Just use an email client

Change is difficult. I get it. Judging by that Dismay on Twitter About the change to the Gmail logo, few people are happy with the multicolored M. Some blamed the change in the email logo for this https://twitter.com/tjdonegan/status/1321235370575626246?s=20. Others complain that it is now https://twitter.com/tumbke/status/1321369118776307713?s=20 from the other app logos from Google. For anyone in an extremely unimportant situation, I have a simple solution: get yourself a desktop email client. If you’re using the Gmail mobile app, you’ll get a different email app.

“Bbb-ut Gmail! My whole life is on Gmail! “They say you need to clutch your imaginary pearls like Gmail and its stranglehold over email is something you need to give up. It is not. I just don’t understand the madness of always having a dedicated tab open to access your email. Chrome is already one Ram pig. If, like me, you have a tremendous number of tabs open at any point in time you wake up, then tabs are an unnecessary eyesore on each of your email accounts. If only you have one Email, you can get away with it, sure. I have five Emails that I am monitoring at a specific time. Pfffffft I can not dedicate five Tabs at a specific time on an open web browser. I am not a madman.

Email clients are beautiful this way. A neat little program on your desktop (or laptop) that lets you organize and manage every single inbox for you. Now you only have one program. Granted, it will also use RAM, but never to the extent that I feel like my laptop is slowing down or losing performance. And even if so, the perks of having a desktop mail client are worth it.

It might be a personal preference, but once you have the infinite opportunity to see all of your email in one program at once, going back to one email account per tab is excruciatingly annoying. You won’t lose any of the features like snoozing emails either. If anything, are your customization options improved. It depends on the customer. Each has its own features and some may be better tailored to your personal needs than others. Many have “smart inboxes” that automatically filter your usage, what is spam, and what is likely to require your attention. Others allow you to have all of your inboxes bundled into one mega inbox while also providing settings so you can reply from the right address.

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I use Funke and that integrates with Todoist – another to-do list app that I use. When I don’t want to sleep with a specific reminder responding to an email, I can simply export it to my to-do list, including a link to that exact email. Alternatively, I can right-click and select “Find Email By Sender” to see every email this person has ever sent me – without going into the search bar. Again, this happens to be the customer I chose as it best suits my needs. I assure you that there are tons of free and paid options out there that offer a better experience than Gmail in multiple web browser tabs.

The other benefit of having an email client on your desktop? You will immediately receive an offline backup of all your emails. It might be a sick, paranoid thought, but in the event that you suddenly get laid off, there is no way to walk into your computer and save all of your contacts or documents. You already have a searchable copy.

But what about cell phones? I’ll scream a lot in my inbox for this, but Gmail’s mobile app is a steaming pile of donkey shit. I keep downloading it and I think this time is the time to understand how to best use it as it keeps popping up on the lists of the best email apps. But unfortunately. While it’s fine for managing a single account, it is awkward as hell when you want to check three or more email accounts at the same time. There’s no good and easy way to see at a glance how many unread emails are in each of my inboxes.

Alternatively, I don’t have the ability to view every “important” email from all of my accounts in one place. Again I have to switch accounts. Sometimes I don’t remember because I’m old and my memory has shrunk Which Account in which the important e-mail is located. I don’t have time to manually check a folder for a single, possibly mythical, email. If I have multiple accounts in the Gmail app, I can’t search all of them at the same time. I can attack my eyes with the All Inboxes view or switch accounts manually. When it comes to notifications, I’ve found that Google’s “High Priority” settings aren’t that easy, and I’d rather die than receive notifications for every single email I receive. Actually, this applies to most settings. Apples iOS Mail Client is stinking junk tooand if you have an iphone, you can do better.

All of these quirks are absent in my life without the Gmail app, and yet I have even more freedom with the email experience. With the Spark app, I can preload templates in case I just send a quick email like “I’m not near a keyboard right now, but I’ll get back to you right away.” I can configure settings for all of my email accounts manage in one place. Thanks to the smart notification filters, I only receive notifications from people I know and with whom I have interacted. Most importantly, I made it so that there was never a damn red bubble no matter how many unread emails I have.

You don’t have to use the client that I do. In fact, there is a good chance it isn’t the best for your needs. But there are dozens of them, many of whom have figured out how to streamline and customize the whole email thing in ways that Google has repeatedly missed. You can pay when you want, but you don’t have to. Best of all, you’ll never have to look at that hell of a Gmail logo again.