There are a number of applications that will make sure you're on time for your appointments and never forget your best friend's birthday, but they're not all created equal. Here's a look at five of the most popular desktop calendaring applications.
Last week we asked you which calendar app you used to keep track of important dates. You answered the call, and now we're back to highlight the ones you nominated.
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Nevertheless, there already is a great choice of apps to help you manage your gmail (and other) accounts from your Windows desktop. Below is the list of apps that we find are definitely worth a mention. Mailbird Of course, we could not publish a list, without mentioning ourselves in it. Mailbird is more than a gmail app for Windows. We are desinging Mailbird to become your app to unify all online. EasyMail brings Gmail directly to your desktop. Easily access your mails, notes and calendar in a standalone app. Moreover, EasyMail allows you to switch between different accounts with just one click. Apr 05, 2015 Go for Gmail is the best and most powerful Gmail desktop client. It's perfect for quickly accessing your Gmail account without ever needing to open a web browser. The app is fully feature packed and built for speed and ease of use. The same can be said for Mail Pilot (; Mac App Store link), a $20 email client built loosely around the Getting Things Done approach to productivity. It looks terrific, but for all its good. Finally, a Gmail Mac app that’s fast, reliable and a mirror image of Gmail on the web (plus a few new and amazing built-in features.) Those of you who have tried to use a desktop app but have found yourself back to using Gmail in your browser, you’ll appreciate the brilliant yet simplistic thinking that went into the creation of this app. EasyMail brings Gmail directly to your desktop. Download EasyMail now for free! Disclaimer: EasyMail is a third-party app. The developer is in no way affiliated with, authorized, maintained, sponsored or endorsed by the Google Inc. Gmail and all other copyrights are property of Google Inc., and their respective owners. Get this app now.
Best Desktop Calendaring App?
Most of us have a system to keep track of appointments, meetings, and regular to-dos, and if you…
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iCal (Mac)
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If you have a Mac, you already have iCal. The app integrates tightly with other Mac OS apps and goes mobile on your iOS device, and supports notifications in advance of appointments. Since it uses the .ics calendar standard, you can quickly import or export to and from other services like Google Calendar. iCal also allows you to share calendars via Mobile Me, but with iCloud coming, that may change.
Some of you went out of your way to nominate Outlook because it's what you use at work, others said you prefer it for your personal appointments as well. Regardless, Outlook offers built-in tools to keep your appointments organized by type, integrates with your email, and when combined with Exchange is a powerhouse that supports resource booking, appointment locations, free/busy times, and more.
Google Calendar (Web)
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While it's not technically a desktop calendaring app, Google Calendar is clearly the go-to calendar service for many of you. It's free, Web-based and accessible anywhere, and if you have a Google account you already have access to it. Adding appointments is easy from the Web interface or from Gmail, and most other applications can sync with it.
Thunderbird + Lightning (Mac/Windows/Linux)
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Thunderbird is already our favorite email client for Windows, but when you add Lightening, the Mozilla Foundation's calendaring plug-in, you get a utility that allows you to read messages, stay on top of appointments, and import/export your calendar to other apps. Mozilla has woefully neglected lightning, but if you like Thunderbird for mail, Lightning will keep your calendar organized.
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Rainlendar (Mac/Windows/Linux)
Desktop App For Gmail Mac Free Pc
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Rainlendar is the ultimate 'out of the way' calendaring utility. The app's lightweight widgets sit on your desktop and warn you of upcoming appointments and to-dos without draining system resources. There are countless skins for it, so you can find a look that works for you. Pay €10 (approx $14) and you'll get a 'pro' license that supports syncing with Google Calendar, Outlook, and Remember the Milk, among others.
Now that you've seen the top five, it's time to vote for an all out winner.
What's the Best Desktop Calendaring Application?online survey
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This week's honorable mention goes out to BusyCal for Mac, which offers mobile calendar sync, multi-user sharing and editing, and support for syncing to Google Calendar. BusyCal will set you back $49.99 for a single user license, but it's a great alternative to Exchange or Google Calendar for groups looking to share calendars.
