THE EXTENSION

Exploring topics beyond our day-to-day coverage.

Filling the Gaps in Email Automation with Utility Apps

• John

One of the worst automation experiences on Apple platforms is also the one that needs automating the most: email. There are many reasons for that, but probably the biggest is that email messages come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Some are plain text, while others include rich text or HTML. Some have attachments, but others don’t. Plus, there’s a lot of metadata to deal with. It makes email automation challenging to say the least. Still, it’s worth understanding what’s available, even if the solutions are imperfect.

Automation Tools

I can’t survey every email app here, but I want to cover a few of the most popular: Apple Mail, Spark, Gmail, and Mimestream. The two that work best with Shortcuts are Apple Mail and Spark, which include several Shortcuts actions. However, both include significant limitations on what can be automated. Mail and Spark can search for and send messages, set Focus Filters, and open Mailboxes in the case of Mail and folders in the case of Spark, but that’s about it. Spark can also open an attachment, while Mail cannot, but neither app can save an attachment. Mail also includes actions for working with email addresses, while Spark can also open its built-in calendar and send feedback to its developers. Neither set of actions is great, and Apple Mail’s actions are more limited on the Mac, but both are a far cry better than Gmail, which offers nothing but a single Send Message action, and Mimestream, which is Mac-only and doesn’t support Shortcuts at all.