14 ms·

Claws Mail

138 points by andrewshadura 4y ago

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Cockbrand 4y ago
Nice to see that this still exists! I've been using it ages ago when it was still called Sylpheed Claws, and I loved it. Clean and very snappy GUI, lots of sensible features, still not as bloated as many alternatives. Lost track of it after switching back to Mac about 2005.
leni536 4y ago
I still use it. Too bad it doesn't support IMAP push, otherwise an excellent client.
rascul 4y ago
I used claws for some time, but I ended up going back to Thunderbird. The big issue I had was that when I switched to another folder it would freeze for a time. I think it had something to do with the folder size. Sometimes the freeze would be over a minute. After some time I simply had enough. Other than that, I very much liked it.
- mrweasel 4y ago
  That's really my only complaint as well, sometimes the whole thing just freeze, I'm sure it does something in the background, but there's very little feedback. One way to fix it might be to some mail retrieval agent that supports MH format and just read the emails that way. It's a little old-school though. I do like the interface, it's much let busy that more modern email clients, and it have everything I need.
- fps_doug 4y ago
  I think it's when you have processing rules in place for some or all folders, it seems they get applied to all messages again every time you open a folder. Normal filter rules don't expose that behavior, and I've been too lazy to look up what the difference is supposed to be. However, ever since I only add rules to "configuration" -> "filter..." I can switch between 5k+ message folders instantly (using IMAP).
  - rascul 4y ago
    I had no processing rules.
- magnetic-recoil 4y ago
  Yep, unfortunately the network and folder loading code is really slow in Claws. There's lots of scope for improvement but no real development effort towards it - a few years ago I made some patches fixing a few low-hanging fruit but they were just left to rot and it hasn't improved since.
- loeg 4y ago
  It seems to do IO on the UI thread.
throw0101a 4y ago
Does it support OAUTH 2? (I don't see any mention of it.)
- mrweasel 4y ago
  Why would an email client need OAUTH2? Edit: Apparently that's a thing: https://git.claws-mail.org/?p=claws.git;a=commit;h=d65f9fb28f367f0274524fb59b10f72f9e9eb401 https://git.claws-mail.org/?p=claws.git;a=commit;h=d65f9fb28...
  - easytiger 4y ago
    There are fast setups for e.g. Gmail that use oauth. Vivaldi, Evolution etc also use them
  - throw0101a 4y ago
    > Why would an email client need OAUTH2? Office365 mandates it. So if your work e-mail uses that, and you want to use neo/mutt, it's a requirement. Given some of the answer I got, seems that it is doable: * https://www.vanormondt.net/~peter/blog/2021-03-16-mutt-office365-mfa.html https://www.vanormondt.net/~peter/blog/2021-03-16-mutt-offic... * http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/#oauth http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/#oauth
- georgyo 4y ago
  Yes, as of 4.0.0
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
phyzome 4y ago
I've been using this for years, and would recommend it to power-user types. Pros: - You can define custom actions to run, including running external programs - Very keyboard-accessible (including bindings for those custom actions) - You can define boolean filters to process messages as they come in, but also per-folder processing rules to run when you visit a folder. Again, you can run external programs as one of the actions when a filter or processing rule matches. - You can write whatever From address you want. A lot of mail clients make it way too hard to do this, but it's important if you have multiple aliases or a catchall at your domain. Cons: - Seems to be single-threaded. Certain UI and network operations block the rest of the UI. - Has a good search feature (same as filter rule language) but not great -- it doesn't build an index and doesn't search across more than one folder at a time. - Can't send HTML email (whatever) and can't view HTML without a pretty clunky plugin (annoying). I usually use a keybinding to send HTML emails to a Firefox instance that has networking disabled. :-P - One big keyboard binding that's missing: You can quickly get a list of all URLs that are in the email, and select and launch one, but not just copy it. (Most people won't care about this, but I prefer opening some email links in a private browsing window.)
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  > doesn't search across more than one folder at a time. But it does search recursively, which makes this way less problematic than it could. Just search your entire archive.
  - trumpablehump 4y ago
    And you can switch folders with the search staying active and only showing the matching mails in the folder you switched to! It drives me mad that Thunderbird insists of clearing the search filter when I switch folders.
- sundarurfriend 4y ago
  I use Claws when I need to quickly check an email update or do a simple search, because it's much faster and less memory hungry compared to Thunderbird. In fact, the inability to read HTML emails is pretty much the only thing keeping me from using it as my main mail reader. (I didn't know about this plugin, clunky or otherwise, could you mention that it's called? Also, in what way is it clunky - is it unstable/unreliable, or is it just slow to load or something?)
sph 4y ago
