Image rights: Readdle Inc.SPARK FOR iOS
Dark mode
Can customize actions
Excellent collaborative features
Expensive for teams of more than two people
GREATSpark is one of our
favorite email apps
for iOS and its recent
upgrade only enhances
that position. As well as an interface
overhaul, Spark has a bunch of new
features that allow you to be even
more productive, and one or two that
just add a bit of fun.
A change of typeface and overall
look and feel are the most obvious
improvements, and there’s also
a new Dark Mode. However, the best
additions are a little deeper. You can
now customize actions to designate
which ones are shown at the bottom
of an email message. So, instead of
having a tool bar of actions including
reply, archive, forward, and snooze,
you can now swap one or more for,
say, move, spam, or save as PDF.
You can also label a contact as
important on your iPhone — which
then dictates how incomingmessages from that contact
are treated — and have it
synced with your Mac
or iPad. Talking of iPad,
the iPad OS version of Spark
allows you to have two
Spark windows open side by
side. And the fun addition?
You can choose to display
avatars alongside email
messages in your inbox.
Spark’s strength has
always been the app’s
productivity and
collaboration features,
and those remain excellent.
You can create a team, share
drafts, and delegate received
messages. You can add one
team member for free, but you
will have to pay for the premium
version at $6.39 a month per user if
you want to add more than that.
Services are another great feature
of Spark — they allow you to add
other apps like, say Things or
Evernote, and send a received email
to them from within Spark, making
it easy to create a to–do item or
a note from an email message. And
its Smart Inbox allows you to specify
how messages are organized, though
we couldn’t Ľnd a way to, for
example, display pinned read
messages above unread newsletters.
There are a raft of other productivity
features such as a smart folder for
Ľltering messages, templates, theability to snooze incoming messages,
or schedule outgoing ones.
This upgrade has improved
noticeably, even if not hugely
signiĽcantly, what was already
an excellent email client.
THE BOTTOM LINE. A very solid
upgrade to one of the best email
apps available on the iPhone or iPad.
KENNY HEMPHILLCustomizable Quick Reply options allow you
to reply to a message at the tap of a button.Spark for iOS
One of the best email apps on iOS now looks
as good as it worksFree (Premium $6.39/month) From Readdle, sparkmailapp.com
Made for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch Needs iOS 11 or later
App Life
62 MAR 2020 maclife.com