Strange that you’d feel entitled to how they spend their money. Imagine if they spent most of the money sipping pina coladas instead - would it make sense for a teetotaller to be upset about that?

You paid them for services rendered. They’ve offered an additional service they didn’t previously for no extra charge. Now you’re upset, even though you’re still getting the same service you were previously at the same price?

As a paying user, I am also beyond saddened that companies work on features I don't use, but I realize I'm not their only customer and different people need different things.

Electron means they're not wasting your heard-earned money. They're hardly spending any of it (on the desktop app, that is).

I applaud Fastmail for this move. The average internet user is not you or me on HN and they have no idea what Thunderbird is. So why not make it easier for people to switch from the Big Thee email accounts that invade your privacy to Fastmail? Most people do not see apps as things that do multiple things (Facebook app for Facebook, Gmail app for Gmail, etc..) so that is what they understand. So give them a Fastmail app for Fastmail even on the desktop, which provides more usefulness that the web version. I say yay.

> I'm beyond saddened that they are wasting my hard-earned money in this

Lol, What do you mean your hard-earned money ? You already spent your money. It is their money now. Consumer != Investor.

Your equivalent is someone going to their local grocery store and asking them to sell stop selling Avocados because they are allergic.

As a happy paying user, I am pleased they created this and have wanted a desktop app for awhile now.

Do you see a regular user researching, downloading and setting up a third party email client or is it more likely they click the download button on Fastmail and log in with their account?

That’s the beauty of open standards, everyone can choose their favorite tool for the job depending on their preferences and skill levels.

Spending your money on this brings them in more money which could potentially be used on features you do want.

Not certainly, because that’s not how paying a subscription works. You would have to contact them too discuss directly paying for a specific feature. But potentially!

As a paying user of fastmail I would like them to to focus on their mail "feature", which is sucking big time, instead of doing bells and whistles with "desktop apps"

While I really don't care about this new app since I'm very happy with their IMAP/JMAP support, there is a fact that you don't know at all. You have no visibility on the number of users asking for a desktop client. I adore Fastmail (subscriber for 14 years now and counting) and they have a history of shipping only what users want. So perhaps you are upset, but I bet that this addresses a need from their user base.

Does thunderbird support the file storage, labelling, alias creation, and notes features as well? I thought thunderbird was just for email using IMAP. Does it support JMAP?

And what about them making this has detracted from your experience as a Fastmail user? I've found the desktop site to be perfectly fine, and they recently addressed my primary complain with the mobile app by allowing emails to be saved offline. I haven't found anything worrying that I feel their dev time needs to urgently address that was ignored due to this. Fastmail just works.

Are there any desktop apps that support Fastmail's label implementation? Also, a Fastmail web app bundled in Electron would still be MUCH faster than Thunderbird with its bundled Mozilla components.

> I'm beyond saddened that they are wasting my hard-earned money in this... what, electron bundle?

Vote with your feet. Go to mailprovider with native app (and leave sane people alone)!

Can you use all the labeling and other features in Thunderbird?

Why the dislike of electron? It’s not worse than a website resource wise ..

I guessed it was built with Electron (or at least a WebView) even before seeing the screenshots.

Creating a fully native desktop app takes a huge amount of engineering effort. When you factor in their target platforms (Windows, macOS, and Linux) you’re looking at multiplying that effort several times over. No one in their right mind would build a fully native desktop mail app these days, unless that’s the one thing that sets them apart from the dozens of other web-based mail services out there.

The only real benefit I see in this Electron app is system notifications for new emails, assuming people keep the app running in the background or minimized most of the time. Other than that, the web version will almost always be better and more up to date, since it’s clearly the main product.

I can totally picture people buying MacBook Pros with 128GB of RAM just to run a bunch of Electron apps, hehe.

For us technical people "native" means something different than it does for regular users. It just means they have an app for their platform and not just a web app.

