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Comment by arohner | Hacker News Reader

One thing I would really love in an email client is a strong separation between reading and writing email. During productive hours when I'm sitting at my desk, I would really like to be able to 1) open GMail, 2) read old email 3) Write new email.

I absolutely do not want the ability to read new email during that time. In fact, I would really like to set up GMail so email only arrives on a fixed schedule, say 2-4 times a day.

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To see e-mail only sent before today feel free to use this bookmarklet:

   javascript:(function(){var d=new Date(Date.parse(new Date())-86400000);var t="https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#search/"+"before%"+"3A"+d.getFullYear()+"%"+"2F"+(d.getMonth()+1)+"%"+"2F"+d.getDate()+"+in%"+"3Ainbox";window.location.href=t;})()

This searches gmail for "before:2012/08/29 in:inbox" where date depends on your current date.

I would love to use a search like before:2012/08/29 OR circle:"vip" [1] unfortunately doesn't seem to work. circle:"vip" alone works great but fails with "OR".

[1] GMail Search parmaters http://support.google.com/mail/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...

I'm actually working on a product right now that provides that precise functionality (and more!) for Gmail. It also lets you schedule when your email arrives for specific groups or single contacts. It's https://lightermail.com and we'll be opening up the beta in a week or so. Hope it helps

Signed up! Will it have an "offline" mode for Gmail? This is something I, too, have been wanting for a long while...

This exists for offline Gmail: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ejidjjhkpiempkbhmp...

Just to comment on your landing page: Your comment here told me much more about what this is about than the copy there.

Unless you're counting on the incoming links' context to inform people what it's about (if you do, fair enough), I'd suggest a bit more info to the potential users.

Sounds good, but it will introduce new problems: 1) someone called and said "I sent you that urgent email; didn't you get it?!?" and you had forgotten about the rules you set up for email receipt. 2) Services that send email notifications now have to add another reminder so people may have to check their email rules in addition to the Spam folder in case mail is "lost" there.

So just have a manual "get mail" button that you can mash like every other mail client ever. If someone sends me an urgent email, and it's genuinely urgent, they'll follow it up with a phone call or a text or an IM, and then I can mash the "get mail" button.

The fact that someone else thinks an email is urgent does not mean that I'll think it is.

And if it really is urgent, they can call me. Unless you're the kind of person who both sends an email and then immediately calls me about it. If you're that kind of person you quickly will be informed of how much I dislike that. If you persist, I'll take advantage of my freedom as a contractor to choose my own projects, and you'll soon not be a person that has any reason to interact with me.

But they might want to send you some attachments or URLs, while not knowing other techniques to pass them to you.

If it's urgent you should still call first to confirm that the person is available and able to deal with what you need them to deal with and that what you're sending them is what they need.

Anything else risks wasting a bunch of people's time going back and forth which if it's genuinely urgent (it usually isn't) everyone should want to avoid.

If someone's likely to call you to follow up on an "important" email that isn't important, turning off email doesn't help. You'll still get a vibrate/ring, look down at your phone, and decide whether or not to pick it up -- exactly the kind of distraction we're trying to avoid here.

The problem with the call-me-with-only-urgent-stuff approach is the Boy Who Cried Wolf problem: if people are constantly calling you (because they know they're not going to get a reply until later in the day, and they need it <whine>noowwwwwwwww</whine>, you'll put your phone on DND/silent. But now you can't respond to actual emergencies.

Maybe we should go back to pagers...

In the first case, you must take action to appease them, whether replying to the email or taking their call. (Or you could script your interaction with them; an automatic email reply or such. But that's suboptimal too). It's outside of your control.

In the second case, they aren't able to distinguish what they consider to be emergencies from what are actual emergencies; this, too, is out of your control.

I honestly don't know how to deal with these. Thoughts?

My solution is as I described. I make it clear that I am unhappy. I make it clear why. And if they refuse to listen, I arrange my work so that they have no excuse for trying to ruin my day.

This is not a feasible solution for everyone.

I'm achieving exactly this with my local email client. Okay, it's not a fancy web application, but exactly that's making it so valuable for me.

When I open my email client, it shows all "old" mail to me, and allows me to write new emails. It only fetches new emails when I explicitly tell it to do that.

I'm using Mutt, but I think this should work with any other email client such as Thunderbird. All you have to do is disabling the auto-fetching of new emails. And if you still feel the urge to hit the "Get Mail" button, then just configure it away from the toolbar.

tl;dr: It's all there - you just need a tiny configuration change in your email client.

