Think differently about email
Discover how to reignite your enthusiasm for email with Spark REQUIRES Spark, OS X 10.11 or later you will learn How to get your email under control IT WILL TAKE 10 minutes
If, like us, you spend a lot of time reading and replying to email, it’s easy to feel swamped by an overstuffed inbox. Apple’s Mail app does a decent job of filtering things, but it lacks some useful features that make email much easier to manage, such as automatic replies, automatic classification of incoming messages, and the ability to snooze messages until it’s time to deal with them. Spark (Free) offers all those things not just on the Mac, but on iOS and the Apple Watch too.
Spark starts with what it calls the Smart Inbox, which organizes your incoming messages into Personal, Notifications, and Newsletters, with Personal at the top. When messages have been read but not filed they move to the Seen section, and if you want to come back to them later you can Snooze them so they’ll pop up at a more convenient time. Snoozing automatically works across all your devices.
One of our favorite features is Quick Reply, which enables you to set up simple responses for those messages you need to acknowledge but don’t feel like writing a whole response to. Simply set up the Quick Reply messages you want to use and then choose the correct one for any given message; so, for example, we’ve got a “Thanks, but this isn’t one for us” message as well as the default “Call me,” “Cool,” and “Thanks” responses. The app also works with the Touch Bar on the new MacBook Pro, enabling you to quickly respond or file messages with a tap.
We’ve made Spark the default email client on our Mac, iPad, and iPhone because it’s a great way to manage busy inboxes – and it’s very customizable too, so it’s easy to change to suit your own way of working. You’ll see in the walkthrough how to change the app’s appearance, how messages are signed, and even set your own keyboard shortcuts. If email makes you anxious or irritable, Spark might just be the solution.