That's a disappointment, and in the screenshots, the app actually doesn't look native at all. The new Liquid Glass design, with the round search boxes and transparency, is nowhere to be seen.

It only says "native notifications". Or did they change the webpage?

It is Electron. Sadly this is usual for Electron applications, the company saves developers and you pay with hardware. Software scales well, so investing in development would be much more efficient.

It is not strictly necessary to waste so much resources with Electron. But usually it is, because optimization also requires developer time. Even rather good Electron applications like Signal require much more resources than a native application (Gtk, Qt, Cocoa).

The right choice would be by Fastmail to cooperate directly with Evolution, Thunderbird, K-Mail, Apple Mail and help them were needed.

> I'd rather just leave Fastmail open in a browser tab

Or if you gotta have a spearate app+:

Safari > File > Add to Dock

+ which I do because it's so much easier to go to my mail instead of wading through browser windows and tabs. I've been using that way for a while now

Offline mode can be useful where network connectivity is not great.

> I'd rather just leave Fastmail open in a browser tab

You'll still be able to do that.

Somehow we used to do that in the middle of 16 bit home computer mess, even when it required writing everything in Assembly.

Don't complain about Google taking over the Web, when everyone keeps packaging Chrome with their applications and calling it a native app.

> “We” (a couple of fanatics)

This has been the standard way to distribute software across platforms for a while now. I'm not sure I understand this kind of objection anymore. What's the alternative?

Fastmail also have a decent API if you're keen to glue together a better client yourself.

> This is like the worst of everything. A terrible noncustomizable browser

Agree.

> and a poor email client glued together.

Totally disagree. FastMail webmail is really good, probably the best webmail/mail client.

Actually, I would use this desktop app if it was compatible with IMAP.

Obsidian is an Electron app, and it's one of the best apps in the world.

Don't hate on the tech stack.

[flagged]

Thanks for this tip, looks much better than the electron app from Fastmail.

> I find it rather strange that so many email providers have to develop their own "app".

It's probably because people want easy access, and have all features supported flawlessly. Mail has come a long way, but there are always specific features not integrated well.

Also, most of those apps are more a thin wrapper around the web-interface, adding some interface-sugar for desktop-integration and serving as a playground for devs to test the web-apps offline-abilities.

> There are so many good clients out there, and I'd rather have 1.

I've yet to see any good client for me. They all are kinda flawed and limited, many suffering from age or not fitting modern demands. Thunderbird seems to be the only trustable Linux-compatible one which is still actively developed, and even this is app is lacking on many corners. Add-ons are supposed to fill and round up the corners, but without anyone developing them, what's the worth in having them?

Fastmail at least seems to work on developing the mail-standards, and having their own client is probably helping them in figuring out how well those improvements are working and where they are lacking.

One reason could be that they need one if there are unique differentiators on the roadmap that cannot be added into regular clients. I dont know if this is the case.

It's very practical when you use a lot of different devices. It's nice to use native built in email apps, but when using multiple different OSes and device types, it can be very annoying to have the different clients play nice with each other.

Kind of like how duckduckgo, a search engine, now has its own "app."

Fastmail's killer feature is JMAP, and there are not so many GUI clients for that. Yes, you can use IMAP, but that's just much slower.

It’s because IMAP sucks really bad and every email service has features beyond what imap supports. Server side filters for example.

its so they can put ads in it without you being able to block them like you can in Thunderbird.

A good IMAP client (in combination with my own domains) gives me freedom. I use Fastmail, I like it, and your support is great, but I don't want to tie my usage of your service to your UI. That would tie me down to your service.

So I use Thunderbird and K-9 Mail, and occasionally the Fastmail web UI to manage masked e-mail addresses etc. That is my happy path.

I want to be tied to Fastmail because of your stellar support and good service, not because I am trained to use your UI.

By the way, fastmail.com is now in full advertising mode for this new app. It's hard for potential customers to see that you support IMAP just fine. Please show potential customers that the app is just one option as you say; not a requirement. Your website currently does not communicate that message clearly.