"Graceful, and sophisticated interface" based on GTK 1.
- rhn_mk1 4y ago
  It's based on GTK2.
  - sph 4y ago
    My bad, I saw a "CHANGELOG.gtk1" in the repo, and the interface reminded me of GNOME running on my SuSE installation in 2001.
    - 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
      I'm pretty sure that's the iconic clearlooks theme on top of gtk2 (that combination is obvious if you've spent any amount of time with it). In any case, those screenshots are too old, and the UI is using gtk3. https://git.claws-mail.org/?p=claws.git;a=blob;f=configure.ac;h=06954c344d9ac7fae1de1e22a504e83651f4f957;hb=HEAD#l597 https://git.claws-mail.org/?p=claws.git;a=blob;f=configure.a...
  - gapan 4y ago
    Latest version (4.x) is GTK3.
    - rhn_mk1 4y ago
      Oh wow, I almost didn't notice! Just the annoying spaces between buttons which will move the entire window if accidentally dragged.
- pelagicAustral 4y ago
  Looks comfy, IMO.
imrejonk 4y ago
I really like the message composer in Claws Mail. It has proper line wrapping, meaning that you don’t get strange line breaks in quoted text when replying inline. I’ve never got that to work on Evolution and Thunderbird (which I haven’t used in a while, so maybe this has been fixed already).
sam_goody 4y ago
It is a shame that open source is much more of a subject in the world of programmers than in the world of user interface designers. A face lift for claws would be worth 1000 new features. It is a fact that people rate software by how it looks, and anyone who is not a geek will pass up Claws - and the geeks will install it alongside whatever they regularly use. I wonder if there is a way to get more open source UI work?
- trumpablehump 4y ago
  Is that a problem though? Claws is great and I hope it will not get a dumbed down Gnome interface by someone on a Mac who does not even use the software they redesign, with buttons in unexpected places, unintuitive icons for the most basic functionality and its options limited to a maximum of 25 because of some metric that says more options are hard to understand. Hyberbole, yes, but the interface of Claws is pretty much what makes me use it. It's blazingly fast and efficient. What would a re-design improve?
  - mrweasel 4y ago
    > What would a re-design improve That is exactly the question people often forget to answer. We see this with both software and webdesign. Stuff gets a facelife, because it doesn't follow the latest trends. During the process features or design decisions made previously is often ignore or forgot, because they don't fix the new "vision". In the case of Claws Mail an argument could be made for upgrading to a never version of GTK and get a facelift in the process. That could also hurt the users, if the UI move around to much, or break existing work-flows. There is a lot of value in a stable UI. You can get caught in old or even deprecated libraries and UI interaction, that's a risk. There is however also value in being conservative and consistent. If you take an application(/web-application) like Chrome or Gmail, and you haven't used that in a few years, then you'll get overwhelmed. Something like Claws Mail or TextMate doesn't have that issue, you learned the concepts years ago, and they are just a valid now as they where then.
    - ajot 4y ago
leephillips 4y ago
Can someone who is familiar with both this and mutt explain why one would choose to use the former rather than the latter?
- smorrebrod 4y ago
  Claws has a GUI, so buttons, drag and drop, etc. It has a pretty good html rendering engine. Also it uses MH format which I prefer.
  - al_borland 4y ago
    >It has a pretty good html rendering engine. I'm a bit confused. Another comment listed the following as a con of Claws: >Can't send HTML email (whatever) and can't view HTML without a pretty clunky plugin (annoying). I usually use a keybinding to send HTML emails to a Firefox instance that has networking disabled.
    - smorrebrod 4y ago
      True HTML rendering is made through a plugin. Although if I remember correctly, plugins are included in the base package. Never had an issue with the HTML plugin but didn't use it on complex HTML so YMMV.
  - leephillips 4y ago
    Mutt supports MH. I didn’t know about the HTML engine, thanks. (Personally, I prefer mutt’s approach, where I can use the external HTML viewer of my choice, but don’t sacrifice the speed of a terminal interface when manipulating mail.)
catchclose8919 4y ago
How does this compare with Thunderbird?
ksajadi 4y ago
A genuine question: why is it that most open source email clients have websites that look like they were put together by Tim Berners Lee, as a test of "this web thing"? Here is another one https://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ https://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/
googlryas 4y ago
That page hasn't changed much in 15 years: https://web.archive.org/web/20070103185316/https://claws-mail.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070103185316/https://claws-mai...
fluctor 4y ago
Will Claws let me identify and delete duplicate messages?
lproven 4y ago
It's a good app. I used it for months. But it's very very close to Sylpheed, which is also a good app. They're good but the overlap is huge. They really need to merge, or be merged. AIUI the maintainer of Sylpheed won't accept patches. His problem, which he should get over. But ISTM it doesn't need his cooperation to merge the codebases, or resync CLAWS against the Sylpheed codebase. The result would be better than either.

