Mail becomes a lot more compact when you choose Use Column Layout (IIRC this used to be referred to as classic layout). You can adjust the slider at the bottom (Show Bottom Preview needs to be selected) to show only the header parts of a selected email (or none of it all) and reserve most of your viewing space for the messages list.
You can define a keyboard shortcut for the Archive command in Sys Prefs > Keyboard > Shortcuts > App Shortcuts.
I’ll look into the column format. That could be helpful.
Yes, it can redefine shortcuts, but only chorded commands. No single character keystrokes.
Getting back to Mailplane vs Mimestream for the moment…
Mimestream really is quite nice. I hope they add better image handling and annotation - even just arrows and text.
doug
The Mimestream developer, who, as Adam said, is very responsive, pointed out that you can create labels in Mimestream directly by control-clicking on an account name. And you can drag them to create hierarchies.
I wonder if we have access to all the Gmail settings from within Mimestream, like we do from within Mailplane (filters, etc.).
doug
Has anyone used Postbox? I’m looking into it; it seems to have many of the features being discussed but I’ve just scratched the surface as yet.
Jeremy
Not yet, but I must admit I tweak the Gmail settings so infrequently that I haven’t noticed.
I use Postbox, which is based on Thunderbird. I’ve been satisfied with it, but lately have had odd problems. It works ok, but often takes several minutes to send mail. That started happening around the time I moved up to Catalina, but that may well be a coincidence.
Postbox appears to be IMAP only.
It supports POP3 as well. But, as this thread is entitled “Mac clients for Gmail”, Postbox is really very good for that and I think worth the 30 day trial. I did use it December (I had used it long ago but had performance issues with the Mac I was using; that’s no longer an issue for my middle of the road 2016 MacBook Air with 8 GB RAM), and I think it’s very good. I still may switch to it. It handles Gmail very well, can be configure to use Gmail web keyboard shortcuts (including the “gl” to switch to another label and just “l” to set a label for a message), and is very stable.
I love the look and layout of Mail on Big Sur, but there is one thing that I miss: in Mail up through Catalina, there were collective mailboxes for all the junk, send, trash, and archive folders for all of the mail accounts you had configured. Unless I am missing something, there is no more collective junk and archive folders in Big Sur. You can create Smart Folders to try to replicate this, but they are pretty slow to refresh. Postbox also doesn’t have these collected folders, but the Smart Folders do seem to be more responsive, and there are a lot more single keystroke shortcuts compared with Mail.
I finally discovered the solution to this: In the Mail app, hover the mouse pointer on the “Favorites” line at the top of the sidebar, and a “+” icon will appear to the right. Click that and you can select “All junk” and “All archive” to add to the list of favorite folders.
I basically like Mail in Big Sur, but for the life of me can’t get searching for mails to work well. I spend some time trying to simply find some emails that I sent to a certain user with nothing coming up, so I went over to gmail.com and entered to:the address and they immediately popped up.
Search is still the big down point for me in regular Mail.
doug
Does InfoClick still work in Big Sur?
Diane
Absolutely LOVE InfoClick. It is invaluable to me as I often have to locate e-mails from years ago. An excellent product from an excellent company.
I am really struggling with going to Big Sur given all I’ve read on TidBits Talk. Especially concerned about the small, light fonts that Apple seems to love so much - and those of us with bad eyesight have struggled with for years. And the CCC issues also concern me. I’m so glad I got my iMac 27’ in 2019 - I think it has saved me some unneeded headaches. No InfoClick will just be one more nail on Apple for me, and I have been with Apple since around 1985 - wrote my doctoral thesis on an Apple ||C. I know, more than you needed to know :-/
I go to System Preferences > Accessibility > Display and check Increase Contrast. This help a lot and has been available for several versions of macOS.
In Big Sur Mail Preferences > Fonts & Colors, I set the font sizes to make the message list easier to read. I bump the displayed message text as required using ⌘-+.
In Finder I set the font size using View > Show View Options, as well as the icon size.
I find no differences in visual usability as compared to Catalina or Mojave where I used a similar approach.
There are various stupidities in the Big Sur UI, but fonts are the least of them.
Back in Mailstream today after the developer created a new release that lets you see the full address when composing and prioritize the most recently used address (I had been making mistakes and sending to old addresses, etc.).
By the way, standard Mail’s shortcut for sending CMD+= is really flaky. Sometimes it works, mostly it doesn’t. It’s a relief to get back to where a simple shortcut for sending works. Plus having multiple labels is very convenient in the Gmail world.
I still need to use standard Mail, though, when it comes to image handling and annotation. I hope Neil adds support for that as well.
doug
I’ve been using simultaneously Mimestream and Spark for different gmail accounts for over a year. Each has its quirks and nice features. However, there is a feature that both lack: deleting file attachments. As even Gmail web interface does not allow it, I rely on Thunderbird to remove attachments, and just for that. I don’t use Thunderbird regularly as I find its interface counterintuitive and it reduces my productivity.
At least through Sierra (I don’t have Mail installed on anything more recent), cmd= increases font size, as it does in Safari (through Catalina) and anywhere else that font size is allowed to increase. I know the menu calls it cmd+ (when it’s in the menu, it isn’t always), but I’ve never actually needed to include the shift, even on pristine installs. If cmd= or other near-system wide keyboard shortcut was reassigned to something else, I’d expect odd results at best.
Thank you James for your suggestions. I have used all of those. They help somewhat (contrast already set to near max in Catalina, Finder view size set to max, 16), also, because I have a iMac 27" 5K Retina I also use System Preferences>Display>Scaled setting that to the 2nd size choice. That has made a great deal of difference. Unfortunately I have some visual conditions that are a bit worse of late because of the COVID isolation - can’t wait to get back to my Duke eye specialist in hopes of stopping what has been happening.
Very much appreciate your suggestions. Especially like your “There are various stupidities in the Big Sur UI, but fonts are the least of them.” LOL And appreciate your affirming there are ways to get around it.
Note that in the latest Mimestream 0.18 the developer added image annotation - and it’s quite good! It seems to be like image notation in the Mail app itself. That now beats out most email clients on the Mac.
I hope he adds image size (small, medium, large, actual) soon as well and an indicator of how large your email is.
Neil (the developer) is quite responsive to requests. I keep on using Mimestream until I run into a problem. Then I usually switch back to Mail for a while. Then when there is another upgrade I switch back to Mimestream.
I do like the labeling in Mimestream (i.e. multiple labels per email thread allowed, like in Gmail). It’s really coming along quite well. You might want to give it a try if your email accounts are all or mostly Gmail. I also use regular Mail for my non-Gmail accounts.