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Comment by doctor_eval | Hacker News Reader

I hate Apple mail. Should I try Thunderbird?

I loved Unibox because it grouped email by contact - this fit my workflow way better than grouping chronologically or by thread. It was not sorted by “from” but rather the main view was just contact names and clicking on the name would show a list of emails. It was so great. Much like other message apps. I only stopped using it - years after the developers stopped updating it - because I was worried about a future OS update breaking it.

Does Thunderbird or any other mail client do this? My memory from a billion internet years ago is that the UI is similar to all other email clients, especially Apple mail.

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Thunderbird can do that and much more. It's very configurable and extensible, I highly recommend it.

Ok.

Don’t tell anyone, but I’m old enough to have used Netscape on Linux as my primary mail client.

So going back to thunderbird after all these years… gives me mixed feelings. But I’ll take it for a spin and see.

Well that's cool, personally i wasn't alive in those days :)

On another note, the absolute best mail client i have ever used is FairEmail on android. It even beats Thunderbird on the desktop. If you run android i highly recommend that too.

+1 for FairEmail! Really powerful and configurable, but also just works like you expect and otherwise stays out of your way.

On the Desktop I have been using Mailspring for awhile and am also super happy with it!

Pfft. You're just a young whippersnapper to those of us old enough to have used mailx on SunOS as our primary mail client.

Ha! My Unix timeline history is vague now but I’ve used SCO, DG/UX and HP/UX in anger. Pretty sure mailx was my client on most of those! :) (not to mention SunOS and Sequent at some point. And DRS/NX. But that’s not one to mention in polite company)

Ah, all of thou young fools! Thou haven't not written mail with ink, quill and ye carrier pigeon?

SunOS is most of a decade older than IPoAC, how can you call its users young to a SunOS user?

I use Thunderbird on a MacBook Air (Apple Silicon). Just be warned that it seems to use a lot of CPU resources (when seemingly not doing anything) and therefore uses up the battery faster than it should. It's not a deal breaker. I tend to keep it closed until I check my mail, which isn't ideal, but then again, it's not the worst productivity/stay focused habit to have. This is as of May 2023 and earlier. Hoping the update/integration with Firefox may improve this.

High cpu usage has been the case with Thunderbird on MacOS since forever. I've long wanted to switch to apple mail due to battery drain, but I just can't work with a unified accounts. I have multiple accounts and like keeping them separate.

How does that work with mailing lists?

If an email comes from someone you don’t know it created a kind of virtual contact which bubbles up to the top of the contact list.

If you click on the contact it shows a list of their emails. If you then click a button in the top email, that will give you a threaded email view which will show the whole mailing list activity chronologically.

I don’t use mailing lists much so there were probably better ways of doing it. But I actually thought unibox’s threaded view was really great.

That said, there are plenty of email clients that deal with mailing lists. What about one for me? :)

I actually want an open source superhuman. Not for all the tricks but because of the low latency.

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