138 points by andrewshadura 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Nice to see that this still exists! I've been using it ages ago when it was still called Sylpheed Claws, and I loved it. Clean and very snappy GUI, lots of sensible features, still not as bloated as many alternatives. Lost track of it after switching back to Mac about 2005.

leni536 4y ago

I still use it. Too bad it doesn't support IMAP push, otherwise an excellent client.

rascul 4y ago

I used claws for some time, but I ended up going back to Thunderbird. The big issue I had was that when I switched to another folder it would freeze for a time. I think it had something to do with the folder size. Sometimes the freeze would be over a minute. After some time I simply had enough. Other than that, I very much liked it.

mrweasel 4y ago
That's really my only complaint as well, sometimes the whole thing just freeze, I'm sure it does something in the background, but there's very little feedback. One way to fix it might be to some mail retrieval agent that supports MH format and just read the emails that way. It's a little old-school though. I do like the interface, it's much let busy that more modern email clients, and it have everything I need.
fps_doug 4y ago
I think it's when you have processing rules in place for some or all folders, it seems they get applied to all messages again every time you open a folder. Normal filter rules don't expose that behavior, and I've been too lazy to look up what the difference is supposed to be. However, ever since I only add rules to "configuration" -> "filter..." I can switch between 5k+ message folders instantly (using IMAP).
- rascul 4y ago
  I had no processing rules.
magnetic-recoil 4y ago
Yep, unfortunately the network and folder loading code is really slow in Claws. There's lots of scope for improvement but no real development effort towards it - a few years ago I made some patches fixing a few low-hanging fruit but they were just left to rot and it hasn't improved since.
loeg 4y ago
It seems to do IO on the UI thread.

throw0101a 4y ago

Does it support OAUTH 2? (I don't see any mention of it.)

mrweasel 4y ago
Why would an email client need OAUTH2? Edit: Apparently that's a thing: https://git.claws-mail.org/?p=claws.git;a=commit;h=d65f9fb28f367f0274524fb59b10f72f9e9eb401 https://git.claws-mail.org/?p=claws.git;a=commit;h=d65f9fb28...
- easytiger 4y ago
  There are fast setups for e.g. Gmail that use oauth. Vivaldi, Evolution etc also use them
- throw0101a 4y ago
  > Why would an email client need OAUTH2? Office365 mandates it. So if your work e-mail uses that, and you want to use neo/mutt, it's a requirement. Given some of the answer I got, seems that it is doable: * https://www.vanormondt.net/~peter/blog/2021-03-16-mutt-office365-mfa.html https://www.vanormondt.net/~peter/blog/2021-03-16-mutt-offic... * http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/#oauth http://www.mutt.org/doc/manual/#oauth
georgyo 4y ago
Yes, as of 4.0.0
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

phyzome 4y ago

I've been using this for years, and would recommend it to power-user types. Pros: - You can define custom actions to run, including running external programs - Very keyboard-accessible (including bindings for those custom actions) - You can define boolean filters to process messages as they come in, but also per-folder processing rules to run when you visit a folder. Again, you can run external programs as one of the actions when a filter or processing rule matches. - You can write whatever From address you want. A lot of mail clients make it way too hard to do this, but it's important if you have multiple aliases or a catchall at your domain. Cons: - Seems to be single-threaded. Certain UI and network operations block the rest of the UI. - Has a good search feature (same as filter rule language) but not great -- it doesn't build an index and doesn't search across more than one folder at a time. - Can't send HTML email (whatever) and can't view HTML without a pretty clunky plugin (annoying). I usually use a keybinding to send HTML emails to a Firefox instance that has networking disabled. :-P - One big keyboard binding that's missing: You can quickly get a list of all URLs that are in the email, and select and launch one, but not just copy it. (Most people won't care about this, but I prefer opening some email links in a private browsing window.)

rhn_mk1 4y ago
> doesn't search across more than one folder at a time. But it does search recursively, which makes this way less problematic than it could. Just search your entire archive.
- trumpablehump 4y ago
  And you can switch folders with the search staying active and only showing the matching mails in the folder you switched to! It drives me mad that Thunderbird insists of clearing the search filter when I switch folders.
sundarurfriend 4y ago
I use Claws when I need to quickly check an email update or do a simple search, because it's much faster and less memory hungry compared to Thunderbird. In fact, the inability to read HTML emails is pretty much the only thing keeping me from using it as my main mail reader. (I didn't know about this plugin, clunky or otherwise, could you mention that it's called? Also, in what way is it clunky - is it unstable/unreliable, or is it just slow to load or something?)

sph 4y ago

"Graceful, and sophisticated interface" based on GTK 1.

