by Upon its first launch, Airmail (Mac App Store link) has impressively sleek looks and a smooth takeoff, but the flight got a little bumpier after I’d stayed on board a while. Airmail’s appealing interface can’t entirely conceal this lightweight email client’s shortcomings.
Setting up Airmail couldn’t have been easier. The program asked for my email address and account password, and within seconds, it had configured an IMAP account and started populating my inbox. The first time it ran, my mail appeared with impressive speed. (Unfortunately, that wouldn’t always be the case.) Airmail looks terrific, displaying information in a series of vertical columns across the screen: accounts, then mailboxes, then message lists, and finally individual messages.
The user interface isn’t perfect, but Airmail sure is pretty.
Airmail is smart enough to pull in your Gmail labels and display them as different mailboxes, and it offers a preset selection of other views, including emails that have arrived the same day and emails you haven’t read yet. It also supports threaded conversations, and can display icons and images associated with each sender. Searches through my messages summoned speedy, accurate results.
Dig deep enough in Airmail’s somewhat bewildering Preferences, and you can even find multiple themes to apply to your inbox. I preferred the default one, but I found them all pleasing to the eye; some offer more information in the message list, some less, and each takes a unique approach to color-coding your messages according to your Gmail or other folders.
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