MH-E frontend, which make this even more niche.

I do keep Thunderbird around on my Linux desktops¹ but that's mostly so I (a system administrator) can see how our IMAP server is working. And I expose a very small subset of my email to my phone through the native iOS Mail client.

¹ I am that eccentric.

@glyph @phildini I guess the difference is that the concept of "offline" isn't known among younger people. 🤷

@phildini Emacs with notmuch. A bit more than just a desktop client.

@Ganneff
Emacs with Gnus.

@phildini

@publicvoit @phildini there is definitely a movement among a certain subset of the Youth that is much more offline than we are

@mpjgregoire @phildini I did have Gnus before, for a long time. It was good.

notmuch is better, for me, with somewhat over 1.3 million mails and 9 different mail accounts included.

@Ganneff
1.3M e-mails? You poor fellow. How many of them do you think you've read?

@phildini

@mpjgregoire @phildini Most.

@phildini mu/mu4e and mbsync, usually but not always within an emacs pane running in a terminal. Almost always over SSH back to a home server though. So... definitely not a web app, but also not really a desktop app? And sometimes via Termux on my phone, so also a mobile app... but still in the terminal?

I don't know, man. Just call me Email Weirdnesses Georg and don't count me