Either the dev team has just given up on quality or they're intentionally goading me into installing Chrome. I'm not going to play that game -- at this point Thunderbird works better.
Even better if you set up the majority of your non-security-essential mail to be at your own domain, hosted by Fastmail/etc. Then you can easily change your email provider and your contacts don't even care. I've yet to implement this is in my own life, I just switched to fast mail - so I can't speak from personal experience on the domain portion of it.
NOTE: I mentioned non-security-essential email in reference to things like, your bank login or things that could threaten your life essentials. I say this because theoretically (and has happened before), using your own domain increases the attack surface area. My personal plan is to setup custom domain email with Fastmail, but still use the plain me@fastmail.com for my security focused emails. The majority of my email will still be based on my custom domain for easy portability, but I plan to avoid that for my bank, for example... assuming fast mail lets me.
I still can't believe how fast the UI is. It's by far the fastest web app I've ever used, and the same goes for the service in general.
Seriously, just ditch Gmail now, the alternatives are great.
I've looked at nextcloud, but IIRC, you have to have the whole suite installed, right? I'd love a way to just use the calendar function.
It does let you, you can create as many aliases as you want (I'm assuming) on any of their or your domains.
Also, FastMail allows for subdomain handling. I use this feature with nearly every site. You can have *@<YourFastMailId>.<YourDomain>.com route to <YourFastMailId>@<YourDomain>.com just as you'd expect. The way this handling works is even configurable.
I know a long time ago you could set up a Google account using a non-GMail email address but I'm not sure if that's even a thing anymore. That's what I want though. Keep the email address with my own domain that I've used for 17 years and just have a regular old Google account using that email (and keep all my Google services and purchases associated with it).
Google has been absolutely terrible to Google Apps for Your Domain users (who were often Google's biggest supporters back in the day). They've been shoved into this weird second class status where their Google accounts only partially work with Google services. I completely regret ever setting it up.
https://accounts.google.com/SignUpWithoutGmail
I use Google services heavily at work, all on a Google account that was created with my work email address. And we are not a Google shop; my employer's email is self-hosted Exchange.
Using FastMail-specific features will lock you into this specific vendor once again, one of the main reasons to switch in the first place!
Using a subdomain for catch-all is great because spammers can’t easily discover and flood the subdomain.
That being said, FastMail is also the leading developer/champion of a new mail standard called JMAP, which supports both labels and folders. I suspect, therefore, if it takes off, they may consider supporting labels themselves.
That’s what I eventually switched to and it works fine.
Thunderbird might be superior, but I really like that App because it's so light and fast.
I wrote software using Cocoa about a decade ago (so I may be out of touch), and it was clear how much thought and effort had gone into making the user interface responsive. And it generally shows.
The idea that you would just give up on that precedence is baffling. And let's face it, email's important but it's not rocket science.
[0] https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Round_Rects_Are_...
It's just horrible to use in firefox (in arch linux) and I'm currently looking for a new provider.
I might just go all in and use protonmail.
https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/custom-domain-...
This could really just be that part. I have a hard time imagining explicit sabotage of FF on the gmail frontend. The likeliest explanation is that perf testing and the like only happens in Chrome
It's tricky to share a screen recording because there's personal information. But I just did two for my own curiosity. From a fresh load, once the "Loading Gmail" screen has gone away, it took 8 seconds and 11 seconds respectively from clicking 'Compose' to having a new window open.
Maybe there is variability. There are a million combinations of factors out there. I suppose as an engineer you make the trade off of "do I hope for the best case" vs "do I make something that works for a broad audience". The previous version shows that they can make something that works for my own anecdatapoint if they want to.
>ten seconds to load your inbox
>16 GB, i7, SSD, 100 MB/s internet etc.
>fine
I don't use Thunderbird myself - was just following the discussion on from the OP who did use it. However I've yet to find a client I like so genuinely interested in any suggestions you might have.
I used TB until two years ago, but I gave up with it's unfixed bugs and quirks. I do prefer graphical clients, but not if they are clunky or buggy.
I used Silpheed and Claws for years, but Silpheed locks (or used to lock) the UI during fetch (unacceptable IMHO) while Claws has some critical bugs in the filter/rule logic that made me lose mail in several occasions by refiling into the wrong folder while processing a lot of messages. If you arent't a heavy filter user you might be fine with it though, I think Claws gets a lot of things right.
KMail wasn't bad when I used it, but it was too long ago to make an honest comment today.
I am now using mutt/notmuch/mbsync to prevent having to go through their horrendously slow web interface, and eventually move away from Gmail completely (probably to ProtonMail or fastmail).
Where? The only one I can trigger that does any kind of network is in the inbox, and that's only to get some icons. The text for the options is already loaded.