this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
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No shit. There's a reason they are killing the nice and simple Windows Mail app; it allows you to sync with your email without Microsoft servers between.
Also, the biggest issue for me is the UX. I use outlook for my work email and like to separate my work and personal life, so soon I just won't have an app for my personal email on my PC.
If anyone knows of a similar windows mail app with good touch support and without such a traditional mouse designed UI, please share it.
The new thunderbird UI looked neat and modern.
They're still working out some kinks, but yes, the new UI of Thunderbird 115+ is pretty good.
Thunderbird has a new UI?
I'm on 115 and i dont notice anything different from how its always been.. (This isnt some joke, or insult, or anything. I genuinely don't notice anything different?)
If you update from a previous version then it configures itself to be similar to the old UI. If you do a clean install it looks very different.
fresh install on a fresh OS install.
Weird
Isn't that more of a replacement for Outlook? It doesn't look designed around touch like the windows mail app.
Outlook in Office (365) is the actual Outlook.
This is like the Lite Edition.
Huh? Okay, well I don't want either of those. I want a light touch first mail app. If it is like any version of Outlook for PC, I'm not interested as it doesn't meet what I originally asked for.
I've been using Thunderbird since forever. It's not perfect but I like it better than bloated and laggy Outlook.
I thought Thunderbird was getting increasingly shitty and slower/clunky, until I realised it was actually my ISP's mail server getting increasingly shit. This became immediately obvious the day that emails started taking 12-18 hours to land in my inbox. Reallllll handy for those time limited account reset emails. Funnily enough, they were planning real soon to outsource their email to another company for the low, low cost of just a few extra dollars a month, opt in now!
Transferred my IMAP inbox to my own domain, everything is now awesome again.
But better for touch and simpler than windows mail?
I am only using Outlook for work email.
If by "better for touch" you mean a phone app: no, Thunderbird is for your computer. In Android I can recommend FairEmail.
No, I mean like windows mail app for windows. A large screen app that can easily used with only touch. Like I said in my first comment.
Failing to read my comments and just answering the questions you want to answer is not helpful.
Sorry I missed that. I don't think you'll ever be happy using Windows on a touch device though. Too much relies on the traditional UX pattern, especially third-party applications.
I've been paying for mailspring for a few years now, and I love it. It has touch and gesture support, is open source, and is available on Windows, MacOS, and Linux.
Its paid plan includes some nice features like email tracking - which you can't really get from just a simple client and (needs a server to track who has opened an email and when) - and id lookup, for things like quickly seeing the LinkedIn profile of a sender not in your contacts list.
Definitely my favorite desktop client by a wide margin, and one I would recommend wholeheartedly.
Edit: Just to be clear, it's available for free as well.
Thank you for actually reading my comment and suggesting something appropriate, though I'm not convinced by the UI images. I'll have to test the touch support myself, but I'll check it out.
While I don't use it like that myself, the website touts "touch and gesture support", so I'm assuming there's something in there.
It is free, so give it a shot - maybe it'll scratch your itch!
Is it a local-only client, or does it download email on their cloud servers first?
Local only.
Even if you pay for their subscription, when you get to a new computer you need to manually authenticate with each service. But, it remembers which accounts you have, so it's faster than manually setting up each account from scratch. Basically "we know you have Gmail, xmail, ymail - tap each account to reauthenticate"
It's a good way to have (part of) the convenience of a cloud service, while combining it with the security of local only clients.
Edit: all of this is optional, you can choose not to let their cloud service know of any of your accounts.
I really liked the mail app, the outlook one sucks
As a guy who runs Windows 10 LTSC on one of the machine, yeah I agree it do suck ass
Not only it’s UI design doesn’t fit at all with overall Windows 10 UI design, it also runs significantly slower than the old Windows Mail app
And in the typical Microsoft fashion, they’ll shoved that garbage into everyone’s throat despite nobody ever asked for it
Fuck that
What especially galled me was as I was updating my laptop before flashing to Linux the new outlook will not work unless edge installed, I had just uninstalled that pile of garbage.
Ah well, at least pop_os works great 😃
Wino Mail has a pretty good UI similar to the Mail app. You can find it in the Store.
Thank you for actually reading my comment and suggesting something appropriate instead of whatever gets you the most karma ("use thunderbird/Linux!").
If you're still using Windows 11, they're still collecting your data. Sure, no need to give them more, but maybe that's the push you need to move elsewhere. There are really good options.
I'm waiting for Microsoft to bring back the option to move the taskbar to the side of the screen before upgrading to windows 11 from 10.
I may switch to Linux if IT forces the update and I can't stop it.
I don’t know any of the alternatives that have similar UI to the Windows Mail app
But it is possible to get back the old Windows Mail app by obtaining the dumped package file for the app (either by looking for it online or leeching it from the official Microsoft Store website using store.adguard.ru) and then install it using Powershell
At least that’s what I do with one of my systems running Windows 10 LTSC, since that version of Windows doesn’t came with Windows Mail and MS Store pre-installed
Thank you for actually reading my comment and suggesting something appropriate! I'll have to figure out how to get the package file myself, thanks!