Former Apple Engineer Introduces Native Gmail Client for Mac With Multi-Account Support, System Notifications, and More

Thursday September 10, 2020 8:04 am PDT by Joe Rossignol

Neil Jhaveri, a former Apple engineer who worked on the company's default Mail app, has introduced a new Gmail client for macOS.

Available in beta, Mimestream is a native app written in Swift and designed with AppKit and SwiftUI for a clean, stock appearance. Jhaveri says the app is designed to be fast, lightweight, and use a minimal amount of disk space.

Mimestream uses the Gmail API rather than IMAP to support more Gmail-specific features, such as categorized inboxes, automatically synced aliases and signatures, full labels integration, and search operators. Jhaveri plans to add more features over time, including Google Drive support, server-side filter configuration, and G Suite directory autocomplete.

Mimestream's advantages over using the Gmail web interface include support for multiple Gmail accounts with a unified inbox, system-level notifications, system-level Dark Mode support, swipe gestures, tracking prevention, and more.

Jhaveri says Mimestream only makes direct connections to Gmail and does not use intermediary servers, adding that the app does not collect or sell users' emails.

Mimestream is free for a limited time while in beta and will eventually be a paid app distributed through the Mac App Store. macOS Catalina or later is required. Jhaveri says an iOS and iPadOS version of the app is planned for the future.

Tag: Gmail

Top Rated Comments

casperes1996

40 months ago

Looks a lot like the native mail client. Which brings up the point, why not just use the Mail app? It supports more than just Gmail, so you can gather all your email providers in one place; iCloud, Exchange, Gmail, Yahoo, custom email servers - The article said something about using the Gmail API and getting extra Gmail features from that, but I can’t imagine anything on offer there that is really useful; Categoriesed inboxes - well, I already have Smart inboxes and the ability to create my own archiving systems with the native mail client. - Maybe it’s just because I’m not really much into Gmail but use many different email systems, including my own server and like the simplicity of regular SMTP and IMAP.

But I mean good for this guy - I’m sure it’s high quality, well produced software

Score: 23 Votes (Like | Disagree)

smithrh

Are ex-Apple engineers allowed to produce an application similar in nature to the one they originally worked on? Just curious.

Depends on the legal agreements - if any - they signed on the way in or on the way out. And whether any agreements are still in force, or have expired.

If he's in California, there are additional worker protections in play as well - non-competes are out.

Score: 15 Votes (Like | Disagree)

RichardGroves

Five minutes in and I can already see it is much better with labels, and emails with multiple labels, than native Mail app ever has been. This for me is the key Gmail differentiator - being able to have the same email in multiple places - so a receipts can be in Orders & Work Expenses & Inbox & Starred until I'm done with it, unstar it and archive it: then it is just left with the first two labels.

Mimestream is showing me the labels attached to a message very nicely so far.

We'll see how it goes, but the app is super lightweight (5.1 MB DMG!), was easy to setup with 5 accounts and so far so good.

Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)