Readdle Expands Popular 'Spark' Email App to the Mac [Update: Now Available]

Wednesday November 30, 2016 6:00 AM PST by Juli Clover
Readdle today announced that its popular Spark email client for iOS devices is expanding to Apple's Mac lineup with the launch of Spark for Mac.

Like Spark for iOS, Spark for Mac includes a Smart Inbox feature, which intelligently organizes email into different categories (Personal, Notification, and Newsletters), to make sure important messages are always highlighted first.


Learning capabilities allow Spark to be told when an email is important, and the next time a similar message is received, it'll send a notification. Spark's Smart Notifications are designed to make sure you only get a notification when you get a message worth being alerted about.

Spark for Mac includes natural language search, so it responds to commands like "Find all my emails with PDFs," or "Find the email from Eric last Tuesday," and there are deep customization tools for personalizing Spark to meet your needs.

Other Spark features include Quick Replies, Touch Bar support, snooze capabilities, and cross-device syncing.

Spark for Mac is available from the Mac App Store starting today. Like Spark for iOS, Spark for Mac is a free app. [Direct Link]

Update: Readdle says the launch has been delayed, as Apple's approval of Spark for Mac is still pending.

Update 2: Spark for Mac is now available for download from the Mac App Store.

Tags: Readdle, Spark
51 comments

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Fall Under Cerulean Kites
40 months ago
Maybe some will laugh at this, but I’ve not yet found a mail app for macOS that I like better than the built-in Mail.app.

Inline image annotation, calendar and contact addition integration, etc. Especially in Sierra, it works relatively bug-free.
Rating: 12 Votes
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Corrode
40 months ago
I'm always curious how these free apps that have access to your email manage to make money.
Rating: 3 Votes
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Evil Spoonman
40 months ago
I just tried it. Currently I use Airmail and find it okay. Airmail's inability to Command+F inside an email is very annoying. Spark looks promising.

It has some peculiar behaviors that I do not like. It tries to reach out to a bunch of places, such as smartmailcloud.com, amplitude.com, and cloudapp.net. During first run I let it do this, but then it sent me email as part of the first run experience. Which means that it grabs my email address when I add an account, sends it to its own servers, and then sends me email. Which I find to be a bit of a breach of trust. An email application should only communicate with the email hosts you add, and only over pre-defined ports (993, 465).

Additionally it seems like it used my email address to subscribe me to their email newsletter. Which I am very annoyed about. I emailed them and asked for clarification on that because I am not 100% sure.

I blocked its communication with any servers other than the my email hosts and it seems to run fine still... so we'll see.
Rating: 2 Votes
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DrumApple
40 months ago

This is a new email client called Spark. It's not MacOS Mail.

I know, but other folks were chiming in about Mail :)
Rating: 2 Votes
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profets
40 months ago

Maybe some will laugh at this, but I’ve not yet found a mail app for macOS that I like better than the built-in Mail.app.

Inline image annotation, calendar and contact addition integration, etc. Especially in Sierra, it works relatively bug-free.


Honestly, I'm the same. I use Mail.app on Mac, iPad and iPhone. For my use they work so well.

However, I know there does seem to be the ever ongoing search for the perfect mail app, especially with new triaging features that newer clients seem to have. But just looking at 30ish people who I'm closest with (family, friends, colleagues at work), there's maybe one person who plays with different mail apps (tech savvy kind of guy), otherwise everyone really just uses what's built in.
Rating: 2 Votes
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Readdlemate
40 months ago

I'm always curious how these free apps that have access to your email manage to make money.

Hey! We are working on Spark for Teams as a monetization model :)
[doublepost=1480689348][/doublepost]

So far, anything Readdle has launched has been great.
I have no complaints. They are one of the few companies listening to their users.
I'll make some time to try Spark.

Thank you!
Rating: 2 Votes
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iDento
40 months ago

I'm always curious how these free apps that have access to your email manage to make money.

The same developer is offering several other paid apps, on Mac there's PDF Expert and this app is like an ad for their paid apps, or maybe a future integration will tempt you to pay for PDF Expert.
Rating: 1 Votes
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SteveJobzniak
40 months ago
I've been writing and updating a mega-thread about Spark for Mac, since I've been a beta tester for long before the public release and am very involved in helping the development (probably two dozen detailed bug reports personally so far).

This image from the latest Spark version (1.0.0.189) says more than 1000 words about why I do not use Spark for Mac yet:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/best-email-client-for-both-macos-ios-isnt-out-on-mac-yet-but-will-be-before-the-end-of-the-year.2013631/page-2#post-24010708
Rating: 1 Votes
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oneMadRssn
40 months ago

Honestly, I'm the same. I use Mail.app on Mac, iPad and iPhone. For my use they work so well.


I do too, but I must say that Mail on iPhone has become unsatisfactory lately. The new way it does threading in iOS10 has been awful for my work email (exchange server), that I had to turn this feature off. I also hate how it only displays notifications and unread count only for the inbox folder, even if there are unread emails in other folders which you have set to monitor.
Rating: 1 Votes
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oneMadRssn
40 months ago

I love the threading in iOS 10. Finally it includes my sent messages as well (like the Mac mail app).

I hear you though on the Exchange folders. Haven't been on exchange for 3-4 years now. I guess it's still the same where it only monitors the Inbox?


The issue with threading is with some emails (but not all), the app doesn't know which part of the message was part of the reply or forward, and which is new text. So threads with 3 or more emails become insanely long as you scroll through the entire conversation for every new email. It's really odd, because for some emails it does not do this. It's inconsistent.

With regard to folders, it is also inconsistent. The unread count in the red bubble only reflects the unread number in the Inbox. If you open the app, the unread count in the bottom of the app reflects unread in all the folders that you monitor. And you can select which folders to monitor within the app. So the red bubble and notification might tell me I have 2 unread emails, but when I open the app the bottom status bar tells me I have 18 unread emails.
Rating: 1 Votes
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