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Hi, i browsed through the website but didn’t find a comprehensive comparison with Apple Mail. Why not just using the default macOS email client?

• Gaelan 6y ago
  It sounds like the biggest difference is that it uses Gmail's API instead of MIME, so it has better support for Gmail features like labels.
• njhaveri 6y ago
  There are two main differences: 1. Mimestream uses the Gmail API (instead of IMAP), so it supports more Gmail features: Gmail categorized inboxes, first-class labeling support (apply multiple, change color, etc), use all the Gmail aliases you have set up, use the signatures you set up in Gmail, and conduct server-side searches with Gmail search operators. A lot more is coming on this front, as the app is still in development. 2. This is a lighter-weight client with a minimal local cache. Mail downloads a copy of every message in your account and requires a lot more disk space to use.
  • m_b 6y ago
    Thanks for answering, i have a Gmail account that i barely use and i didn’t knew about all these features.
  • dmix 6y ago
    How was your experience working with the GMail API?
    • njhaveri 6y ago
      It's nice to have a RESTful API, and nice to access to more Gmail features, but there are several aspects where it is not as efficient as it could be, and multiple round trips are required with the server to perform some basic tasks that IMAP can execute in 1 round trip. It also has pretty aggressive request throttling, which is fine for a very thin client like Mimestream, but would not be a good fit for a client that wanted to download every message in the account.
      • pvg 6y ago
        Can you say a little more about the thinness and what the offline capabilities are? I noticed the search looks like it happens serverside which is great when you're online since you get actual gmail search. What happens when the client is offline?
        • njhaveri 6y ago
          Search is a merge of server-side results and a very basic local search that right now only looks at From and Subject. If you're offline, you'll get the local search results. When you're offline, you can view messages. However, only the most recent messages are cached in the account, and caching is run lazily with the background activity scheduler, which won't run if your device is under any kind of load and runs infrequently on battery. Overall, I eventually plan to offer a "days of mail" setting to make this more predictable. You can also take actions on messages – marking them read, starring them, replying and sending new messages, etc. This is all architected to work while offline and replay when a connection becomes available. This design is necessary to make things seem snappy when the client is online. Overall, I have not yet heavily tested the offline capabilities, and there is some work to do around the caching predictability story. If offline access is a very firm requirement, I would recommend a client designed around this model, like Mail.
          • pvg 6y ago
            Thanks, I think you're right to identify 'predictability' as a key feature here. It's not so much that I need my every message offline (for which, as you point out, I can just Mail.app) it's that I'd like to have some idea of what I can expect offline if the client says it works offline. If the client doesn't offer any predictable offline features it's not really an offline client.