Did we miss your favorite? Do you want to make the case for your favorite? Sound off in the comments. Photo by John Lanman.
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You can reach Alan Henry, the author of this post, at [email protected], or better yet, follow him on Twitter.
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Postbox 3.0.5
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A recent surge of worthy new email clients offers Mac users some of the best choices they’ve ever had for managing their mail. With a panoply of clever features and new ideas, these contenders have also mounted a serious challenge to the relatively stagnant Apple Mail and Microsoft Outlook. But with so may options to choose from, it’s now even harder to pick out the best email client for your particular needs. We’ve found one strong program that offers a great mix of features, usability, and value for a broad swath of users, plus several more that will cater well to more specialized preferences.
Top choice: Postbox 3
Postbox 3 () isn’t the newest or sleekest candidate in this roundup. Its design hews more closely to the traditional Mac look and feel, rather than adopting a slick iOS-like appearance. But for $10, it combines reliable performance, smart design, and a wide array of impressive features that make the program feel like what Apple Mail ought to be.
Even though it’s built on Mozilla’s aging Thunderbird underpinnings, Postbox handled my email quickly and confidently. Setting up new POP and IMAP accounts went smoothly; in one case, when I tried to set up a work Outlook account, Postbox patiently guessed at several different IMAP configurations until it found the right one. It then filled up my new mailbox relatively quickly, despite the pile of messages involved, and let me track its progress with a clear but unobtrusive progress icon.
Everywhere you turn in Postbox, you’ll find well-thought-out features that enhance your email experience. Message threads are easy to follow, with each message’s beginning and end clearly marked, and a quick reply box waiting at the end of the most recent message.
An inspector pane next to each message shows you not only who sent it —and, with a click, their entire contact card from your address book—but breaks out any links, images, maps, or package delivery info it finds in the message. You can also easily search for any messages, images, or attachments from a particular sender just by clicking links within their address book info.
And if work requires you to send a lot of form responses, Postbox builds in that ability. Just compose your response in preferences, then choose it from a pulldown menu when you’re writing a new email.
Postbox plays nicely with many popular social and productivity tools. If you have Evernote installed, Postbox can send emails to that service to help you keep track of them. Once you set up your account information, dragging and dropping files from your Dropbox will create links that let recipients download those files straight from your Dropbox account. And you can tie in your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts to not only get links to your contacts on those services, but post to all three directly from Postbox. The program will even use the Gravatar service to pull in images for your friends and acquaintances from one or more of those services.
A helpful To-Do mode lets you create new tasks, or turn existing messages into tasks, then check them off as you finish. Postbox also integrates an RSS reader to keep track of your favorite feeds, an increasingly rare feature among modern email clients. And Postbox provides great support for Gmail, including the ability to use Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts. None of these features gets in the way of simply sending or receiving email, but they’re all readily available when you need them.
Finding and using all these features can get a bit intimidating when you first start using it, but Postbox’s clear, straightforward, and easily searchable online help files make the learning curve much gentler.
Postbox 3 has begun to show its age; OS X updates since its initial release have actually broken a few features, such as integration with the Mac’s Calendar. But overall, Postbox seems like the best mix of price, capabilities, and quality for the majority of Mac users.
Top contenders
Inky
Desktop App For Gmail Mac Free Download
If you use email more for pleasure than business, you’ll likely enjoy Inky’s earnest efforts to present your inbox in ways that matter to you.
Built for portability, Inky () stores information for your POP and IMAP accounts—but not your mail itself—securely on its remote servers. Once you’ve set up that info, a single Inky login will bring all your email to any computer you’re using Inky with.
In a clean, colorful interface, Inky lets you view mail as a unified inbox, by individual accounts, or by several different clever Smart Views. The program’s smart enough to automatically recognize and sort messages containing maps, package info, daily deals, subscription mailings, and other common categories.
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By clicking icons on each message, you can also teach Inky how to rank your email by relevance, so that it’ll display messages that matter to you more prominently.
I occasionally had trouble logging in to Inky, and had to quit and restart the program a few times to get to my mail. And Inky doesn’t offer business-friendly features like to-do lists, or any bells and whistles beyond sorting and handling email. But it’s free, it’s fun to use, and it’s full of well-executed and practical new ideas.
