Idea for a minimal desktop email client – would you use this?

I use Heirloom-mailx. I made a status indicator to indicate how many email messages there are, so I need not keep a dedicated window open to know if there are any messages; rather, the same window is used for the system load, memory usage, and date/time. But, I have my own email server, and don't use Mac OS X. Maybe what you have might be useful for some people who use Mac OS X, but I don't. But I think if you like it, you can write it anyways even for your own use, and then you can also publish it even if it doesn't have the options used by other users; I write software for my own use (but also publish it) and so can you, if you like to do so.

You may not need a dedicated window open, but it does look like you need dedicated space. It’s unclear how your program would interact with other windows or a cluttered Desktop. It also doesn’t seem practical for multiple accounts.

From your screenshots it doesn’t look like I’d use it, even though I’m unhappy with essentially every email client out now (Sparrow was the last good one).

It borders on the line of maximal instead of minimal because it integrates into a greater interface instead of creating a fresh screen. I like that, I think it would be important to organize in some strong ways, like several "Visions" or "Aspects" (simply tabs) that could have thematic views on e-mail. What if I want to leave an e-mail unread but don't want it sitting on the desktop? I think that it's a nice idea but there should be preference for notes to myself rather than messages from others, so maybe you can add some fields for "notes to self" that could sit between e-mails, and e-mails could be grayed out until I mouse over them. Those are the kinds of features I personally would love to have.

Would you mind adding those image links in a comment? The URLs in your post aren't clickable, but they should be if they are in a comment. Thanks!

Please don't put Show HN in the title if a thing doesn't exist for people to try out yet. This is in the rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html.

I have many problems with email but I don't see how this solves any of them. How do I see who these were sent to, or what mailing lists they come from? What do the chevron and gear icons do? How does it scroll when I have more than 4 emails? How does search work? How does composing work when I have more than one draft in progress? Does it just ignore my folders/flags/accounts? How do I move/minimize/etc these views if they don't have normal window frames?

This is the danger of judging any design by Lorem Ipsum. If it's not using real data, I don't trust it to be a real design.

JWZ said in 1998, "Mozilla is big because your needs are big. Your needs are big because the Internet is big. There are lots of small, lean web browsers out there that, incidentally, do almost nothing useful."

The standard window frame controls are not a problem to me. In fact, my #1 gripe with every program that tried to customize them (e.g., Pixelmator, Affinity, Firefox, 1Password) is that they screwed it up somehow and everything would be better if they'd just used standard controls.

For home use and personal E-Mail I prefer a client that can be opened and closed. At the same time I disabled all notifications on my Desktop where possible. So I might not be in your target group. Although for work use I lean more towards a more present mail client.

In any case, I think that's a cool direction. I have a love-hate relationship with Thunderbird since it has so many features that I don't use and some features I need - at work for instance Exchange support or Encryption - have only flaky plugin support. Also I totally not use HTML mail, on the other hand console clients just don't work for me. So I end up using Web mail clients which is not super practical always...

This is one of the most refreshing designs I've seen in months. It's absolutely beautiful. I'd be interested in a Mac version.

I don't know anything about the engineering behind an email client, so I'm curious about the security aspect – would my emails ever touch your server?

Side note: you could post this on Dribbble if you want more beta users.

Edit: It is quite lovely to have gotten some people to look at this idea of mine. I think I will go ahead and polish the code up and try to release it this week. If you would like to try it out you can email me at nikk@getfractals.com and I will send a link out when it is ready. Maybe spin up a landing page too. Thank you so much.

How will it handle inboxes with 30+ emails in them? And the whole archiving / labeling / folders process? I'd love to see concepts for those. I am, on the lookoit, for a nicer email client.

It looks beautiful but how does it handle other windows on the desktop?

I would love to use it but I wouldn’t pay. I hope you continue development but I understand if you don’t, since it’s hard to compete with many free alternatives.

Hey none of your links are clickable nor they take me to relevant webpage if I copy them. The browser ends up searching the URL

I need something for Windows so badly. Thunderbird is just so...meh...and there is nothing else that I know of.

The interface looks too much like desktop notifications to me.

Darn, I was looking for a telnet client that only connects to port 25.

Those are some huge image files.