How to Turn Airmail Into a Complete Email App for IPhone

Your phone is probably the device you most often use for email, and Airmail is one of the best iPhone apps to read, reply, and organize. Airmail is all about customization , and while it’s ok out of the box, a little customization makes it even better.

Airmail is available for both Mac ($ 9.99) and iOS ($ 4.99) , but we’ll focus on the iPhone version. However, if you have both, almost all of the settings you make on the iPhone will be transferred to the Mac using iCloud Sync. Likewise, everything below is also available on Mac.

Receive only the most important notifications by creating VIPs and customizable rules

Undoubtedly the most annoying part of email on your phone is notifications . If you’re not careful, you’ll receive hundreds of useless notifications a day, making it nearly impossible to get emails worth reading. In Airmail, you have three different ways to set up when you receive notifications, how you receive them, or who you receive them from. You change these settings for each account, which means you can use one method for your work email and another for your personal email.

Set up a VIP for your most important contacts

Airmail’s VIP contact system works the same as Apple Mail. You create a set of VIPs and then they are the only senders you receive notifications from. The setup is simple:

1. Tap the menu icon, then Settings, and then tap one of your email accounts.
2. Scroll down to Account Notifications.
3. Click “VIP Contacts Only”
4. Now add contacts to your VIP list. From the menu screen, tap the Contact tab, then tap All Contacts. Find the contacts you want to add to your VIP list. Tap a name, then tap the heart icon to add them to your VIP list. You can also tap the sender’s name or email address in your Inbox and then tap the heart icon there.

The VIP list is most useful if you only want to receive notifications from your boss, family, or other small group of people.

Use smart notifications if you don’t want to waste time setting up

If you don’t want to waste time setting up your VIPs, you can enable Smart Notification, where Airmail only notifies you of emails from people you communicate with frequently.

1. Tap the menu icon, tap Settings, then tap one of your email accounts.
2. Scroll down to Account Notifications.
3. Slide the Smart Notifications switch to On.

Smart notifications are best for getting replies to emails you send or from people you communicate with frequently. It takes a while for Airmail to figure out exactly what to send a notification for, so you may need to practice it for a while before it works well.

Create notifications for a specific location or on a schedule

You can also set up notifications to come at a specific time or place. For example, you can set up notifications so that they only come when you are in the office, but they will stop as soon as you leave work.

1. Tap the menu icon, tap Settings, then tap one of your email accounts.
2. Scroll down to Account Notifications.
3. For a schedule, tap Do not disturb, and then select the days and times that you don’t want the notification to appear. For a location, select a location, add places you want the notification to appear. For example, add your work address but not your home address so that you only receive notifications at work.

Location-based and scheduled notifications are most useful when you have a very clear work-life balance and are not receiving very important emails (or rather any emails you need to see after work) when you are away from the house. office.

Customize your Airmail sidebar with the most used menu items

The sidebar menu is where you navigate between accounts, folders, attachments, emails, drafts, and more. However, you don’t have to just accept the default menu items. Here’s how to customize what appears in the sidebar:

1. Tap the menu icon.
2. Click the “Change” button in the lower right corner of the screen.
3. Tap and hold any menu item to move it, or tap the flag to add or remove it from the sidebar.

What you decide to post here is up to you and depends on how you use email. For example, if you’re not using drafts or shortcuts, you can get rid of them and replace them with an unread section or menu item with emails marked as “important.” You can also add up to two separators, so make sure you use them to keep your list a little more organized. There are tons of different items on the menu, so take your time to organize them however you see fit. Personally, I like to keep my starred emails, list of emails from today, and conversations always available at the top.

Tell airmail what you want when you swipe left or right

Flipping to organize email was once a revolution, but now it is a feature of almost every email application. While most of us are fine with the default behavior of swiping to the right to archive, or to the left to move an email to the trash, Airmail lets you do more.

Each direction of travel can be assigned up to four different actions. When you do, you can swipe a different length across the screen to move the email to a different location. For example, if you choose four options for the right swipe, say archive, snooze, reply, and spam, you can move the email to any of those locations with a long, slow swipe. When you slide your finger across the screen, the email address changes. You can customize the behavior of the swipe to the right or to the left:

1. Tap the menu icon.
2. Tap Settings.
3. Tap Swipe.
4. Tap the swiping direction you want to change. Then click on up to four actions you want to display here. To change their order, press the edit button and then press and hold to change their order. The most commonly used action, which is probably “archive”, should be at the top, this is your short swipe. No matter how many other options you have, a short swipe will always be a quick swipe.