rhn_mk1 4y ago
It's based on GTK2.
- sph 4y ago
  My bad, I saw a "CHANGELOG.gtk1" in the repo, and the interface reminded me of GNOME running on my SuSE installation in 2001.
  - 5e92cb50239222b 4y ago
    I'm pretty sure that's the iconic clearlooks theme on top of gtk2 (that combination is obvious if you've spent any amount of time with it). In any case, those screenshots are too old, and the UI is using gtk3. https://git.claws-mail.org/?p=claws.git;a=blob;f=configure.ac;h=06954c344d9ac7fae1de1e22a504e83651f4f957;hb=HEAD#l597 https://git.claws-mail.org/?p=claws.git;a=blob;f=configure.a...
- gapan 4y ago
  Latest version (4.x) is GTK3.
  - rhn_mk1 4y ago
    Oh wow, I almost didn't notice! Just the annoying spaces between buttons which will move the entire window if accidentally dragged.
pelagicAustral 4y ago
Looks comfy, IMO.

imrejonk 4y ago

I really like the message composer in Claws Mail. It has proper line wrapping, meaning that you don’t get strange line breaks in quoted text when replying inline. I’ve never got that to work on Evolution and Thunderbird (which I haven’t used in a while, so maybe this has been fixed already).

sam_goody 4y ago

It is a shame that open source is much more of a subject in the world of programmers than in the world of user interface designers. A face lift for claws would be worth 1000 new features. It is a fact that people rate software by how it looks, and anyone who is not a geek will pass up Claws - and the geeks will install it alongside whatever they regularly use. I wonder if there is a way to get more open source UI work?

trumpablehump 4y ago
Is that a problem though? Claws is great and I hope it will not get a dumbed down Gnome interface by someone on a Mac who does not even use the software they redesign, with buttons in unexpected places, unintuitive icons for the most basic functionality and its options limited to a maximum of 25 because of some metric that says more options are hard to understand. Hyberbole, yes, but the interface of Claws is pretty much what makes me use it. It's blazingly fast and efficient. What would a re-design improve?
- mrweasel 4y ago
  > What would a re-design improve That is exactly the question people often forget to answer. We see this with both software and webdesign. Stuff gets a facelife, because it doesn't follow the latest trends. During the process features or design decisions made previously is often ignore or forgot, because they don't fix the new "vision". In the case of Claws Mail an argument could be made for upgrading to a never version of GTK and get a facelift in the process. That could also hurt the users, if the UI move around to much, or break existing work-flows. There is a lot of value in a stable UI. You can get caught in old or even deprecated libraries and UI interaction, that's a risk. There is however also value in being conservative and consistent. If you take an application(/web-application) like Chrome or Gmail, and you haven't used that in a few years, then you'll get overwhelmed. Something like Claws Mail or TextMate doesn't have that issue, you learned the concepts years ago, and they are just a valid now as they where then.
  - ajot 4y ago

leephillips 4y ago

Can someone who is familiar with both this and mutt explain why one would choose to use the former rather than the latter?

smorrebrod 4y ago
Claws has a GUI, so buttons, drag and drop, etc. It has a pretty good html rendering engine. Also it uses MH format which I prefer.
- al_borland 4y ago
  >It has a pretty good html rendering engine. I'm a bit confused. Another comment listed the following as a con of Claws: >Can't send HTML email (whatever) and can't view HTML without a pretty clunky plugin (annoying). I usually use a keybinding to send HTML emails to a Firefox instance that has networking disabled.
  - smorrebrod 4y ago
    True HTML rendering is made through a plugin. Although if I remember correctly, plugins are included in the base package. Never had an issue with the HTML plugin but didn't use it on complex HTML so YMMV.
- leephillips 4y ago
  Mutt supports MH. I didn’t know about the HTML engine, thanks. (Personally, I prefer mutt’s approach, where I can use the external HTML viewer of my choice, but don’t sacrifice the speed of a terminal interface when manipulating mail.)

catchclose8919 4y ago

How does this compare with Thunderbird?

ksajadi 4y ago

A genuine question: why is it that most open source email clients have websites that look like they were put together by Tim Berners Lee, as a test of "this web thing"? Here is another one https://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/ https://sylpheed.sraoss.jp/en/

googlryas 4y ago

That page hasn't changed much in 15 years: https://web.archive.org/web/20070103185316/https://claws-mail.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20070103185316/https://claws-mai...

fluctor 4y ago

Will Claws let me identify and delete duplicate messages?

lproven 4y ago

It's a good app. I used it for months. But it's very very close to Sylpheed, which is also a good app. They're good but the overlap is huge. They really need to merge, or be merged. AIUI the maintainer of Sylpheed won't accept patches. His problem, which he should get over. But ISTM it doesn't need his cooperation to merge the codebases, or resync CLAWS against the Sylpheed codebase. The result would be better than either.