I’d be remiss if I missed the tech news that some ex-Googlers behind Google Inbox have launched a new email client, Shortwave, that attempts to bring some of that spirit back.
I hopped on it right away to give it a spin. On the first day, it literally wasn’t sending my emails, so I bailed. But I tried it again a few days later and that seems to be resolved.
There are some really great features I think. Little stuff like Markdown support (e.g. just type dash, space, and you’ll be kicked into a list) is great. Drag and dropping emails to change the order arbitrarily I (who cares about my inbox sort order! I should have control!) is satisfying. The :heart: style emojis is a great touch too.
That, combined with a trim amount of features (just pin, snooze, or done emails) makes it feel really nice to me. I’m not sure I care for the focus on “conversations” (it’s a big list of names that I can’t remove that I don’t really care to see), but maybe I could get used to it.
2 responses to “Shortwave”
Any idea whether it works with email servers other than Gmail? I couldn’t find any mention on their site, just ‘Sign in with Gmail.’
I would assume it doesn’t work at all without basically being Gmail behind the scenes. I kind of like that as it means I can easily abort at any time, but it is a major limiting factor if you aren’t a Gmail person.