Hey folks! Mailspring maintainer here — glad to see this on Hacker News. For anyone just catching up, here's the tldr on Mailspring:
- It's a fork of Nylas Mail with the entire mailsync codebase
(~40k lines of JavaScript) replaced with a new C++ core based on Mailcore2. It uses roughly half the RAM and CPU of Nylas Mail and idles with almost zero "CPU Wakes" thanks to new C++11 features, which translates to great battery life. You might not even notice it's an Electron app.
- It still has the same great pro features, like snoozing and send later, but doesn't send your email credentials to Mailspring servers. All of these features have been re-implemented to run locally on your computer.
- The pro features still cost money ($8/mo). The goal is to use revenue from subscriptions to pay maintainers (myself, possibly other folks!) to maintain Mailspring indefinitely and/or put bounties on popular feature requests.
- The roadmap and website are still being assembled, but there's some really cool stuff in the works. Launching it and polishing the new C++ sync codebase is just step 1.
Current Airmail user here. Have given Nylas a look in the past and will definitely check out Mailspring. Friendly advice: I am all for paying reasonable prices for quality software, but I think you may run into trouble pricing the pro version as a subscription, or at least as an $8/mo subscription.
Going by Nylas' blog post last month, they say new development of the Nylas mail client is sunset, and the team was reallocated to the API product, which is doing better commercially? https://www.nylas.com/blog/sunsetting-nylas-mail-development
Really like it so far, but there is one nitpick that is bugging the hell out of me.
I can't "snap" or maximise the window on Windows (Win7). Because I have a decent sized screen I often just maximise to half screen for most applications, but not having the standard resize tools is frustrating. Edit: This only happens if I have the Reading Pane enabled.
Running version 1.0.1-ba1d6734.
Is this something being worked on? Or just a bug hitting me? Or just not something other people have asked about?
The RAM and CPU usage is interesting, I think most of the people hate electron apps for their thirst of resources.
Just by looking at the activity monitor I'm curious what's the emptyWindow process.
Have you gotten in touch with the Nylas-mail-lives crowd? Their fork seems less goal-oriented than Mailspring. I’m sure if you invited them on board they’d be happy to join forces.
I'm someone who usually works in C/C++ and more system level things. A roadmap, and a set of already run benchmarks, for the different pieces of the codebase would be very useful to point someone like me to where we can be useful. A roadmap is also nice too.
The Social|Promotions|Notifications|Forums tabs (and its automatic classification) is something I can't seem to live without. There is a way to replicate that (automatically in Mailspring). I think this is my main and only blocker to think on a permanent move! Congratulations on the work.
- It's a fork of Nylas Mail with the entire mailsync codebase (~40k lines of JavaScript) replaced with a new C++ core based on Mailcore2. It uses roughly half the RAM and CPU of Nylas Mail and idles with almost zero "CPU Wakes" thanks to new C++11 features, which translates to great battery life. You might not even notice it's an Electron app.
- It still has the same great pro features, like snoozing and send later, but doesn't send your email credentials to Mailspring servers. All of these features have been re-implemented to run locally on your computer.
- The pro features still cost money ($8/mo). The goal is to use revenue from subscriptions to pay maintainers (myself, possibly other folks!) to maintain Mailspring indefinitely and/or put bounties on popular feature requests.
- The roadmap and website are still being assembled, but there's some really cool stuff in the works. Launching it and polishing the new C++ sync codebase is just step 1.