Early this month, Joe Kissel delighted Mac nerds with specific email requirements about the upcoming launch of MailMaven, a power-user-focused email application for the Mac that reaffirms SmallCubed’s dedication to managing email on the Mac.

I’m hoping to write something more complete once I’ve had time with MailMaven, but I thought it would be fun to share things as I discover them. I’ve been using MailMaven regularly for about five days after first installing it; it’s still undeniably in beta, but the latest builds (I’m using build 5958 for this post) have been usable.

Smart Folders

The first feature I look for in an email client is Smart Folders: they are how I set up my email clients in my own particular preference, which I’ve written about before. A quick summary of how I manage email:
– A folder showing today’s inbox contents;
– A folder showing yesterday’s inbox;
– A folder showing this week’s inbox ;
– A folder showing last week’s inbox.

Some great examples of Smart Folder support are MailMate and Apple’s own Mail. Spark, especially on the Mac, used to be good at Smart Folders, too, but things have changed since version two. (If you’re interested, they still kinda work on iPad and iOS, but they break all the time and you have to delete the old one and craft anew.)

Once a message is archived or moved from a Smart Folder to another folder, it’s not something I see unless I search for it. I try to keep these folders pruned so older messages don’t pile up. It’s aspirational.

Happily, MailMaven supports Smart Folders. For my use case, I can create account-specific smart folders that fit the bill, so this checks off the Smart Folders box for me. It too supports compound rules, so I am able to combine my iCloud and personal Gmail accounts into “home” smart folders, and then a separate set for work. I like it.

It’s so handy having both accounts available so readily, in an app I’m likely running all day (for work email), that I’ve managed to prune down the last week’s home email attentively. I realized how much unsolicited email I’m getting (and subscriptions to newsletters and headlines and t-shirts and health suggestions) that I unsubscribed to a lot of it. I was not in this habit at all, as the home email solutions I’ve been using (Spark on iOS and Mimestream on the Mac) don’t work as well–or as simply.