Readdle’s popular Spark email app for iOS just received the biggest update of its young existence. The timing of such an update couldn’t have been better with the unfortunate demise of Mailbox — a once beloved email app that’s scheduled to shut down tomorrow, February 26th.
Prior to today’s update, Spark was well-liked, but the lack of iPad support made it difficult for some to adopt it as a full time client. Now that iPad support, and several other new features have arrived, Spark feels as if it’s now ready for prime time. Should you consider adopting Spark as a part of your email workflow?
Spark 1.6 changes
Here are some of the more outstanding changes to come to Spark 1.6
- iPad support, including support for the 12.9″ iPad Pro
- New languages (9 in total): English, German, Chinese, Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese and Portuguese
- Settings and Accounts syncing via iCloud
- watchOS 2 support
The main takeaway from my time with Spark is that it feels more mature. Sure, support for the iPad makes it easy to feel that way, but the overall level of polish has noticeably increased. Check out our 50 getting started tips for Spark for a look at many of the app’s additional features.
iPad support
Up until recently, I’ve been a big fan of Microsoft Outlook for iOS. The primary reason for choosing Outlook was due to its iPad support. Now that Spark supports the iPad, I’ve switched to using it as my full time email client.
As mentioned, Spark hasn’t merely been updated with general iPad support, but it’s been updated to work with the iPad Pro. Native iPad Pro support is a very big deal for me, and I’m sure other Pro owners will feel the same. The fundamentals of the app don’t really change when compared to using Spark on a smaller device like the iPhone, but having Spark on the iPad Pro is a great experience for power users.
Syncing settings via iCloud
Another hugely convenient feature to make it to Spark 1.6 is the ability to sync settings and accounts via iCloud. Make no mistake, this is major new feature. It means no longer having to deal with the meticulous task of setting up email accounts from scratch on every iOS device. It also means that, along with email accounts, all Spark preferences will transition over as well. For someone like me with five or six email accounts, it’s hard to overstate how brilliant this feature is.
watchOS 2 support
With Spark 1.6, Readdle is officially supporting watchOS 2 for its Apple Watch efforts. This means that Spark now functions as a native app on Apple Watch, and comes with a noticeable speed increase.
Why you should consider using Spark
Besides the obvious addition of iPad support, Spark is just a solid email client with a lot of practical features. Known for reducing the friction normally associated with managing email, Spark lets you easily process items in your inbox using gestures, features a Smart Inbox that breaks up email into logical categories, and contains search capabilities that let you easily hone in on specific messages using natural language.
Snoozing
One of the biggest features that former users of Mailbox will appreciate is the ability to snooze emails. Mailbox made its name off that ability, so snoozing will be a big draw for Mailbox fans.
I’ve never been keen on the concept of snoozing emails, but I know that a lot of people are enthralled with the idea. By utilizing the snooze button in the upper right-hand corner of an email, you can remind yourself to address a message at a later time. Users have the option of further customizing snooze alert times and availability within Spark’s preferences.
Personalization
Spark prides itself on personalization in a number of ways. Users are encouraged to customize the app’s Sidebar, which contain shortcuts to the Smart Inbox, Attachments, Snoozed email, and more. You can fully customize the Sidebar and add or remove a variety of different shortcut cards just by venturing into the app’s preferences.
Along with the Sidebar, Spark lends the ability to customize swipe gestures. In all, there are four types of swipe gestures available: left short, left long, right short, and right long. Spark lends users a boatload of customized swipe actions, including:
- Mark as read/unread
- Delete
- Archive
- Move
- Move to…
- Pin
- Snooze
- Move to Spam
- Save to Evernote, Dropbox, Box, Google Drive, OneDrive
- More (iOS Share Sheet)
The last big personalization feature is Widgets. Widgets provide even more quickly accessible shortcuts. Certain application shortcuts, like Calendar access, can only be accessed via Widgets, but there is definitely some overlap provided between Widgets and the Sidebar.
It doesn’t stop there
Outside of the primary “personalization” panel in Spark’s settings, there’s a whole host of additional options and settings to be configured. Let’s have a look at some of the other ways to customize Spark to your liking.
The Email Viewer preferences let users adjust the type of buttons that appear when viewing and managing individual emails. Spark gives you the option of enabling Archive, Delete, or Archive and Delete buttons at the bottom of individual emails. You can also choose what happens after an email is archived or deleted, and you can configure the browser that will open upon tapping a link within an email.
It should come as no surprise that signatures can be customized within Spark as well. You can add as many custom signatures as you wish, and make specific email accounts default to a signature of your choosing. I love the way Spark handles signature management, as it lets you quickly swipe between signatures, or disable the signature all together while composing a new email.