I appreciate you taking the time to engage with your customers here. I’ll say this announcement doesn’t thrill me, as a long-time customer. I’ve been paying for Fastmail for at least six years. It may be as many as eight but I can’t find my oldest receipt.

I use Fastmail because of the excellent mail service, customer support, sieve rules to keep my inbox manageable, and because of the little details like WebDAV that I have unexpectedly found useful for things like syncing browser bookmarks. I pay for Fastmail because it has been excellent, not because I’m captive.

This app signals to me that there may be a change coming in our relationship. One in which you may start to neglect IMAP or make it harder for me to choose my own mail client. It tells me that Fastmail might be pivoting into “growth” and treating me like a “user” rather than a paying customer. It won’t surprise me, and I can’t really say I’d be mad. Most companies get to that point. There’s probably a lot more money to be made from vendor lock-in than happy, $50 per year customers. As for me and mine, I will switch to the next small-to-medium-sized mail provider the second I get a sense that this is the direction.

I would consider using this app on my desktop instead of Thunderbird primarily due to the improved search.

After giving it a spin for 180 seconds, the main nuisance for me is that I can't elect to "Always show images from this sender". I use that in other desktop clients to ensure the image blocking banner doesn't end up being subconsciously ignored by me, as it will then only show for new senders who I'm not familiar with and need to be more wary of.

Also, like all banners everywhere no matter how well designed, it's ugly. In fact to be honest... this is the main reason I want the option to get rid of it.

I can understand why you don't offer that in the web app if you're storing it server side for each customer's list of saved senders, but for a desktop app where it can be stored locally, I'd value it.

Hi,

Long time Fastmail user. Very excited for this; normally I would care if it is an Electron app but because I want the same experience as iOS/web app, it probably makes the most sense to be an Electron app anyway.

I've been waiting for a FM desktop app that provides native notifications. Will this mean that iOS notifications from iPhone mirroring will be suppressed in favour of the native app?

Why bundle as a .zip instead of .dmg?

Will search work the same with offline use?

A few thoughts (no need to respond): I want all my messages available offline (and can confirm this is a setting), I want the same interface as the iOS app and the webmail app especially since they handle aliases and catch-all aliases including replies properly.

Edit: looks like when using iPhone mirroring, it doesn't detect that Fastmail is already installed on the mac, so you get duplicate notifications.

> Why Electron?

> Because it lets us

The answer to the Electron question never starts with the customer.

Every Electron thread goes the same way on HN. Engaging is a lost cause. As a Linux user, Electron is the only way many companies even acknowledge our existence. Getting native integrations without the native UI is always going to be better than nothing.

Hi! I have been using Fastmail for the last 2 years and love it!

I don't use the web interface much, instead I use Apple's Mail.app. My only issue is that external email accounts (gmail) take some time to be fetched periodically. When I open the web interface and click on the tag, it instantly pulls the new mail in from the external account, but if I fetch in the Mail.app, it doesn't refresh the external accounts. So, for things that have a very short time period (confirmation codes), I still end up needing to open the web interface. I wonder if this would still be the case with the new desktop app?

I will take some time to set it up over the next days and try it out!

Thank you for Fastmail and thank you for the very well thought out keyboard-driven web interface. It's good enough, I rarely use mutt anymore.

If I could sort by label, it'd be perfect.

Why not make an option to use third party JMAP providers (like selfhosted stalwart)? It would help push the JMAP client ecosystem - which could really use some help…

I’ve been a long time Fastmail user and generally love the service.

I’ve got one question not about the new desktop app, but I was wondering if you’d consider adding some kind of automatic email sorting like Gmail? I feel like I’m in a constant battle marking newsletters I didn’t ask for as spam but there’s always new ones. And wish there was a feature that just automatically filtered them all in to a bucket for me.

> Because it lets us build an app that works well across all major platforms with the resources we have available. Building an email/contacts/calendar app is a huge undertaking. Doing it from scratch on each platform is just not feasible for us.

