I’ve gone full circle yet again of using a new email address (Proton) and then circling back to just using iCloud and Gmail. As with notes and other services I end up losing so much stuff as I have no idea where it all is. Just going to stay put with Gmail for crap and iCloud Mail for important stuff so I ... social.lol

@AndyNicolaides I’ve pretty much got Apple Mail exactly the way I want it having spent months moving away from Hey. I think it’s important to stick with one system and not jump around. I found it horrible at first, but it does me fine now.

@BenSouthwood yeah you’re absolutely right, you really do need to stick to something. I’m banning myself from trying new email services! Sounds like you’re taking the sensible approach, even if it’s not as ‘fun’ sometimes :)

@AndyNicolaides I tried last year and resubscribed to Hey quickly. This time I gave myself several months to get everything in order and I’ll save myself €100 or thereabouts for someone else to manage my junk mail.

@AndyNicolaides @BenSouthwood I came to the realization I don’t need my email to be fun, I need it to be clean, simple, and functional. I dropped FastMail and went all-in on iCloud custom domains—seeing I’m already paying for Apple One—and couldn’t be happier.

@pimoore @BenSouthwood you guys make a lot of sense. Chasing the next fun / interesting thing only leads me back to iCloud anyway. Though emails do feel like they go missing sometimes in folders. I have the domain sendmethings.email so I should just use that with iCloud for non-important stuff.

@pimoore Yes, the ability to create aliases and a domain address for my blog has everything pretty simple. I’m all in with Apple One and it pretty much has done away with a lot of superfluous subscriptions.

@AndyNicolaides @bensouthwood I hate email folders and labels, always have. My workflow is simple and basic:

1. Email comes in, and I’ll check the sender/subject/preview in the inbox.
2. Either act on it right away, or use the Mail “remind me” feature for a later time.
3. Only if I really need to keep something for reference do I archive once I’m finished with it, otherwise it gets ruthlessly deleted.

No folders, flags, or fuss. If I need to find something I just use search, which for me has always worked quite well. And since I’m using iCloud custom domains, all my emails show up in one single inbox and can be replied to by any account.

@pimoore @AndyNicolaides I actually think that makes more sense and I might be overcomplicating matters.

@pimoore I view trying to organize email in a world with good search and large email boxes is the ultimate yak shave.

@pimoore This is why I use Gmail, I can delete and delete. There's very little that comes to that account that needs saving.

@alexink You’re one of very few people I seem to know (including myself when I had a Google account) that used Gmail this way. It was antithetical to what you were told—keep and archive everything—but I never cared. This behaviour carried over to Mail and I’m fully on board.

@BenSouthwood @pimoore so you just leave everything in the inbox? Like insurance documents and stuff?

@AndyNicolaides @BenSouthwood If there are documents I need that are important I’ll save them to iCloud Drive as a backup, but I’ll still archive or delete accordingly. While I haven’t needed to, you could use deep linking of an email message into the Notes app. This would make it easier to pull up the message you felt like search-ability would be a problem. This is another reason I love the stock Mail app.

@pimoore I’ve said it before, but I wish Apple would acknowledge just how well their native apps work together and shout about it a bit more. Most of it is there, but no-one has a clue about it.

@AndyNicolaides I have set up aliases for newsletters and shopping and they go directly to the folder I created for each.

@BenSouthwood @pimoore I think the only problem there is that's kinda true. I mean, if you're on just iOS and maybe also an iPad and you mostly do light work? Sure, they're great.

For example, I tried to save an image on my Mac a couple of days ago, right into iCloud Drive. It just broke, refused to work. I don't know if it's because of the app I was using but it doesn't matter; Apple is providing the syncing back-bone and that is not something that can be prone to error when you're working.

I'm confident they're close to finally solving this problem to the extent that other "feature not a product" companies have done so for years but I have a sneaking suspicion that they need to iOS-ify the Mac some more before that is true.

@pimoore that is what I did. And I love it. Of course I am iOS first.

@pimoore and I print to PDF important emails. Save in a folder with docs in iCloud Drive

@BenSouthwood I think they’ve gotten better at this during keynotes, but you’re right they really need to make this more of a priority; it’s a huge selling point.

@terrygrier Printing to PDF is also a terrific option, which allows you to then delete the message fearlessly.

@pimoore They could make a podcast: «What we forgot to tell you…»

@odd This is a killer idea, send this to Tim!

@pimoore It was thew only reason I got one so I could use it for everyday use and have all the "junk" stuff in one place. Why archive email unless it's from the bank?