Apple’s Mail app is getting some much-needed features this year in iOS 16, and I’ve been using it all summer as my mail app on my iPhone and iPad, but sadly I just removed it from those devices and have gone back to Spark.

For all the talk in the Apple enthusiast community around native apps and responsiveness being prioritized above all else, it’s striking to me how terribly slow the Mail app is to use, even for my very basic use case. Mail is the only app I can think of on my phone where I need to let it sit for 5-10 seconds after opening it to actually see what’s there. Even when I see the app icon badge showing X new emails, I still have to wait for it to pull in those emails when I open the app (iCloud, Gmail, and Outlook accounts, they all have the same issue).

And then even when the app is fully loaded, I still need to use the archaic three-button keyboard shortcuts to perform even the most basic actions on messages. Ugh.

I like the simplicity of the app, and I appreciate the tracker blocking that’s built in so marketers can’t see that I opened their emails, but returning to Spark feels like a breath of fresh air after a summer of trudging through my email.

P.S. Mail was rough on early macOS betas, so I never stopped using Mimestream there.