this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2024
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I just can’t find a decent email client that looks like it’s from the last 20 years. Geary and Evolution both appear to be pretty modern but something about using Gmail with a Yubikey just doesn’t work and neither of them will connect to my account. Both on Fedora and OpenSUSE. Thunderbird works but it’s so old fashioned and Betterbird doesn’t look much better. What’s everyone else using?

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[–] [email protected] 90 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thunderbird all the way 🙌

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (3 children)

I have used Thunderbird for years. HOWEVER:

  • I don't know why Thunderbird can't get a reliable, functional search ability. It's such garbage. I constantly have to delete my entire search index and start from scratch, it is immensely frustrating.
  • The problems connecting to gmail are also so frustrating. Yes, they are Google's fault but if you make an e-mail client you maybe need to add a workaround for the world's most popular e-mail provider. It's totally fixable because you can apply those fixes manually.
[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don’t know why Thunderbird can’t get a reliable, functional search ability. It’s such garbage. I constantly have to delete my entire search index and start from scratch, it is immensely frustrating.

Maybe see if Betterbird's search works better for you

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thunderbird for desktop computer, K-9 mail for mobile phone.

[–] Theoriginalthon 18 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Did you know K-9 mail is soon to be thunderbird mobile

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Thunderbird is fine.

Maybe I have too much grey in my beard - I don't care how modern it looks.

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[–] LordCrom 30 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Thunderbird. Hate the redesign. If it ain't broke dont fix it.

K9 for phone

I still have pgp signs, but no one has used it to encrypt back to me in years. Don't know why I keep those on there and active

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago

Thunderbird + K9 Mail are my way to go, too.

Though I mostly do like the redesign, since it fixes some long standing issues with Thunderbird (e.g. not being able to select a multi line message view ("cards view"), instead of the traditional table view.) The search bar being always on top annoys me each time I open it, so I understand a more long time Thunderbird user might have more nitpicks. Almost all of the changes can be reverted through settings, which I find awesome.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

I still have pgp signs, but no one has used it to encrypt back to me in years. Don’t know why I keep those on there and active

Me too. I mean if I got an email with someone's public key attached I'd send an encrypted reply. One day the person you're emailing will eventually do the same lol. (I mean I do get people sending me encrypted emails sometimes, but most of the time it's "wtf is this .asc file you've attached to this email")

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Thunderbird on desktop, although I don't love it.

FairEmail on Android.

[–] wreckedcarzz 21 points 3 months ago (1 children)

FairEmail is fucking awesome. If it were a sentient being or object, I'd pound it so hard. With consent, of course. Does everything I want and then some: fast, strips everything down to text, lets me appear to send from any address on my domains, blocks trackers, is constantly (almost literally) updated and improved, custom notification handling per folder, custom colors for messages/folders...

I'd pay for it again to get a desktop version, no hesitation about it. TB is /fine/ but... that one meme with the guy looking back at the other girl

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago

Thunderbird. It's great

I am not sure how to make it look shitty like Gmail, maybe you could theme it to wast a ton of space.

Seriously, do you want a useful email client or not?

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Thunderbird. Idk what you mean by old fashioned. It works fine, and you can style it with gtk themes.

On Android I use K-9 Mail, which looks modern to me.

I mean everyone has their preferences, but personally I don't use email clients because I want to look at something pretty—I use them to read my emails. Thunderbird mostly matching my gtk theme is more than enough for me.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thunderbird had a redesign not too long ago. I mean, maybe you still consider it old-fashioned, but did you check you're on the latest version?

