Bicycle For Your Mind
Writing email outside the email app
(Originally posted on 2015-01-08)
Email is a necessary evil. It is evil because it is distracting. I find myself in the middle of a task and an email arrives which I have to respond to, and then another and then another and very soon I have no recall of what I was originally working on. So, I have time windows. I do email in thirty minute windows two or three times a day. At the end of each window, I quit the email program, I use Apple’s stock Mail app.
However, the need to send email beckons a lot more than the windows I have designated for email. The solution: an app which lets me send email without the need to launch Mail.
On iOS devices, I use Drafts. On both the iPad and the iPhone, Drafts lets me compose an email, in markdown.
Then I hit the action button on the top right hand corner, and get this.
Choose Markdown>Email and it gives me a compose email window with my content neatly turned into rich text. Fill in the recipients name, send, and I am done with the email.
On the Mac, I use Let.ter. It lets me do a similar thing. I write the email in markdown.
I can preview it.
And then I send it along.
Textwell lets me do the same thing from within the program. I write my content. I highlight it. I can send it to a predefined recipient or I can just choose email and it will give me a mail compose window, and I can enter the email addresses of the intended recipients. Click send and I am done. The only downside of Textwell is that it doesn’t do the markdown to rich text conversion. So, if you don’t always write in markdown, Textwell can do the job fine.
I use these apps several times during the day and they are very useful to me. I get the benefit of sending email without the distraction that the category brings with it.
You can buy Textwell Mac version here. $9.99.
You can buy Textwell iOS version here. $2.99.
You can buy Drafts 4.0 for iOS here. $9.99.
You can buy Let.ter app directly from the developers for $3.99.
macosxguru at the gmail thingie
Let.ter Drafts Email Textwell Mac OS