Ask HN: Email Client
6 comments
Thunderbird, by Mozilla who make Firefox, is free and open source. It can handle your requirements, but not sure about vim shortcuts and there's no AI functionality. It's been around for a long time
Thanks, I don't need AI functionality (unless you mean the scheduling meetings) and tbh would rather avoid anything branded as AI
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There is none
Not yet; Thunderbird is going to release such a feature in the near future:
https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/04/thundermail-and-thunder...
> Assist is an experiment, developed in partnership with Flower AI, a flexible open-source framework for scalable, privacy-preserving federated learning, that will enable users to take advantage of AI features. The hope is that processing can be done on devices that can support the models, and for devices that are not powerful enough to run the language models locally, we are making use of Flower Confidential Remote Compute in order to ensure private remote processing (very similar to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute).
> Given some users’ sensitivity to this, these types of features will always be optional and something that users will have to opt into. As a reminder, Thunderbird will never train AI with your data. The repo for Assist is not public yet, but it will be soon.
https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/04/thundermail-and-thunder...
> Assist is an experiment, developed in partnership with Flower AI, a flexible open-source framework for scalable, privacy-preserving federated learning, that will enable users to take advantage of AI features. The hope is that processing can be done on devices that can support the models, and for devices that are not powerful enough to run the language models locally, we are making use of Flower Confidential Remote Compute in order to ensure private remote processing (very similar to Apple’s Private Cloud Compute).
> Given some users’ sensitivity to this, these types of features will always be optional and something that users will have to opt into. As a reminder, Thunderbird will never train AI with your data. The repo for Assist is not public yet, but it will be soon.
I used MailMate (https://freron.com/) before and I liked it. Very customizable and the search functionality is better than Apple Mail or Outlook. Has some tool extensions to allow it to interact with some other apps.
It does not have a built in calendar though, so you will need to either get something else (there is an extension to allow MailMate to work with some calendars).
It does not have a built in calendar though, so you will need to either get something else (there is an extension to allow MailMate to work with some calendars).
Thanks. Do you use something different now? Is there a reason you left it
I assume you've ruled out the native Mac client?
Actually I haven't. I used to use it on an old macbook but it became buggy. I'd consider using it if you think it would be suitable
It's what I use and it meets all your requests except maybe the hotkeys.
Ok, I'll have a look. Mac OS lets you change the hotkeys in the menubar anyway, so not a back idea
I use default Apple Mail. It meets points 1, 2, 4. 3 can be somewhat configured like you said.
Thanks for the suggestion
Mimestream is the best one hands down!
Spark Email is good. Has 1-3. Maybe 4.
I'd rather stick with a client that will last the test of time that I really learn, than a new start up client. I really got into Arc Browser but now there aren't any more updates other than security.
I don't even use email a lot, I'm just a regular student, but find that I want to use outlook less each time I use it