Spark also lets you curate how notification badges are displayed on its Home screen app icon. Notification badges can be toggled globally, for individual accounts, or for new messages only. By providing such options, Spark helps you reign in notification badges to a manageable level.
The main downside to using a third-party email app like Spark is that you can’t set it as the default email app in iOS. This means that the stock Mail app will automatically launch when tapping email links in Safari and in other locations. True, it’s an inconvenience, but it’s one that I’m willing to live with for the many positive features that Spark adds to my email workflow. Best of all, Spark is absolutely free on the App Store, so there’s really no excuse not to try it.
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About damn time. Spark is one of the best mail apps I’ve ever used.
I have a number of mail accounts, iCloud, my own aalseth.net account, my work account, and others. Am I right in assuming that Spark can handle multiple mail accounts from multiple sources? Gmail, AppleMail, Exchange, etc. I only ask because a week or so ago someone here on 9to5 suggested a client, I forget the name. It was really great but only worked with Gmail. I’m thinking it might be time to move on from Mail.app. It has gotten quite long in the tooth.
Oh and one other thing; You were a big fan of Outlook? Really? I suppose to each his own, but personally I despise Outlook, whether it’s on Windows, Mac, iOS or wherever, I just hate it. It’s installed on my company desktop and I’m glad that I don’t rely on e-mail for what I do. I start it a couple of times per day for particular things and close it the instant I’m done.
Yes, Spark works great with multiple account sources. Even iCloud! I’ll have more on this later today. Stay tuned. And Yes, I thought Outlook was decent, primarily because of the iPad support though. Now that Spark has iPad support, it’s no longer a contest.
CloudMagic still the most complete email solution available (iPhone, iPad, Android, Mac, Wear). Love their clean, intuitive interface with powerful service integrations.
I don’t know how it can be most complete if it doesn’t have a smart/focused inbox and no alias support
Their support says that alias is in the works. ETA 3-4 weeks.
I tried Spark and loved it, but had lots of sync issues. Emails not coming on time or the app not updating properly in background to see that an email has been read on another device. I read lots of people have this issue. Just tried latest version and it still happens
Weird, haven’t had this happen to me at all.
Send yourself an email from another device (computer browser, etc.) then read it on that other device. Does the notification from Spark disappear on your phone? it does with Outlook, Gmail, and Inbox, but not with Spark. I am only using gmail accounts so maybe it’s specific to that.
Forgot to mention one more thing which annoys me. Quick replies essentially serve as advertisements for the app.
You can switch that off!
I know but I still want to use quick replies lol. Inbox has them and they’re great
I moved to Spark after Mailbox shutdown. For the most part its great, however, it would be good if they applied some of Mailbox’s features:
– Have snoozed emails reappear in your Gmail inbox, not just in the Spark app
– Be able to snooze more than one email at once
– Be able to swipe the whole inbox in one gesture action, so you can deal with it all later
– Swipe your finger on the left side to open the menu pane rather than having to press the top-left hamburger menu
– Have notifications clear themselves, including the mailbox count, when mail is archived/deleted on another device or within Gmail using a desktop browser
It still baffles me that Mailbox paid $100M for Mailbox then shut it down. Having said that, they purchased it prior to its public release, and it was remarkably well thought out, feature rich, but most importantly, it worked flawlessly – something I haven’t found in other similar apps, including Spark.
However, I must say Spark is well rounded, more customisable than your average app, and is updated frequently. I would happily pay for it should they need to charge in the future.
Also of note, Airmail is adding Universal iPad support in the next version (out soon I would think) and offers most of Spark’s functionality and a lot more without the questionable “Free” status. If you aren’t paying for it, who is, and how? Always remember, if you aren’t paying for it, the product is probably you.
Readdle has other paid apps —It’s a successful company. Its goal is to likely funnel you into the direction of other paid apps.
I would gladly switch to Airmail if they have a ‘focused’ or ‘smart’ inbox like Spark/Outlook. I don’t think they do. Really hoping Polymail has this when it comes out
I tried AirMail as a replacement for Mailbox and it is buggy as hell. For five bucks… No, thanks.
Spark is a nice client, however, it has a number of issues to be addressed before it becomes the best email client on the App Store. There are some bugs related to the badge counter, mail order in a thread and replying to emails from other devices. Extra optimization would also help this app, the previous version was a bit harsh on battery life had a huge memory footprint according to instruments in Xcode (in comparison with other mail clients).
We are working on those. Will be fixed soon. :)
I love the Spark app now that it has iPad support, Landscape view on iPhone/iPad and Slide Over/Split View support.
It has a unique and excellent search feature, nice UI and is the only one that can attach multiple files in one go from cloud storage.