Swipes are the best way to manage your email right from your inbox. This is good if you distribute emails to different addresses, archive or empty the trash. However, this is not the only way to organize. You can also organize emails from a separate email screen using actions.

Customize action lists with sorting, archiving, and advanced mail options

When you view an email in airmail, you will see a menu icon in the upper right corner with three dots. This is your action list. This includes all of the same options as the scrollable menu, plus a few others. It includes everything from archiving messages to converting email to PDF, and you can customize what appears here based on the features you most often need quick access to:

1. Tap the menu icon.
2. Tap Settings.
3. Tap Actions.
4. Tap Edit.
5. Tap each item that you want to appear in the Actions menu. Then press and hold to reorder them as you see fit.

The action menu is useful for actions that you take immediately after reading an email. This could mean moving the email to a specific folder, deferring it until later, starring the message with an asterisk, or, if you are in the process of clearing your mailing list, unsubscribe. Whatever you choose, make sure you rearrange them in a sensible order.

You can also create your own actions that combine multiple actions in a row. For example, if you tend to “move an email to a specific folder and then create a to-do list for that email,” you can do one action that will do that. Go to Settings, then Custom Action to create your own action, after which you can add it to your list of actions wherever you like.

Adjust snooze settings so that they are really useful

The idea to snooze emails came up a few years ago, but it’s only useful if it works with your schedule. If you don’t want to deal with the email at the moment, you put it off. This will make the email disappear and send you a new notification later or at a time when you’re ready to deal with it. Airmail allows you to select the time:

1. Tap the menu icon.
2. Tap Settings.
3. Click Postpone.

Here you can change the repeat mode to several options. You can change what it means later today, tomorrow, or tonight, change weekend dates, and more. If you are using the snooze function, it is absolutely necessary to go here and change the default time.

Link external accounts like Dropbox, iCloud, etc.

To get the most out of Airmail, you need to link third-party external accounts. This means services like Todoist , Google Drive, or Pocket . When you link a third-party app with Airmail, you can use actions to instantly send an email to that app. This is great for sending attachments to cloud storage or email to your to-do app. Here’s how to set them up:

1. Tap the menu icon.
2. Tap Settings.
3. Tap Services.
4. Tap the switch to turn on all the services you use. They will now appear in various airmail menus.

In addition to linking your favorite services, you can also change the default browser that opens when you receive a link in an email:

1. Tap the menu icon.
2. Tap Settings.
3. Scroll down to more options and click Default Browser.
4. Choose whichever browser you want to use, or use the in-app browser if you want links to open in Airmail.

If you use such services, this feature is huge and well worth setting up. Airmail allows you to use the various tools you already have, rather than providing new ones.

Other settings to look out for

Airmail has so many options that we can’t go into detail here. Most are, however, a matter of preference, so let’s take a look at a few options you might want to consider. You can find it all by clicking on the menu icon and then under Settings:

• Customize appearance options : You can change some of the appearance options for Airmail, such as whether it highlights items, includes icons, or uses different colors for different accounts. You can also change the number of lines displayed in the preview pane in your mailbox.
• Change how email is displayed: You can change the behavior of several major parts of airmail. You can switch conversation threads between recent and oldest, change the “mark as read” behavior when opening an email message, remove filters, and more.
• Explore the advanced options: The advanced options include a small number of options to look out for. You can change the download time of airmail attachments, change the remote image download behavior, and add Touch ID protection if you want to add another layer of security.
• Customize your email composer : Finally, a final list of options you want to look at in the composer section. Here you can change your default sender account, decide where to include a signature on emails you send, and more. Most importantly, you can also change the Undo Submit behavior here. By default, sending an undo takes five seconds, but you can change this time to 10 seconds.

With that, you should be on your way to using airmail in the best possible way. This is an incredibly powerful app that you can adapt to suit your needs, so take some time to explore each option.

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