Yes notifications work with stock mail and the FastMail app.Another couple of things you could try to get at least a little more info that might help you:
(1.) Add the FM account to Accounts and Passwords and see whether you can get notifications in the stock Mail app.
(2.) Download the FastMail client, which, obviously, should have no trouble with it.
If you can get FastMail notifications with one or both of those methods, but not with Spark, you'll at least know it's a Spark issue rather than a FastMail issue. I think.
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Spark the best [update: a good] email client for BOTH macOS & iOS
- Thread starter SteveJobzniak
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And in Spark, you're getting zero notifications — i.e., no sound (including vibration), no badge, no banner. Correct?
Yes correct - nothing at all.
You have to manually refresh to get new mail in both Mac and iOS.
Hmm. That's a totally different issue, the no-notifications part notwithstanding. Are you seeing this happen with any other kinds of accounts, or is just FastMail? (You may not have others; just asking.)
It only happens with FastMail.
Two macs. Two iOS devices. Settings all correct.
Does this happen with others who use FastMail?
I just did a quick DL/install of Spark on iOS, gave it access to my FastMail account, and sent that account two emails from another account (iCloud). Same result as yours -- no notifications despite their being turned on and, yet, the FM mail was clearly going through and, when I opened Spark, showing up as unread. Interesting and weird. If our Spark-knowledgeable friend @SteveJobzniak is still watching this thread, perhaps he can weigh in. In the meantime, it's probably worth notifying both Readdle Support and FastMail Support. Clearly not just you, @lpoolrob.
@bwintx That's weird...
Well, Spark uses Amazon EC2 cloud servers to watch for emails, and then sends Apple Push Notifications (via Apple's network) when an email arrives. And we know the Apple pushes work (since your other accounts worked). Therefore, something is wrong with the way Spark's server listens for new emails on FastMail in particular.
The actual implementation of Spark's server code is not known, but since they have near-realtime reactions to new emails, it makes me doubt that their servers do periodic login and polling. They probably stay connected to the accounts 24/7 via `IMAP IDLE` or `IMAP NOTIFY` (basically just connects and then sits there until the server tells it that a new email has arrived).
I'd check if FastMail's servers support IMAP IDLE/NOTIFY. But I think they do, since it's the "standardized" way of realtime mail delivery.
As for Spark, I may be knowledgeable but I don't use it at all since a few months. It's still too buggy. :-(
Well, Spark uses Amazon EC2 cloud servers to watch for emails, and then sends Apple Push Notifications (via Apple's network) when an email arrives. And we know the Apple pushes work (since your other accounts worked). Therefore, something is wrong with the way Spark's server listens for new emails on FastMail in particular.
The actual implementation of Spark's server code is not known, but since they have near-realtime reactions to new emails, it makes me doubt that their servers do periodic login and polling. They probably stay connected to the accounts 24/7 via `IMAP IDLE` or `IMAP NOTIFY` (basically just connects and then sits there until the server tells it that a new email has arrived).
I'd check if FastMail's servers support IMAP IDLE/NOTIFY. But I think they do, since it's the "standardized" way of realtime mail delivery.
As for Spark, I may be knowledgeable but I don't use it at all since a few months. It's still too buggy. :-(
They definitely don't use IMAP NOTIFY:
https://blog.fastmail.com/2016/12/21/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-push/
Notable quote there is: "Cyrus (the server that powers FastMail) does not implement it and probably never will."
The section before that, the article doesn't flatly say that Spark doesn’t support IMAP IDLE, but certainly doesn’t sing its praises, either. One can make of that what one will.
Okay, I can see that Cyrus supports IMAP IDLE *if* FastMail has enabled it:
https://www.cyrusimap.org/imap/reference/manpages/systemcommands/idled.html
This may be re-treading ground from earlier-quoted FastMail blog posts from around the time FM implemented the Apple iOS-preferred version of push, but...
https://www.maxmasnick.com/2015/07/17/fastmail-push/
While, again, the quoted FM guy doesn't come right out and say they don't use IMAP IDLE, it certainly sounds that way.
