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Email like a breeze

How Airmail 3 helps you glide through email.

Airmail - Lightning Fast Email

Lightning Fast Mail Client

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Believe it or not, email can be a smoother experience. Airmail 3 is a progressive email app built to help with that, but its wealth of features can take a while to master. Here are ways to make the app work better for you.

Master the shortcuts

A shortcut goes a long way, even knowing the basic ones will save you a lot of time. C or Command-N will create a new message, while R or Command-R will start a reply and A or Command-Shift-R will reply all. E or Delete will archive an email when you’re done.

Write in Markdown

Airmail supports typing in Markdown – with a catch. To compose in Markdown, you need to first click Markdown in the New Message window. Type in the left pane that appears, above the [original-HTML] tag, and preview the formatting on the right pane.

Markdown is an easy way to format text using symbols, like asterisks (*) for italics.

Once you’re done, click Send and Airmail will dispatch the email with formatting intact.

Customise your Actions

Tailor your most often-used actions in the Actions tab, found on the top-left corner of the Message pane. If you always Archive and never Move to Trash, for example, you can change the latter to something else like Mark as Starred. That way, you can activate the command in one click.

Go to Airmail 3 > Preferences > Actions, then click on the pulldown menus for Menu Button 1 through 4 to personalise them.

Customise the Actions tab with your most frequently used commands. Then you can activate them with a click.

Save searches as Smart Folders

If you always search for the same emails, like “from: Johnny Appleseed” for example, you can save these searches as Smart Folders. Once saved, you can click on them and see the same results without searching.

To create a Smart Folder, perform a search inside the search bar. Click on Save as Smart Folder, which appears as the last option in the search bar’s results.

Save this search as a Smart Folder and it will always show you emails from Johnny.

Click on Save in the pop-up menu that appears. To see the saved search, expand the Smart Folder in the sidebar. If you don’t see the folder, click More (the three dashes) in the sidebar and select Smart Folder.

How to filter emails

The Quick Filter menu, found at the top of the messages list, helps you sort emails in a snap. If you don’t see it, click on View > Show Filters or press Control-Option-F.

The filters are self-explanatory; Show Unread Messages, for example, does exactly that and hides the rest. Besides clicking on their icons, you can also use their shortcut keys to filter emails, like 1 to show unread messages or 3 for messages with attachments.

The shortcut keys also let you combine filters. Pressing 1, 3 and 9 in succession, for example, will show unread emails with attachments sorted by date in descending order.

To see a full list of Quick Filters and their shortcuts, click View on the menu bar.

Click the Quick Filter icons (on top of the messages list) to sort emails. You can also find a full list of filters in View listed with their shortcut keys (numbers 0 to 9).

Remind yourself if nobody replies

When you compose an email in Airmail, you can set a reminder if you don’t get a reply in time. In the New Message window, click Reminder (the bell icon), set a deadline for a reply, then click Remind Me. After you click Send, you’ll receive a notification if a reply doesn’t arrive after the deadline.

Click Reminder when composing an email and Airmail can remind you if the email goes unanswered.

Emails with reminders attached will be listed in the Reminder folder. If you don’t see the folder in the sidebar, go to Airmail 3 > Preferences > Favourites and select the Reminder checkbox. You can also go to the folder by clicking More and choosing Reminder.