[–] Land_Strider 6 points 3 months ago

Switched from the default win10 mail app to thunderbird about a year ago when the mail app started forcibly updating to the outlook and broke some shit on my windows installation to use a whole lot of resources. I quite liked the old mail app of the windows, but Thunderbird is quite enough of a replacement at default settings and much more customizable after fiddling. K9 has no difference than Gmail on default settings, either.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 months ago

Why is Thunderbird old? It recently had a major redo and was rebranded with the supernova branding. Try the flatpak version.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago

I use Thunderbird and I don't think it looks old, specially after recent updates. You can also change the colors which is pretty cool.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 months ago
[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (2 children)

What do you find "old-fashioned" about Thunderbird? Do you not consider an interface "new" if they don't change it and hide all the common features every five minutes like Microsoft does? It's an email client, you read your emails in it. How would you do it better?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (7 children)

"needs more whitespace and rollover disclosure on invisible icons"

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Thunderbird with the conversations add-on. It's a game-changer that makes it much easier to transition from Gmail.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (4 children)
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[–] spacemanspiffy 13 points 3 months ago

Thunderbird, much like Firefox, is the best because it's the least bad.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago

I just use Protonmail's web client. Fast, sleek, similar polish to gmail imo.

For an actual desktop client, Thunderbird with Dark Reader addon and some tweaks for theming.

Honestly though, I just prefer the web client from Proton, it's really nice.

[–] Presi300 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)
[–] markstos 9 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Despite all the other answers, I suspect Web Browser is the most popular. As web apps for email got better, development of desktop clients stalled.

Fast search through a lot mail takes some considerable resources to build, store and search an index, and web-based systems do that really well.

I’ve used about all of them over the years: Pine, Mutt, Thunderbird, Evolution, K-Mail and some others.

I eventually threw in the towel and use web UIs now. Fast, available everywhere and good keyboard support, especially when paired with a browser extension like Vimium.

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[–] zloubida 10 points 3 months ago

mutt, because it looks like it's from the last 20 years. Of the 20th century.

[–] 108 8 points 3 months ago

Web browser and Proton mail app on my phone.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Am I the only one using Evolution here? I really like everything about it. All in one, simple, responaive.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Thunderbird. It's familiar to me and I like the calendar too.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

Honestly there isn't a good one, Thunderbird is as close as it gets but it's buggy with things like CardDAV and it's slow.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Evolution. It works with MS Exchange.

I have an elderly and rather unloved Gmail account for testing and spam reception only and a couple of Yubi keys so I'll see what I can do with them. I probably ought to use the Gmail account more but I'm concerned that Google will kill it off 8) I got it when the G stood for gigabyte because everyone else set quotas in the 10s or low 100s of megabytes. "Do no evil" Google were as cool as fuck but that was a long time ago. Sad really.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

After Thunderbird's UI overhaul I jumped around a bit and landed on Claws Mail. It's fairly old fashioned, but I personally prefer that and find it clear and logical. It's a good client.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago

Using Evolution for nearly a decade now.

Cannot say anything about using it with a Yubikey.

Concerning Evolution: It never let me down, always worked and is comparatively lightweight.

Thunderbird was quite slow/heavy/memory hungry many years back. KMail ate my emails, failed at integration of GMail accounts etc etc etc. In the past I also liked Sylpheed, but AFAIK it doesn't have any OAUTH support etc. by now.

When nothing big changes, I guess only Thunderbird and Evolution are good investments, because they seem to be the only clients which are stable now and have enough users/active developers to not disappear randomly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

K-9 on Android and Evolution on Ubuntu (Thunderbird is installed, too).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Claws-Mail is still alive and well and works great. Lots of plugins, you can write your own post processing actions, custom powerful filters, customizable interface etc.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)
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[–] steeznson 6 points 3 months ago

gnus on emacs

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago

Thunderbird. Being on Plasma, I would use Kontact / KMail but it randomly refuses to send emails for me.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Tuta's web client.

It gets the job done and I don't use email much any more.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Proton web and Android app

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[–] bitchkat 5 points 3 months ago

I use the bird. Looks how I want email to look.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Thunderbird on Fedora Kinoite and GrapheneOS ;) even though the Android version is still named K-9, based on Android Mail and waaaay smaller.

[–] abominable_panda 5 points 3 months ago

Thunderbird on OpenSUSE

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Betterbird, a Thunderbird fork and I installed it from AUR repo but it has a flatpak version too

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Def proton mail. I was using spark for my other accounts and it was pretty good. Then i got a new phone and never downloaded it agIn and i use the stock ios app.

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