Primarily constructed with SwiftUI and occasional AppKit elements, Swift Mail combines the speed and efficiency of a modern mail standard with desktop-centric features such as system notifications, keyboard shortcuts, quick look, multiple windows, state restoration, dark mode, and more.
Swift Mail distinguishes itself from other email clients with its steadfast commitment to the JMAP standard over the traditional IMAP implementation, facilitating seamless alignment with modern mail features. It supports various innovative Fastmail features, such as multiple sending identities, the ability to send or reply on-the-fly from wildcard (*) aliases, and the ability to swiftly transition between (true) label and folder organization schemes.
Swift Mail prioritizes user privacy and does not collect any user data or function through intermediary servers. Instead, it directly connects to the JMAP server with the user's provided account credentials, processing and storing all data locally on the user's device.
Currently, Swift Mail is available directly via the Mac App Store with support extending back to Monterey.
I’m also running a developer build on visionOS (if you have hardware and are interested in testing a beta release, please reach out to beta at swiftmail dot io).
A sincere thank you to everyone who has contributed their valuable insights or participated in beta testing via TestFlight thus far.
Looking forward to your feedback!
- Karl
I'm increasingly disinclined to feed the subscription-based software economy, especially for the personal tools I use.
Great work! Will def. try it out
Unfortunately, as a solo developer on macOS, some of the more complicated approaches don't seem feasible from a maintenance and support standpoint—at least not initially. I hope to stick with the macOS App Store as well, which I assume adds additional complexity since that type of offering is not supported natively by the framework (to my knowledge anyway).
I would like to explore additional options in the future, but I don't see any major overhauls happening in year 1.
While Swift Mail is a Fastmail Platform Partner, it is not affiliated with Fastmail (or others) and does not offer email services directly.
Money.
Apple gets 30% off your app purchase and/or in-app purchases, while it gets 30% from your subscription for the first year and 15% for the subsequent years.
So, if you think your app is worth 10$, you lose 3$ and the ability to make more money and to support its development (if you do, they have to be in-app purchases, like extensions, etc. and again 30% is gone).
On the other hand, if you sell it with a 0.83$/month subscription (= 10$ / 12months, just to be "fair"), the first year you lose 3$ but you gain later 1.5$. And btw, I don't even think 0.83$ is allowed (AFAIK the price points start with 0.10$ so you can't have weird numbers like 0.23$ or things like that), so you round it up to 0.89$/month or 0.99$/month and you gain even more money, which will be used also to keep the development going.
Plus it seems weird to double drip. I’m already subscribed to you for the email service and you want me to almost double that price for a client to use it?
Will the existing Fastmail app be deprecated to force folks to the new subscription app?
(I still have the same reaction to the pricing... but at least it's not double dipping by Fastmail themselves)
-- edit --
Turns out it's not made by Fastmail, it just uses "Fastmail's standard" of JMAP. I'm still not going to pay a monthly subscription for it; a one-time fee would be much more palatable IMO.
Does nobody here see the irony of being a community of people who make their income working in software that refuses to pay even $3/month for software? Ditto for the universal hatred of ad-based business models.
This is why the consumer market for software is basically non-existent. Consumers value their time at $0 so they get free tools subsidized by intrusive ads or expensive hardware.
Businesses make more rational decisions with their time and resources. To the developer of this cool product, I recommend targeting B2B instead.
I mean, I just use Thunderbird, but I'm sure there are ways to torture myself if I wanted to.
100% reliable contacts and calendars and email for the last 20 years.
Some people even wondered if an email account is included in the price... (because of, ... Fastmail in the title).
Anyway, they only refer to JMAP which was created apparently by Fastmail. It has nothing to do with the company, besides using their open email API protocol.
People, have fun developing stuff for free or for little to no money while having to support a shitload of OS versions and possibly multi-device, multiple framework versions, bugs, people sinking your app on the App Store if you don't react or whatever.
3 dollars per month are nothing IF the app is useful. Email is literally the thing you use the most. Why 3 and not 1 or 5? Maybe 3 dollars are just enough to keep people who just criticize you out of your customer base, which is maybe more worth, considering that nobody installs an app with 1 or 2 stars.
The thing that is funding the development of it at this point is my slow-burning rage at Spotify; the more people I can help get out of Spotify the more wrapped in wings of vengeance I feel.
However, some people still want to make that ugly thing called ... money... :)
When that's the case, you really need to do your best NOT to let your app sink on the App Store - when that happens, you can say goodbye to your income (be it passive or active), unless someone really gives it a try because there is no other solution, etc. etc.
I was a Fastmail customer for many years but moved to apple’s iCloud+ when they introduced custom domain support as that works entirely offline on all my devices. Also that gives iPhone/mac integrated contacts and calendars with zero hassle that actually syncs to everything properly. It’s cheaper per seat as well (£25 a month for that plus Apple Music for 6 people a month). No brainer.
It doesn't provide full offline support by keeping a complete cached copy of all mail data on disk, as an IMAP client might. Any content received from the server will remain accessible offline and during subsequent app launches.
For a long time, The Bat! was one of the best e-mail client for its times in the 2000s. Loved it's ticker-style notification bar back then. Sad to see that this piece of software has deteriorated over time and not evolved to support Mac/Linux. Next, Thunderbird emerged as an open alternative that was stable for a time. When GMail took over, few innovations came for email with its own Inbox being a starting point, followed by Superhuman and Hey. Is there room for more? Or are folks too attached to the traditional form of email?
