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I wish software had a “quiet start” mode
I wish that software, in particular email clients and operating systems, had a quiet start mode.
The challenge is that I often open up my laptop or my email client with a certain thing in mind, and then I get shown all the stuff in my email inbox, or whatever window I had open last.
It'd be really nice if instead, I could enable quiet start.
For email client, that'd look like that my inbox wouldn't be shown - it'd just be a search bar, a compose button, and a button to show my inbox (perhaps a button to show inbox as of when I last opened it, and a separate button to show all new emails. Or even the default is that no new emails are shown in the inbox until I click 'load new').
For desktop, it'd be that I could set it to minimize all windows and tabs when it wakes from sleep.
How do you feel about this?
I suppose I could build a script for MacOS that'd minimize windows. I think email is the bigger challenge for me. There are things that'll prevent gmail from pulling your new emails every few hours but that's not quite what I'm after. I use Superhuman and I wish it'd be blank on open rather than showing me new stuff that makes me lose my train of thought. Otherwise what I do is I make a note to myself about what I'm about to do, then open my email client, but I wish it was easier.
- PaulHoule 3y agoWeb browsers too. Often I get some message asking if I want to reload my tabs or "start a new session", frankly I didn't want a session to begin with and I don't want to start a new one now. Also none of this popping up popups about new features in the application to distract me when I am trying to get something done, this is at its worst when I am doing some task I do occasionally (say paying bills) and feeling under the gun.
- tolciho 3y agoThis is easy to solve, mkdir ~/mail/empty mkdir ~/mail/empty/{cur,new,tmp} and then start with mutt -f ~/mail/empty Operating System is the same; OpenBSD (though noisy at boot from the dmesg) launches to a completely blank screen for me, and I have to run voctana or whatever to get some xterms up. Do not much use what you call browsers, so nothing to fix there. w3m does not need a blank start screen, and amfora is most often launched with some URL so does not show the default screen.
- damnesian 3y agoOnce long ago I worked in an office whose IT department requested everyone log out of their computers before they left for the evening so an admin bot could login remotely, run various maintenance scripts, then reboot the machine. Regardless of the real necessity for it, it did force me to adopt the habit of reaching stopping points with all my tasks by the end of the work day. I grew to appreciate it; often it made me monotask (better quality of work) so I could hand something off to someone else. It became something of a lifestyle choice- though I do violate it out of necessity. Anyway, it's not a bad habit to adopt, and if you don't have the same time constraints of an 8-5 you could certainly establish this limit for yourself. When you reach the appointed time, tie up all your loose ends for the day and logoff. The next day (or at the appointed time), login and get the fresh promise of a blank slate every time.