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FairEmail: Open-source, privacy friendly email app for Android

3 pointsby andrecarini11 months ago

1 comment

WarOnPrivacy11 months ago
I&#x27;ve had this app on my phone for about a year. It has a loyal userbase and is generally spoken well of.<p>For me it hasn&#x27;t been the best fit. I find the UI difficult to navigate and the controls non-intuitive.<p>For example: I&#x27;m working in an email and I need to do in-email stuff like forward, reply or reply all. Quickly.<p>There&#x27;s a row of icons across the top of an email that look promising like an arrow pointing forward. Except it doesn&#x27;t forward. The icons are all maintenance items; they&#x27;re controls for stuff I&#x27;d do when I&#x27;m no longer in a hurry.<p>The reply options I want are hidden in a single button on the bottom. It has a reverse arrow and a 3-dot icon, indicating a menu. So yeah, these are clues but I really want signposts, not hints.<p>I want the context menu (hinted by ...) so I long-press the button. However, this dumps me into composing a reply to sender.<p>There <i>is</i> a context menu under the button but it&#x27;s a single tap. It&#x27;s the opposite action I expect for a context menu.<p>To recap: The actions I need are in an non-obvious place and the controls are reversed. By the time I&#x27;ve worked this out, I&#x27;ve had to unwind a half doz actions I didn&#x27;t intend to do.<p>I usually quit now and go finish at a desktop. I use the app for notifications for a few months. After this much time, my next attempt is basically starting from scratch so I repeat the experience.<p>I usually know my way around email clients. I setup and manage email servers and have worked with about every email client there is. I once even used Sylpheed as my daily driver so I&#x27;m no stranger to oddballs.<p>I think FairEmail&#x27;s devs are competent and know what they want. I think FE is an ethical product - unlike, say, Outlook for Android which injects crapware shortcuts into your OS context menus.<p>But FE doesn&#x27;t work for me. It does - however - work for a lot of other users. I recommend you judge for yourself.