Mailwell 1.1

A new look, a faster app, and Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts.

Mailwell 1.1 is out today. It's the biggest update since launch, and most of it is about how the app feels to use every day.

Lately I've been looking hard at the Mac apps I love using, like Things, Mimestream, Granola and Superhuman, and asking why they feel so good. A lot of it comes down to small things. How fast a click lands. How much room there is at the top of a window. Whether a button reacts when you press it. So that's what this update is.

A new look

Your mail now sits on one calm canvas, with the sidebar around it in a soft paper gray. The toolbar is lighter, the lines between panes are gone, and the top of every view has room to breathe. Settings and the compose window got the same treatment, so the whole app feels like one thing.

Full width reads more like a page now. The title is bigger, the conversation sits in the middle, and the list keeps to a column so your eyes don't have to travel across the whole screen.

There's a new app icon too. It's the same letter, but macOS can now light it and show it in the dark, clear and tinted styles.

Faster

I rebuilt how the app updates the window, so a click only redraws the parts that changed. Opening a conversation, archiving and flagging are all quicker, and launching is about a third faster on a big inbox. I measure this on a 5,000 message inbox before every release now, so it should stay that way.

Gmail's keyboard shortcuts

A lot of people come to Mailwell from Gmail, and their fingers already know where everything is. Settings › General › Keyboard now lets you pick Gmail's keys instead of Mailwell's. Shift-I marks read, A replies to all, B snoozes, U goes back to the list. The tooltips and the ? sheet switch with it.

Smaller things

• Compact density in Settings › Viewing fits more conversations on screen.
• You can pick a color for each account in Settings › Accounts.
• If a conversation is already in Archive or Trash, that button shows it, and a click puts it back in your inbox.
• Getting to Inbox Zero is a little moment now.
• The sidebar slides in and out, and buttons press back when you click them.
• Fixed a bug where flagging from the reader sometimes didn't show the flag.

What's next

As always, the feedback board decides a lot of what comes next. If something feels off in the new look, or you miss how something used to work, post it there or email [email protected].

Mailwell updates itself, so you'll get 1.1 the next time it checks. If you haven't tried it yet, it's free for 14 days, no card needed.