Canary Mail App 4+

Fits my workflow well, however beware

Absolutely love the app and fits my workflow so well. Finally pulled the trigger to purchase the paid version (which I have not done before with previous clients I have tried as they never fit me quite right) however they have separate Mac and iOS apps and it is not entirely clear on the purchase page. I purchased the app on Mac and wasn't flowing through to my phone and after contacting support they let me know that it is listed in the FAQ on their website (which I have never been so). They were not able to refund or transfer my purchase to the iOS app (which I preferred for push notifications). It is not clear on the purchase page and the syncing between both apps (which works so well) makes you think they are exactly the same. Don't make the same mistake I did!!

Neat and easy to use

I have enjoyed using Canary for my email - juggling multiple email accounts if my lot in life and Canary makes it easy to tell what is coming from where. I'd possible like a combined Inbox option but I', getting used to checking each account individually - Canary certainly makes it easy to see which email boxes need attention. I've only just intalled it on my iPad so can't really comment on using it across platforms but so far it looks like a good package. Given the number of other email platforms I've used (Spark, PostBox, Unibox, Apple Mail, Outlook to name a few), I'd say Canary is the winner so far.

Styled to distraction, and missing major features

I was able to set up Canary to download my mail. That is about all the positive things I can say about it.

For all the features Canary is incredibly proud of, it has *no rules engine*. There's no way to auto-archive or auto-filter emails. How *anyone* is able to operate an inbox in 2019 without a basic rules engine is a mystery to me.

On top of that, Canary's banner feature - encryption... well... I'm darned if I can make it work. It's proably a configuration issue - but if I can't work out how to configure an app use my existing GPG keys, then the feature might as well not exist.

And then there are the cosmetic issues. The designers have been bitten by the worst of every app design trend of the last 10 years. The app has a default appearance that makes extensive use of transparency. It has controls that hover over actual content, obscuring that content. It has controls that "magically appear" as soon as you give something focus, or hover over a magic location. There's no control over things like the default font for emails sent *to* you... but I found at least 3 different ways to change to the "dark mode" theme - a feature that is apparently so important that it's baked into a button that you can see from *everywhere* on the app, *in addition* to a menu item, and a settings panel.

Very disappointed.

Developer Response ,

Hi Russell, thanks for the feedback. We'll keep this in mind for future updates. You can reach out to us via the in-app Help menu, or via the Help button on our website, if you need help setting up encryption.