It’s been six months since Mailplane threw in the towel, saying Google is going to destroy the ability for users to log in in apps like Mailplane. I keep an eye on this saga a bit as I’m a big Mailplane user. I like having a dedicated app for email, but I actually like the default web experience of Gmail, and I like having separate tabs for separate accounts.

So if Mailplane really were to die, that’d be a little sad for me, but I’d move on and find something else I like. It won’t destroy my email productivity.

I’d probably give Mimestream a real shot. It’s clearly macOS-y in a way that I usually like, and clearly entirely focused on Gmail support (which would be much harder for me to switch away from):

But this isn’t a wrapper around the web experience for Gmail, this is making Gmail more like Apple Mail or Sparkmail. As of yet, I’ve never got into this style of email client, but I’d try it before switching back to using my actual browser for email. Jason Snell was in the same boat as me:

I went through the stages, as you do. I tried to run Gmail in a single-site browser. It didn’t really take. I opened Apple Mail and… nope. It doesn’t work the way I want my email to work, and it’s inconsistent and slow in just too many ways. I’m not going back to that relationship.

If Mimestream can convince a fellow Mac dude who seemingly feels the same way about email as I do, that’s certainly worth something.