Also of possible interest, this thread from earlier this year:
http://www.emaildiscussions.com/showthread.php?t=72483
...although the more salient quotes seem to be specific to iOS, while @lpoolrob said he experienced this on both iOS and macOS. (My test was iOS only.)
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And, yet, there is this...
https://twitter.com/fastmail/status/370458258772746240
I'm so confused. :-(
Is anybody having issues with Spark going crazy with RAM? Reinstalled it twice now and still have the same problems. I'll go back to Airmail within a week if this still isn't fixed (I had no problems until 2 updates ago)
![63K5W1L.png]()
Well, since it's football season here in North America, I decided to do a good ol' end run.
I realized that, in the final analysis, what I really wanted was simply for all my email, from all my accounts, to work well with the Apple clients on macOS and iOS; and then I further realized that a lot of my aggravation with email and those clients would go away if I simply bit the bullet and made Gmail cease to be the elephant in the room, since its non-standard ways and anti-Apple practices were causing most of my problems in this regard.
So, after some research into how others had done it, I got my own domain plus an account with FastMail to host it for email, and then migrated all 12 years' worth of Gmail content (and set Gmail to forward any subsequent emails) to the new place.
Of course, this had its own upfront pain to handle. I had to notify quite a few vendors, friends, et al.; I'll have to rebuild a lot of rules for automatically moving some emails to folders (real IMAP folders, not the Gmail bastardizations thereof); and I'm still also keeping the Gmail account live partly because I want to make sure I haven't forgotten anybody and partly so Google won't shut it down, because that does happen and then you can't ever get the old account name back.
...BUT FastMail comes highly recommended, costs only about 14 cents a day (plus about 4 cents a day for the domain, at least where I bought the domain), and is far more standards-compliant than Gmail, which means it works a lot better with Apple's clients including, yep, providing absolutely normal push. Stuff comes through almost instantaneously. And, best of all, if I ever decide that the Apple clients aren't what I want to use, the standards-compliance of my new setup should make it highly portable.
I will be the first to admit that such a move ain't for everyone, but that's my current version of the "holy grail": rather than gripe because the car bounces on the hole-filled road, I decided to drive it on a smoother road.
Nearly two weeks now, and I've actually stayed with the Apple clients continuously since then — which, for recent times, constitutes a minor achievement for me.
So far, I remain very happy with this setup and recommend it highly to anyone who also is trying to have push and Apple Mail (especially iOS), too.
My setup is still:
macOS: Apple Mail
iOS: Apple Mail. With an unused installation of Edison Mail (just logged into all of my accounts) so that I get notifications about new emails.
Apple Mail is seriously great. Rock solid and efficient. I posted various tweaks on previous pages of this thread, about how to tweak Apple Mail. Such as adding a trash icon to the message toolbar (I use that to delete emails after reading; and can still long-press on the trash icon and choose Archive in very rare cases).
macOS: Apple Mail
iOS: Apple Mail. With an unused installation of Edison Mail (just logged into all of my accounts) so that I get notifications about new emails.
Apple Mail is seriously great. Rock solid and efficient. I posted various tweaks on previous pages of this thread, about how to tweak Apple Mail. Such as adding a trash icon to the message toolbar (I use that to delete emails after reading; and can still long-press on the trash icon and choose Archive in very rare cases).
I take it Spark is still not in your good graces for the reasons you've mentioned previously?
I take it Spark is still not in your good graces for the reasons you've mentioned previously?
I haven't tried any of their newer versions, but I am willing to bet their latest Spark version still has the IMAP "missing/invisible messages" bug. That bug was confirmed by their team, so how hard can it be to fix after confirming it, right? Invisible messages (not seeing all emails) should be the highest priority bugfix in the world for a mail client. But I lost all confidence in Spark's developers when the super serious bug was still there a year later.
And I haven't been back since.I am sure the bug is still there, because they still haven't contacted me about having fixed it, and they were borrowing an account on my server to test with. They still have that account...
