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Comment by rtpg | Hacker News Reader

Basically no desktop client works as well as the gmail web app (especially when it comes to search).

I use the mail client on iOS out of principle but still end up opening the gmail app when I actually need to find something.

A state actor will have less trouble breaking into a mail server I run, and I don’t really believe too much in the idea that other countries apart from the US are immune to police overreach.

Signed: someone who has multiple email addresses, has tried all the fancy alternatives (fastmail etc) and who desperately wants this stuff to work because having 3 web tabs to check email is annoying.

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> A state actor will have less trouble breaking into a mail server I run

Only if they have a good reason to target you, personally.

But if we are talking about mass surveillance, attacking a large provider is incredibly *cheaper*: spend one million dollars on 0-days to gain access to one million mailboxes, or one billion to intercept submarine cables and backdoor CPUs and gain access to one billion mailboxes.

There is no way to attack somebody's personal, custom mailserver with a budget of $1.

> Basically no desktop client works as well as the gmail web app (especially when it comes to search).

I would actually make the opposite statement, i.e. generally, webmail clients are significantly inferior to desktop clients in most respects: Feature set, responsiveness, flexibility etc. And of course, being potentially somewhat secure, as opposed to guaranteed no-security with webmail.

As for search functionality - I'm not sure you're right, but I'll grant you that some webmail providers, like Google, provide speedy search.

At work I use the macOS Desktop edition of Outlook for my work O365 account and I've found searching to be pretty good and quite fast. I'm pretty sure it just searches the local cache hence the speed. It's pretty good at suggesting email addresses when I type someones name so I can usually quickly find emails from a certain person just by typing the first characters of their name and pressing return when it finds the correct address.

Outlook on mac uses Spotlight search internally

KMail (on KDE on Linux desktop) search is instant. Pity the Akonadi framework under it needs more love to iron out its bugs. I suffer web GMail only when not at my workstation.

Yeah my problem has been fast search that just is wrong. Like even exact keyword searches.

I’m sure it’s something about my configurations but every time I mess around to figure it out it doesn’t work.

Generally my use of email is “look at stuff from right now” or “look at stuff from 6+ months ago”

(Here “wrong” means “does not find the email I am looking for”. Usually a failure mode of just not showing much of anything)

If you’re on mac mimestream is really good:

https://mimestream.com/

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