Perfect example of something that's been available for ages but people somehow think they need a shiny web app (SaaS with a monthly subscription, of course) to do.

Go into offline mode. Gmail will sync back up when you're online.

It's easy to pull mail into a desktop client on a schedule. Why haven't you taken a few minutes to set one up?

Because I'm not using a desktop client.

It does give you exactly what you want: easy access to old email, a simple way of writing new email, and a scheduled time for getting new mail.

It solves your problem. You'd be giving up the Gmail web client, but the Gmail web client has turned to crap lately and other mail clients have grown an "archive" button and a usable search feature, so there's no compelling reason not to switch.

Why not use a traditional mail client that polls for mail when you tell it to?

If you're a commandline junkie, Sup and Notmuch both come pretty close to a gmail-style "search everything / tags everywhere" philosophy.

I would really like to set up GMail so email only arrives on a fixed schedule, say 2-4 times a day

why not do it then? it's pretty simple to do?

I think the real reason is that you like the idea of doing that, but not the reality.

Cultural atavism might sound like a good idea, but the reality is the positive benefits of email and smartphones way outweighs the negatives.

I wouldn't be so certain of that.

On a vacation a few months ago I turned off automatic email fetching on my phone to try and eke out a few more hours of battery, and just kind of left it there to see what would happen.

On an average day I hit the "get my email" button twice. Once when I wake up in the morning to see if there's anything pressing, and once on my way home from work as I'm walking towards the train.

I have absolutely not missed the disruption that having a constantly-up-to-date email client in your pocket creates.

I have also yet to miss a single email due to this - people have better sense than that. If they need a quick response they know to call me or to text.

From this I've started pruning the apps and services that can interrupt me pretty hard. At this point I'm down to my calendar, my SMS client, FB direct messages, and the NYTimes (they seem to be pretty responsible, but they are on a short leash). It's worked out. I'm very much enjoying this pull lifestyle, instead of push.

How do I set that up with GMail? It's trivial on a desktop client, or one where I own the server.

GMail can be configured to retrieve mail from another mailbox. That is, it can function as a POP3 client. That's the route I would investigate first.

This is definitely a great idea, I've been thinking of different ways to accomplish it myself. The research backs this up too as a very reasonable solution, allowing workers to still be productive in replying, while only checking new email at certain intervals.

In fact, you've even come across the magic number for email checking frequency. Checking it 4 times a day provides the best trade-off between reply speed and productivity gain, as seen in research by Gupta et. al.[1]

[1] Gupta, A., Sharda, R., & Greve, R. a. (2010). You’ve got email! Does it really matter to process emails now or later? Information Systems Frontiers

I think you could set up a filter to directly archive all new email, and mark it with a specific tag.

Then, when you want to check your new email, search for that tag, and un-archive the messages you actually want in your inbox.

Yeah, it's weird that this feature doesn't exist.

It would be even better on smartphones; constantly having the new mail icon pop up on is so distracting that I have turned off automatic email checking on my phone, and just check manually every couple hours when not near a computer. This was after being surprised not to be able to find an option to control gmail's polling interval.

I use K-9 Mail on my Android phone. It lets me set up per folder poll intervals and per folder push settings. Eg, I can have email from one folder pushed to my phone on delivery (using IMAP IDLE), another folder to be polled once every two hours, another daily, and the rest manually.

Your "smartphone" doesn't sound very smart.

[Edit] I use sieve filters on the server side to route email into various folders on delivery.

[Edit2] I just double checked, and the "per folder settings" are not quite as granular as I thought. You can only set up one poll interval and add that to a selection of folders, and then set other folders to push or nothing. You can't have multiple poll intervals. Eg, Could set two folders to push, three folders to poll hourly, and the rest to manual only polls.

just have your secretary print your email twice a day (1). you can read it at your leisure (2), and dictate your responses whenever you want. (3)

what is this, 1950? Sounds like something from Mad Men.

Automator, a printer and Siri might be pretty close.

i think it's a reference to knuth's advice on the matter

It sounds like something 1950 got right. At least to me.

Better write your comments on the print out and have it faxed back by your secretary.

I'm trying to get all of that to sync with my beeper. The future is now!

I guess I still need some time for that, I never was the early adopter... :-)

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