Just to be clear, does this mean the app is mainly reusing the already existing codebase of the web-app? How much additional work went into the desktop-app?

I can't login with my YubiKey (FIDO2/WebAuthn) on the desktop app. It works flawlessly in the browser.

I like the idea of using the new app, but in the browser I can use ublock to remove the weird "Inbox Zero!" celebration. Is there any plan to allow that kind of empty inbox configuration in the app?

I'm interested, both as a Fastmail customer, and a software developer: what does this let you do that a PWA doesn't? Perhaps not become the default email client? Is there anything else?

Happy Fastmail customer here. I switched from Gmail several years ago, but the one thing I miss: staring emails (not pinning).

Please add a staring functionality.

Thank you.

I was just hoping for this a couple hours ago. :)

Any idea how far out the Linux version is?

Are there any plans to provide builds for x86 Macs?

I think you should also understand that HN is not best place for this kind of news. This is page for people posting very obscure and hacky things. People that try to squeeze miliseconds on everything they do or do things the clever way. Why we should be happy for something that is the antitesis of clever and basically could be called corpo-slop?

Why should Fastmail invest in Thunderbird, an open-source email client run by a completely unrelated organization? Of course they could, out of good will. But you can't demand that they do.

This is just their webapp wrapped in an off-the-shelf browser engine. Hardly any development resources needed. It could have been quickly put together to tick a checkbox for some big client, the revenue from whom could help them work on features that actually matter more. None of us needs to use it. But somebody must have needed it, so here it is.

Fastmail.app/Contents/Frameworks/Electron Framework.framework

Yes, Electron 38.2.2 at least which isn't bugged on macOS Tahoe.

It should be JMAP because that's the primary protocol that Fastmail as a email hosting company (not a email client) operates on.

I don't think that's open source based on the blog post alone, and I don't think they have a reason to build a separate email client with advanced features. This app is likely just meant to serve the needs of the business clients that have asked for a separate app rather than using the website.

Thunderbird needs to adopt JMAP and then Fastmail will work great in it

they have an amazing team, integration with 1 pass, tons of good things and chose a shortcut like every other major company because it generates revenue, short wins over strategy

Just taking a glance and main benefit I'd say is offline support - which they also recently added to their mobile app.

Also being able to make it your default app for email (and hopefully calendar?)

Yes, the keyboard shortcuts are available, but I am unable to see browser navigation shortcuts like 'command + left arrow' to navigate to the previous page.

Do you mean to access Fastmail as a client for your Gmail-hosted inbox? How about using the fetch feature that moves all emails to your Fastmail inbox, and the 'send as' feature where you can send emails out from your Gmail SMTP via Fastmail. Those two features already exist.

Replying to mail that arrived through masked email addresses will also reply with the masked email address and not accidentally leak your main address.

Also creating masked mail addresses in the first place.

On the down side it's an Electron app, on the upside it's JMAP.

Almost every mail client I've used doesn't handle (catch all) aliases/identities properly including responding with the correct address. Also much better search.

I use Mail on macOS, but occasionally the Fastmail web app in a browser. Here are a bunch of things I use the web app for besides configuration stuff:

- Block sender (whole domain)

- Report phishing

- Mark as spam

Because that stuff should be done on the server, not on the client and if you mark stuff as spam in Mail, it's on the client afaik.

I would hope it uses JMAP, not IMAP

older versions that have a bug do. they are using Electron 38.2.2 which doesn't have the bugged rendering code.

Yes, don't all providers? I search through my email fine.

It does. Why wouldn't it?

Yes

May I ask how old you are? Interesting perspective to me that " no one uses desktop apps". In my bubble people only use the phone to get notified about mails, but do the interaction on a desktop computer using some mail app

Surely it’s more efficient to just ignore this release and continue using the browser than it is to switch providers? Unless there’s another reason, in which case I’m all ears. I’ve been quite happy with Fastmail as a provider.