Recommendations for macOS Mail Client

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Aaron2222

220 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 111

#318270 1-Jan-2025 18:15

I'm looking for recommendations for macOS mail clients for a friend who's just got their first Mac. Their requirements are:

Configurable to not mark emails as read when viewed on the preview pane (which rules out Apple Mail, which otherwise would be suitable)
Support for using iCloud Contacts (and iCloud Calendar if it includes calendar functionality), ideally by using the system contacts and calendar, though adding iCloud through CardDAV and CalDAV would also be acceptable
Free or a one-time purchase (no subscriptions)
No mandatory cloud features (optional is fine as long as it's able to be turned off)

Any suggestions?

cddt

1973 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1906

#3326892 1-Jan-2025 19:53

Thunderbird satisfies your requirements 1, 3, and 4. Regarding requirement 2, you would have to do more research as I'm not familiar with this use case.

Edit: a quick search of the support site suggests that you can indeed sync yourself into the iEcosystem with Thunderbird, including CalDAV. "Thunderbird has native CalDAV and CardDAV support."

My referral links: BigPipe | Mercury

zxboy

28 posts

Geek
+1 received by user: 14

ID Verified

#3326928 2-Jan-2025 08:41

Just to add re requirement #2 above, Thunderbird supports iCloud accounts natively, see this to set them up:

Calendar:

https://ekiwi-blog.de/en/65232/

Contacts:

https://danielbrinneman.com/2022/12/12/sync-icloud-contacts-with-mozilla-thunderbird/

[edited to include Calendar and Contacts URLs]

TwoSeven

1712 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 304

Subscriber

#3327048 2-Jan-2025 16:41

I’m not an apple mail user (and only use macOS for development) so just guessing here as I use outlook 365, but while I understand the desire to not mark an email read - I find this is sometimes because one will action the email later (follow up ).

If this is the case, then I would just turn the email into a todo/reminder/task (even if the task is just reply to joe bloggs).

Usually I just run through my emails twice a day (no more than 15 mins each time) - for informational emails, I quickly read them and then move to the appropriate folder (if there isn’t a mail rule on it) and if I need to keep it. For actionable emails, the same, but I create a task that I can schedule time for.

In outlook, I have it start up in the unread mail folder (which I have added to favorites). I have the setting ‘mark email as read after 0 seconds, so it vanishes out of the unread mail folder when I finish reading it and have not deleted it.

The equivalent in Apple mail would be to create a smart mail folder with the filter set to ‘unread’. To create tasks/reminders - if I have the reminders app open to ‘all’ one can just drag the email into task or reminder.

There are a couple of other options in smart mailboxes (folders) - one is ‘message is flagged’ which means when viewing the email, just click the flag button (useful if using an iphone and one wants to follow up later’).

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