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Spark 3 Released


Email is one of the oldest forms of Internet communication, and has maintained its vitality in many foreign countries and regions. In such a background, it is hard to attract people’s attention when a foreign developer’s email client launches a big version update. However, there are still a group of people who adhere to the use of e-mail to send and receive newsletters, feedback on the exchange of product information, or correspondence with mentors, friends and other conversations.

After Calendars 5 and PDF Expert, another signature product of Readdle, Spark, an email client, has also received a major update recently. In version 3.0, Spark has been redesigned with a smart inbox, a new sender filtering mechanism and a class task management system, as well as a Windows client.

If you’re looking for a free, easy-to-use email client, check out Spark after its big 3.0 update to see if it meets your needs.

New Features in the New Release
In the official blog post, Readdle begins the update by bragging about the new philosophy he’s injected into Spark – Intentional Productivity, which encompasses Intentionality, Focus, Accomplishment, and Learning. Focus, Accomplishment, and Learning. As for what this metaphysics actually says, we’ll skip it for now, because it has nothing to do with how we use this software. Next, let’s look directly at Spark’s new features.

Smart Folders
Spark has redesigned the sorting logic and interaction interface of Smart Folders in this new version. If the senders are manually “marked as priority”, emails from these senders will be fixed at the top of the list and highlighted; if Spark recognizes that the senders are real contacts, emails from these senders will be displayed in the secondary position (below the top position) of the entire list; if Spark recognizes that the emails are Newsletters or Notifications, then they will be displayed in the secondary position. If Spark identifies emails as Newsletter or Notification, they are automatically categorized into these two groups and displayed at the third level of the list (below the emails from real senders). The other emails will be listed below the emails in the first three tiers in order of receipt.

I really like Spark’s account aggregation feature, which allows me to manage all my email accounts in one place and get a unified experience through one email client. Currently, Spark already supports multiple accounts such as Google, Outlook, Office 365, iCloud, Yahoo, Yahoo Japan, Exchange, etc. and manual IMAP / SMTP server settings, and the inboxes of all accounts can be aggregated in one smart folder in Spark for viewing, replying, archiving, forwarding, etc. All inboxes can be aggregated in one smart folder in Spark for viewing, replying, archiving, forwarding, etc.

Email is a task?
As you can see from the metaphysics of Intentional Productivity that I have been complaining about earlier, Readdle’s ambition for Spark is not only to send and receive emails, but in 3.0 Readdle has designed a simple task management mechanism for Spark.

In addition to the traditional “marked as read”, all emails in Spark can be marked as “completed” when processing is done.

In addition to marking individual messages as “completed”, Spark also introduces bulk operations for this action, allowing multiple messages to be marked as “completed” at the same time by time and grouping.

If you have an email that needs to be processed later, you can use the new “hold on hold” feature in Spark to prevent you from forgetting. After selecting any email, click the first button of the shortcut menu on the right side of the email or use the keyboard shortcut G to set the email to the “temporarily shelved” state, at this time in the lower left corner of the message list will display “X messages have been shelved”, click to press to view the “temporarily shelved” list, or use the keyboard shortcut Command+G to achieve the same purpose.

In addition, I can mark incoming emails as “set to do” and set a time when the set time expires, the email will reappear in the mailing list.

Sender management
Spark has added a new filtering system for senders in the new version. When you receive a message from an unfamiliar recipient, Spark asks you to accept or reject the sender. If the sender is accepted, future messages from this sender will be received normally. Otherwise, messages from this sender will be automatically blocked.

If I receive a large number of messages from a sender over a period of time, I can set the sender as a “grouped message” and messages from that sender will be automatically archived in a folder. Combined with the “Mark as Priority” feature mentioned earlier, it can make your inbox look more concise and clear.

Quick Center and Home Screen
Spark also introduces a popular global shortcut center, just press the keyboard shortcut Command+K or right-click any email to call the shortcut center. In the Quick Center, you can directly click the shortcut action, or you can trigger the corresponding action through the corresponding keyboard shortcut.

The home screen is also a very “interesting” feature of this version. When I’m done working on the messages in my inbox, I can tap the Home button in the upper left corner to enter the Home screen. From the home screen, I can still preview emails, search my inbox, create new emails, and see information such as date and time. But why don’t I do these things on the mailing list?

New Platform, New Framework
Before the new version was released, Spark already supported macOS, iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, and Android clients. After the 3.0 update, Spark launched Windows client, which is the last piece of its ecology, allowing users to use Spark on almost all mainstream platforms and get a unified experience.

I use a Mac computer at home and a Windows computer at work, so I can experience and compare the clients on these two desktop platforms. In terms of the application experience, the overall smoothness of both the Mac and Windows clients is passable, with no significant lag. In terms of the loading speed of email content, I was satisfied with the loading speed of both clients, whether it was text, images or HTML.

However, compared with the new platform adaptation, Spark has another new change that may be of more concern to old users, that is, its desktop client has fully switched to the Electron framework. I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about the pros and cons of Electron. For developers, using Electron can reduce the development cost, especially to reduce the individual adaptation of multi-platform work. For users, the applications developed with Electron are generally large and have obvious performance bottlenecks, and are prone to lagging and other situations.

Although the Electron framework has been criticized, in my experience with Spark, I haven’t found the application to be laggy, either because the email client doesn’t need to call on much hardware performance or because my computer is reasonably well configured. If you find serious lag problems when using the macOS or Windows versions of Spark, please share your usage scenarios or computer configuration in the comments section.

Price system
While Spark is free to download and use on various platforms, Readdle is not charitable. Taking advantage of the 3.0 major update, Spark has launched a new paid mechanism, Spark Premium, which can unlock the home screen, priority senders, sender filtering, sender grouping, discussion silence, large attachments, templates, and third-party application integration after purchase.

New users purchase Premium for $7.99 per month, or $59.99 per year. Returning users don’t get the discount if they pay monthly, but they get a 30% discount for $41.99 per year when they pay annually.

In addition to individual users, Spark also has another pricing system for enterprise users. Enterprise users get additional features like team creation, private chat, team permissions management, shared inbox, shared drafts, and more on top of the individual version for $9.99 per month or $83.88 per year.

Summary
If as a free email client, Spark’s interface and interaction design, full platform, multi-account support, smart folders and other features are attractive enough for light email users. The vast majority of users only need to send and receive emails through email clients, then Spark is definitely a good choice. Of course, Gmail, Outlook, and system mail clients can also meet most people’s needs, and the choice is mostly based on whether the app’s value and operating habits can satisfy individuals.

If you’re having issues to update to this new version, you can try to completely remove the previous version first. Or you can choose to use AppUninstaller.com’s App Uninstaller for thorough removal. AppUninstaller.com’s App Uninstaller is the top choice for Mac uninstaller in the industry.

If you are a heavy mail user, then Spark’s free version obviously can’t meet your needs, and the price of Spark Premium is not much competitive among many competing products, like Airmail, Canary Mail or Proton Mail, MailMate, etc. which also adopt subscription system may be a better choice. The price of Spark Premium is not much competitive among many competitors, such as Airmail, Canary Mail, Proton Mail, MailMate, etc., which are also on subscription basis, may be better choices.


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