Best Gmail App For Mac
Mail Pilot
The same can be said for Mail Pilot (; Mac App Store link), a $20 email client built loosely around the Getting Things Done approach to productivity. It looks terrific, but for all its good qualities, it’s still missing a few crucial features.
Mail Pilot treats your inbox as a to-do list. Each message is a task that you can check off right away, set aside until you’ve got the time for it, or ask to be reminded about on a certain date. Clearly labeled keyboard shortcuts at the bottom of the screen make these tasks easy to accomplish.
It’s IMAP-only, and setting up your account ranges from simple (Gmail) to tricky (Outlook, although the program’s great help files spelled out exactly what I needed.) Once your mail’s in place, Mail Pilot offers lots of different options to navigate message threads. The variety puzzled me at first, but I came to appreciate the different ways it sorted and stacked my messages.
As a fairly new program, Mail Pilot’s still somewhat under construction. The ability to save new messages as drafts or search by message text won’t arrive until a later version. But if you’re in synch with Mail Pilot’s productivity-first approach, you’ll nonetheless find the program helpful and worthwhile.
Unibox
Give it a few more versions, and Unibox (; Mac App Store link) could become quite the contender. Right now, it’s a very well-designed and usable $10 app with a few pesky hiccups.
Setting up IMAP accounts is fast and easy, and once your mailboxes are populated, Unibox displays them not by message title, but by who sent you mail on a given day. From the top of the screen, you can switch between viewing each sender’s message thread, or seeing all the attachments or images in that thread by list or by icon.
I really enjoyed Unibox’s sleek and efficient one-window interface, which makes maximum use of space while still displaying your mail clearly. The new message window slides down from the top of each message thread. Buttons to sort, junk, or delete a message materialize when your mouse hovers to the left of it; replying and forwarding options appear when you hover to the right.
I wasn’t as fond of the blank screen Unibox displayed upon loading until I manually refreshed my mail. And it has a bad habit of truncating longer messages by default, forcing you to click again to read the whole thing. Still, it’s a smart program full of good ideas; it just needs a bit more polish.
The rest of the pack
AirMail
AirMail () offers an attractive, inexpensive front end for your IMAP-based webmail of choice. But while the program’s interface is nice to look at, it’s not always easy to use, with tiny, hard-to-see buttons and space-hogging new message windows. Gmail messages also take an unusually long time to load; promised Dropbox support proved impossible to set up; and AirMail offers few help features.
Download Gmail App For Laptop
Mail.app
I used to love Apple Mail () but it’s begun to stagnate with the last few versions of OS X (Mail is free with OS X Mavericks). The latest incarnation trickles in a few new features, including the welcome ability to search by attachments and attachment types. And, as befits an Apple program, it’s well-integrated with the rest of OS X. It’s also the only client in this review to natively support Microsoft Exchange accounts, although Outlook’s increasing support for IMAP renders that a bit moot.
Alas, the latest version was plagued by troubles with Gmail, and Apple has released updates that address many of the problems. But wouldn't it be nice if it simply just worked?
MailMate
Like a mighty rhinoceros, the $30 MailMate () won’t win any beauty contests; it’s not what you’d call “approachable”; and it’s astonishingly powerful. Its gray, austere, text-only interface conceals jaw-dropping abilities to search, sort, and sift massive piles of mail. Its support for SpamSieve and PGP, and its unbelievably granular search categories—like “level of server domain”—make MailMate the undisputed best email pick for power users, but probably a needlessly intimidating choice for everyday users.
See a list of email clients available for the Mac
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Bottom line
Even if you only want a simple, no-frills email experience, you don’t have to stick with Apple Mail. Inky’s a great free alternative for folks who just want a streamlined inbox presented in a friendly way. On the other end of the spectrum, MailMate is ideal for tech-savvy experienced users who want to rule their inbox like a cruel, all-powerful god. And right at the happy medium between those extremes, Postbox offers plenty of easy-to-use enhancements for a fair price.