As for Edison Mail: They keep evolving it and it seems really nice now. I just use it for notifications but I might switch to it completely someday. And they are working on a Mac client.
I kept going between Spark, Airmail & Apple Mail but I have stayed with Apple Mail on both macOS & iOS for a while now. The lack of making default apps on iOS is one of many reasons. I like that Spark gets you emails even when the Mac app is closed but it doesn't support Spotlight Search which is a minus for me. I never had the IMAP bug with spark. Airmail I love because it is a powerhouse and supports Spotlight Search on macOS. However Airmail has to be open in order to get your email like Apple Mail does on Mac. Apple Mail uses less resources than Airmail and if you add Mailbutler has almost all the same features I would use on Airmail. So in the end, Apple Mail wins out in my opinion, it has almost everything you need, is integrated in Apple's ecosystem and has it's bugs and quirks, could use some improvements when it comes to Gmail, but overall it has the best performance...
I've been trying to set up Spark on mac; I set it up with my Gmail account, but I can't seem to send email at all. It just sits in the outbox. I've been searching around the web, and I don't see any discussion on how to fix it. Has anyone seen something similar? Thanks for your input!
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Well, I’ve been using Spark on iOS for the past months and I have to say it has worked pretty well for me. It also seems quite snappy and whatnot.
Mail app on the other hand seems perfectly fine, too, except it doesn’t have some of the features Spark offers: eg. touch ID option, smart inbox.
The reason why I’m inclined to switch back to Mail is because these 3rd party apps including Spark store your account credentials on their servers... So what is one to do here?
Mail app on the other hand seems perfectly fine, too, except it doesn’t have some of the features Spark offers: eg. touch ID option, smart inbox.
The reason why I’m inclined to switch back to Mail is because these 3rd party apps including Spark store your account credentials on their servers... So what is one to do here?
Use Authenticator app (for gmail and/or MS) with two-factor. They can store my **** all they want. Unless they have the Authenticator they can’t get in......
I really tried to like Newton Mail, but I'm back with Spark.
I love the smart inbox. I subscribe to newsletters because I want to read them, at some point, and Spark puts these out the way for later reading. The same with alerts, they are grouped together, out the way of the actionable emails but still easily visible. Newton Mail puts them in a lower priority folder that you need to remember to navigate to, I think their "Tidy Inbox" feature is complete trash.
Performance on the Mac app has certainly improved. The only thing I think it could improve on is the speed at which emails are received/notifications are launched. Newton Mail seemed to receive emails quicker.
I love the smart inbox. I subscribe to newsletters because I want to read them, at some point, and Spark puts these out the way for later reading. The same with alerts, they are grouped together, out the way of the actionable emails but still easily visible. Newton Mail puts them in a lower priority folder that you need to remember to navigate to, I think their "Tidy Inbox" feature is complete trash.
Performance on the Mac app has certainly improved. The only thing I think it could improve on is the speed at which emails are received/notifications are launched. Newton Mail seemed to receive emails quicker.
I've been using Outlook for iOS for over a week and really like it. Outlook 2016 ( version 15 ) for Mac was clunky so I went back to Apple stock mail app. However I started a new Office 365 subscription I have Outlook version 16 . It runs like a dream and works well with my hosted MS Exchange email. I really like the interface of both apps, but the email features roped me in. Mail sweep for easily finding and take action on a batch of emails, mail retention policies that can be applied globally or to individual folders.
I use retention policies to clean up deal / sale emails as sales usually are done in 30 days, so I have them delete email older than that automatically.
Server side rules - it's really easy to write complex server side rules that run whether or not your devices are online.
This set up does cost you a subscription fee, but it saves you a lot of time managing email. For me the time savings are worth the price.
I use retention policies to clean up deal / sale emails as sales usually are done in 30 days, so I have them delete email older than that automatically.
Server side rules - it's really easy to write complex server side rules that run whether or not your devices are online.
This set up does cost you a subscription fee, but it saves you a lot of time managing email. For me the time savings are worth the price.