I don’t know about you, but I’ve been desperately in need of a solid email client on my Mac for years. The Mail app that comes preinstalled with macOS Sierra or earlier just doesn’t do it for me, and I’ve been using Airmail for a couple years too. It’s an improvement over the stock offering, but for the price it never felt like it reached its potential. At long last, my favorite mail app for iPhone and iPad has arrived on the Mac: Spark.
Spark by Readdle (the makers of PDF Expert 5 and Scanner Pro) calls itself the “smart email client that solves a problem of an overwhelmed inbox.” In my one week of beta testing the Mac app plus about a year using the iOS app, I can declare it lives up to the mantra.
Spark’s Smart Inbox Tidies Up the Mess
Spark’s signature feature is its Smart Inbox. While traditional email clients just present all your new emails at once, Spark sorts through the new stuff and organizes them into cards. New, personal emails are at the top, followed by notifications, newsletters, your pinned read emails and the rest of your inbox. This alone dramatically saves me time as I can quickly click and swipe through emails this way. Plus, the emails come from all linked accounts.
Spark has quick action gestures that are completely customizable in the Preferences. By default, a left swipe lets you mark an item as unread or archive it (long left swipe) and a right swipe lets you delete or pin it (long right swipe.) So in just a few gestures I can clear through all my newsletters without even thinking about it.
Like the now defunct Mailbox, Spark also has a snooze feature. It lets you deal with emails later on so that they reappear in your inbox when the timing is more appropriate. By default you can snooze an email for later today (in three hours), tomorrow morning, next week or pick any date. Choose Someday and the email won’t have an assigned date, it’ll just stay in the Snoozed folder. Again, all of these time and date options are customizable.
Other Key Features
While Smart Inbox plus gestures and snooze are highlights, they aren’t the only features Spark has going for it. Smart notifications cleverly omit strangers and automated messages from your notifications, leaving only the important senders. These are enabled on a per-account basis, so some accounts can have smart notifications, some can have all notifications and others can have none. It’s up to you.
Another useful feature though limited in its functionality is quick replies. These are basically quick actions you can take on an email to essentially respond without, well, responding. Click the Quick Reply button at the bottom of an email to send a small message with a relevant emoticon. Examples are “Thank you!” with a check mark or “George liked this email!” with a thumbs up. They’re like Facebook reactions. People who don’t use Spark don’t get the full effect including the nice UI and image though. Luckily, with the release of the Mac version in addition to the iPhone and iPad apps, the number of users should be growing.
Speaking of the iOS version, arguably my favorite feature of all is iCloud sync. Not only does Spark sync your accounts across all your devices, but it syncs your settings too. That means all of your swiping customizations, smart notification settings, even snoozes and quick replies show up instantly wherever you have Spark installed. It worked beautifully when the iPad app debuted, automatically importing all my accounts and settings, so I’m sure it’ll be an even greater delight here.
Email Support
The cherry on top of the cake is that Spark works with just about any email address. You can sign in with your Microsoft Exchange account, Google Gmail, Yahoo, Microsoft Outlook or iCloud. Otherwise, with your server settings on hand, you can also use Spark with any IMAP email server.
Spark Delivers on Its Promise
In pretty much every way, Spark has helped ease the stress over checking and responding to emails. Best of all, it comes packaged in a fantastic design — the best design ever in a Mac email app, I’d argue. It’s lightweight yet powerful. The UI fits in nicely with macOS Sierra while still adding some personality of its own.
You can’t beat the price either. Spark is zero dollars and zero cents — free — on iPhone, iPad, and now Mac starting today. Apple and Airmail really have a lot of catching up to do.
➤ Download Spark in Mac App Store (free)
