I have a special affinity towards Mail apps. My first email address was one given to me by AOL, almost 17 years ago. I still remember firing up the AOL mail app, and realising that I didn’t know a single other person in the world who also had an email address! Since that time, I have used almost every email client you could think of. For the past few years I have given up using a program for my personal emails, and instead simply use my Gmail account in a browser. And why wouldn’t I? It’s fast, and easy to use. So what would possess me to download a program to check my Gmail account?

Sparrow is an email client that promises a minimalistic approach to checking your emails. Now, most email clients I’ve used in the past have been variations along the same theme. Whether you’re using Entourage, Outlook, Mail, Thunderbird, Lotus, you’re essentially looking at the same layout, but with varying degrees of bells and whistles. The first thing that struck me as Sparrow started up was that it was, different. In fact, so different I actually couldn’t quite understand what I was looking at. And that’s what I immediately began to like about Sparrow. Gone were the huge panes showing endless folders, and labels. Gone was the preview window, constantly showing me the last email I’d read. Instead, what I was looking at was the minimum amount of information I needed to check my email. In the bottom right is a small “drawer” button, which throws out an extra extension window, in which your actual email message is shown. But what about all the special features that keeps Gmail users addicted to their accounts? Labels and Search and Archiving? Well, Labels are respected. On top of that, you can still apply a label to an email within Sparrow. Archiving is done almost too easily with a button on the top of the Sparrow window. And what about Search? The absolute killer feature of Gmail. Clicking on the magnifying glass on the left hand toolbar, I was prepared (with dread) to see what would happen. Imagine my shock when search results popped up almost instantly! I could have sworn the searches were being done faster in Sparrow than they are done on the Gmail website itself!

As you will see from the picture above, I’m currently using the Lite version, which is supported with Adverts. In the next few days we should see an update on the Mac App Store, which will allow Sparrow to connect with other accounts other than Gmail, which is something I am in desperate need of. I will report back here as soon as the update is released. For now, my first impressions of this email client are incredibly positive. I think the team at Sparrow has managed to take one of the oldest and most established type of programs you can find on a computer, and do something completely different with it, and that in itself makes it worth a download. If you have a Gmail account and a spare 5 minutes, grab a copy of it off the App Store and give it a try.