Former Apple engineer Neil Jhaveri has been working on an email app for Mac called Mimestream. It is now out of beta after a long test phase of more than two years. The app uses Gmail’s API — and that’s why it’s only compatible with Gmail at the moment.
Jhaveri, who was at Apple for more than seven years, worked on the Mail app for the first iPad, and the first Notes app for macOS. Later, he managed teams working on Apple’s Mail app. He left the company in 2017 and founded Mimestream in 2019. Jhaveri said that the company is still bootstrapped with five people working on the app. He mentioned that more than 167,000 people have used the app in beta.
Because of his familiarity with Apple’s Mail app, a lot of design elements of Mimestream look like the default app on the Mac, such as the usage of blue dots to indicate unread emails, a three-column layout and action buttons located in the top bar.
As a native app, Mimestream integrates nicely with the rest of the operating system. It supports trackpad gestures, dark themes, linking email profiles to Focus Filters and keyboard shortcuts.
The app uses the Gmail API, which means that it can easily import things like signatures, server-side filters, templates, labels and vacation responses. The app also supports Gmail aliases, mentions, code blocks, Markdown substitutions, undo send and the ability to send and archive. This integration means that Mimestream’s experience is closer to Gmail’s website.
With the new launch, Mimestream will also support profiles like “Work” and “Personal” so that you can separate different accounts. You can also assign different colors to accounts to differentiate between emails in the unified view. Plus, you can set a notification schedule so that you aren’t disturbed by unnecessary notifications.
The app also features a menu bar extra — when you click on the menu bar icon, you can quickly check for any unread messages without opening the app.
You can use Mimestream for free with a 14-day trial. After that, you have to pay either $4.99/month or $49.99/year. However, the startup is offering the annual plan at a discounted launch price of $29.99 for the first year until June 9. Mimestream is going up against other email clients like Boxy, Edison Mail and former Google exec’s app Shortwave. It is relying on the simple and familiar interface for Mac users and tight integration with Gmail to stand out from the competition.
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