Working on this now & adding a few links below for ref in the meantime:
https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1595671863?pt=12263...
https://twitter.com/SwiftMail_io
https://mastodon.social/@SwiftMail
mailto:contact@swiftmail.io
It was disabled pending user feedback to allow private external testing of the feature while the app itself was open to public testing via website link.
This was to ensure a high quality, two way support channel could be established when enabling the feature for external testing. (It also ensured Test Flight data & support channels would not become polluted with failed attempts to sign in with gmail or similar)
1. Subscription model. I will be willing to pay even $250 for a good email client, that is superior to the native macOS client. If it really adds more features that I need. Meaning, I can use mostly all the email related features offered by Fastmail. But I am not willing to support subscription models.
2. No iOS client. I use email on macOS and iOS. Not having support for iOS is a dealbreaker. I want the same client.
3. No trial. As it seems like. I actually tried to download the app. There is a Sign-In page with a disabled Sign In button. I guess I need to subscribe to try it. I can spare $3, but I don't want to support subscription models. Seriously, give me an option to try it for 14–30 days, I will pay for it $100-$200, and you can ask me to pay you again for an upgrade in 3–4 years.
4. The main reason I don't want to try it, also because I am sure, there are probably some nice features, but at the same time, there are most likely so many issues with integrations between other apps. Like links from Reminders to the Mail client, or from Notes to the Mail client. And based on the roadmap [1] it seems like this is mostly MVP product.
--
Consider a mail service that only has IMAP-IDLE [1]. iOS's mail does not support that.
So ANY 3rd party to be able to deliver notifications you either have to go through Apple's push notification service (or ask for Local push connectivity [2]). But regardless, it implies that in order for you to trigger the notification (either via Apple to the device, or directly) you must thus know that a new email has popped up. The only way to keep track of this is to use an intermediate server that maintains connection with IMAP-IDLE, and thus needs to know credentials.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAP_IDLE
[2]: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/networkextension/l...
2. An iOS client is planned going forward. The first few iterations of Swift Mail were actually deployed to both iOS & macOS, so there's quite a bit of shared platform code in place already when the time is right. I have a visionOS build up and running already as well, which I think bodes well for that effort.
3. (Trials do exist, as you mentioned below)
4. Swift Mail does provide support for mailto link handling, and it can be set as the default macOS mail client as well. I'm not familiar with linking from Reminders or Notes directly to the Mail app, however, so can't speak to that workflow at the moment.
Any and all feedback is appreciated & encouraged though so please don't hesitate to reach out as needed.
Note - that roadmap is not valid and was meant to be deactivated long ago after I cancelled my subscription during the beta (great experience but couldn't automate release notes with Xcode Cloud). A replacement roadmap and feedback portal should be back online very soon at that same link, however.
1. No reply button to email. You can only compose a new mail message.
2. I have received new mail, got notification, but don't see it in the list (inbox). You need to restart the mail client to do so.
3. No images are displayed in the message body.
4. The interface is very not-intuitive in some parts yet. Like in the Threads - to expand the message you need to click a tiny button on the right, clicking on the message or on the body does not do anything.
Anyway, I am excited about this email client. But I don't see how I can justify paying for it yet. It is good maybe for read-only mode, but if I don't replace mail app, I don't see how it is much different from me just opening fast mail in the browser.
1. Reply button is below the sender's profile symbol in the thread message header.
2. Thank you for the feedback on activating the notification. This should work as anticipated but it's been quite some time since I received feedback related to notification behaviors so I'll certainly take a look.
3. Images and remote content are blocked by default (similar to Mail.app); clicking the 'photo' button (next to the Flag button) in the message header will reveal these images.
4. Expanding threads by clicking in thread message header white space would be a welcome addition and feature request. I'll add this to the planned feature list. Expansion via body content click will require a bit more investigation, however.
Appreciate the detailed feedback!
The page you have tried to access is not available because the owner of the file you are trying to access has exceeded our short term bandwidth limits. Please try again shortly. Details:
451 Actioning this file would cause "swiftmail.io//" to exceed the per-day file actions limit of 80000 actions, try again later
https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1595671863?pt=12263...
https://twitter.com/SwiftMail_io
https://mastodon.social/@SwiftMail
mailto:contact@swiftmail.io
Edit: I've got 99 problems and 98 of them are JSON on a regular basis. Poor parsers, problems dealing with numeric values, terrible terrible schema support, poor encapsulation support, large things attached to it in base64 (difficult to stream on most parsers), difficult to read without external tools which actually tend to mung or fix the problem you are trying to see (jq does this), completely arbitrary and random metadata jammed in everywhere by everyone trying to make it self-describing, shitty enapsulated types i.e. ISO 8601 date in a text field rather than a principal type.
Urgh kill me. It's a hammer made of poo and no one knows any better any more. It's the PHP of wire formats. The COBOL of representation encapsulation.
Edit 2: the only positive is it's probably less bad than CalDAV but that's not even supposed to be part of an email stack is it? Everyone has outlook brain.
thanks for this nice App. Will have a look at it.
There is another cool app coming up. It's called FMail2 http://fmail-app.fr
Maybe it's also interesting to compare it. Just to let you know about.
Bandwidth Restricted
The page you have tried to access is not available because the owner of the file you are trying to access has exceeded our short term bandwidth limits. Please try again shortly.