But there are also some things to be fixed or added before I can say it’s the best e-mail app out there. Here are my comments which I hope will be fixed/added soon:
Bugs:
– badge icon – The badge app icon only works with background app refresh on and then still sometimes doesn’t show a badge number. I’ve turned on ‘show badge’ within the settings of the app for both my e-mail accounts and for ‘new messages only’ is ticked. it although when you open the app you see new e-mails. I have also allowed showing the badge app icon in the ‘Settings app’ > ‘Notifications’ for Spark. In the Spark app ‘Protect Notifications Actions’ is turned off (at Settings > Privacy). I have my e-mail set to fetch every 30 minutes now for Spark and have also turned on background app refresh for Spark (only). This morning I had 4 e-mail but didn’t see a badge icon although this was all set. As soon as I opened the Spark app I noticed the 4 new e-mail showing up and these were all send in the night when the iPhone was in standby.
– sync via iCloud issues – on my iPhone 5s the ‘Sync settings via Cloud is turned off each time when I fully close the app. This is not the case on my iPad mini2. Both are running iOS9.2.1.
Missing features:
– doesn’t show attachments above the e-mail message
– option to show avatars
– task/action list for e-mails,
– TouchID security/password
– save multiple attachments to the cloud
– translation: support more languages (e.g. Dutch)
– OSX/Windows support
– snooze to desktop feature
I just found a solution to the badge ‘problem’. You have to go to the Spark app > Settings > Accounts > press each mail account and set Notification Preferences to ‘All’. In my case it was set to ‘Smart’ with one account and another was set to ‘No notifications’ for some reason. Maybe it would be good if this was set to ‘All’ as a standard.
Nice App! Thanks Jeff!
First of all I decided to write here as it seems at least someone from Spark support monitors this thread. Sending messages to Spark support or twitter account has no reaction at all. Yes, you can’t complain about anything free which is probably an issue because this is no tetris game but a business tool. And is such it must work and have at least some level of support feedback, whether it’s free or paid.
I sure have suggestions and wish-list but those are suggestions which I have sent to Spark support for future consideration. I have one annoying issue which I can not resolve.
I use Spark on my iPhone 6 (latest firmware and latest Spark version) with single account – my Exchange 2013 hosted email.
Up until iCloud sync integration + iPad version the app was going grate. I have downloaded iPad version along with update to iPhone.
Obviously enabled iCloud sync, iPad version got the email account fine, no worries. Both apps were doing push just fine, push messages were appearing without delay. I then noticed that iPad version does not show the badge count (I have it for new messages). I noticed the feature was not enabled in the Settings – Badges menu. So I enabled “Show Badge”, clicked back arrow and clicked “Done” on top left of the settings menu. And? Nothing happened, going to Badges menu still shows “Show Badge” unchecked. Obviously I tried doing it several times, reinstalled the app several times, rebooted iPad – same thing. At this stage the iPhone app was doing fine. In app settings in the iPad as well as in IPhone the Spark app has all notifications enabled, including “Badge App Icon”.
And today the same issue occurred on the iPhone app. It was showing badge count just fine but as of this morning it’s gone.
Same issue, trying to activate it in the menus but it remains inactive. In addition to all that push notifications on both iPad and iPhone are now dead.
No new messages notification is received.
And I am not talking about their issues like sync issues (different email count in the inbox on iPad and iPone apps) and no sync in background (even though enabled). I have tried Airmail before, I paid for it and then requested appstore for refund because of one simple issue – no replies from support.
Again, all these fancy issue like snooze and nice menus are nice as long as the email app works. Again, it’s a business tool for many and it means it must have proper support. I can understand you are overloaded because the app is so popular but again, no support means no use for me.
That’s the biggest difference to the iPhone built in app – it just works, it pushes, it was no issues whatsoever.
Will appreciate if someone from Spark would address my problem so I can decide whether to keep trying using Spark or just get back to the native mail app.
I’ve been loving the app so far. Beautifully designed, intelligent sorting of emails, swipe to archive, etc.
But even though I find myself really trying to substitute Mifrosoft’s client, Outlook, the syncing problems presented by Spark make ir a untrustable notificator. It seems to be mandatory to open the app in order to be sure of the badge count on the icon.
I obviously didn’t give up right away, and still haven’t given up, but also did not delete my previous email client. I will most likely keep Spark on my phone unil it is updated and fixed, so I can use it as a main email client.
I keep using my iPhone built mail app which is very reliable, pushes and notifies with no issues whatsoever. It also allows to add Archive to the swipe function.
My complaints about Spark are:
* Still no S/MIME or GNUpg
* Can’t easily send an email into OmniFocus with a message url that takes me back. I have to rely on the OmniGroup inbox email address, which isn’t as elegant as the way applications like Airmail or Dispatch do it.
Both preclude me from using it full time, but since nobody does S/MIME or GNUpg on iOS yet it isn’t really like I recommend anything else. Just means I keep using Mail.app.