PostfachA notification when it matters. Quiet otherwise.
Postfach announces new mail in the inbox, message by message, and takes the notification back once you have read the message, here or on another device. Junk it never announces. And for the folders your server fills, there are alerts: a notification when more than 500 unread lie there, or 50 new arrive within ten minutes. Time Sensitive if you want, so it comes through a Focus.
New mail, message by message.
A notification shows the sender, the subject under it, then the account and the first lines of the message. A click or a tap opens the message. When more than five arrive at once, one notification sums them up, “12 new messages”, and names up to three senders, so the last one does not stand for all.
Read, moved, or deleted, the message's notification leaves Notification Center, also when you read it on another device. And while Postfach is in front, it announces nothing: the mail is right before you then.
- On or off per account, with Notify about new mail in Settings › Accounts, and for every account at once in General
- An account's notifications are grouped together
- Senders are named the way the account shows people: by name, by address, or both
- For the inbox. What your server files into other folders, an alert announces, if you want one
- When a new account's first download is done, a notification says that too
How soon it comes.
On the Mac, Postfach keeps a connection to each inbox open, and your server reports new mail the moment it arrives: the notification comes within seconds. On the iPhone and the iPad that holds while Postfach is open. In the background it checks when iOS lets it, a few times an hour to a few times a day.
Faster would take a server of ours that holds your password and watches your mailbox around the clock. There is none, and that is on purpose.
- On the Mac: new mail in seconds, with no server in between
- On the iPhone and the iPad: at once while the app is open, otherwise as often as iOS lets it check
- An account you set to Manually is checked only when you choose Get New Mail, and announces no new mail by itself
Junk stays quiet.
What your server takes for junk and puts into the Junk folder is never announced: notifications are for the inbox. And what Postfach itself sorts out as it arrives, by your junk rules or because you blocked the sender, goes to Junk or to the Trash without a notification. Your phone lights up for mail you want to read.
- Junk your server sorts out: no notification
- Mail a junk rule matches: to Junk, without a notification
- Mail from blocked senders: to Junk, or to the Trash marked as read, without a notification
- More about the rules on the Junk page
An alert for a folder.
A server sends every error as a mail, a filter on the mail server files them into a folder of their own, and in a bad hour hundreds lie there. Without an alert only someone looking at the sidebar sees it. With an alert Postfach tells you: “Alert for Server Logs”, the account under it, and “612 unread messages · more than 500”. A click opens the folder.
An alert has one of two conditions. More than n unread is the pile that stays. More than n new within a few minutes is the storm, also in a folder nobody reads: it counts what arrives, read or not.
- Add Alert… in a folder's context menu in the sidebar, or in Settings › Alerts, which lists every account's alerts
- Once, when the folder crosses the threshold, and ready again when it is back under it; or every 5, 15, 30, or 60 minutes while it stays over
- A repeat takes the place of the notification before it instead of stacking up twelve
- Several alerts per folder, on any folder, the inbox or Junk too
- An alert that is off keeps its settings and is not checked
The alert stays in sight.
A notification can be swiped away, a problem cannot. While an alert has gone off, its folder's count in the sidebar is red, with the alarm clock before it, and an alarm clock follows the account's name, also with its folders collapsed. A click on the one after the account's name lists the alerts that have gone off, and a click on an alert opens its folder.
- Unread: the alert stays until the folder is under its threshold again, read here or on another device
- New: the alert stays until you open the folder. A storm at three in the morning is still there to see at eight
- On the Mac, Eddie in the Dock if you like: Show 🙀 in the Dock while an alert has gone off puts him in the place of the unread count
- Red and the alarm clock together, so it is seen also by someone who does not tell red from grey
Through a Focus, if you want.
A full newsletter folder and a server in trouble are both alerts, but only one is worth an interruption. So each alert has its own switch, Time Sensitive Notifications, off until you turn it on. On, the system shows its notifications during a Focus too, where that Focus allows Time Sensitive notifications, and on the iPhone outside the scheduled summary.
- Per alert, not for all: new mail stays an ordinary notification
- A repeat is as Time Sensitive as the first notification
- Where Time Sensitive notifications for Postfach are off in System Settings, the editor says so, with a button that goes there
- It changes how a notification arrives, not when the folder is checked, and it does not ring through the silent switch
- An import from a settings file does not take the switch: an alert becomes Time Sensitive only on the device where you turn it on yourself
How current an alert is.
The open connection is the inbox's. Postfach checks other folders with the rest of their account's: at its interval, between one and sixty minutes, and every time you choose Get New Mail. An alert can be that late, and the editor says under each alert how often its folder is checked. Where the interval is longer than five minutes, it offers to check the account every five minutes. When nothing has happened, a check costs one short request for the whole account.
- Where an alert's window for new messages is shorter than the interval, a storm can slip through between two checks: the editor says so, in orange
- On the iPhone and the iPad a wake in the background checks the inbox first, then the folders with an alert, whenever iOS lets the app
- For an account set to Manually, an alert comes with your check
- Each device checks for itself: where the Mac and the iPhone have the same alert, both announce it
Good to know.
Checked on your device
Every alert is counted on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad, from the mail Postfach keeps there. No server of ours watches your mailbox, and none knows your password.
An alert touches nothing
An alert watches and tells. It moves no message, marks none as read, and deletes none.
Taken along
The settings file takes your alerts to another device with the rest of your settings, with their folder, condition, and repeat.
Get Postfach.
Notifications that matter, on Mac, iPhone, and iPad. From the App Store, one purchase for all three.
