Mimestream is a Mac app reminiscent of Apple Mail, but it uses the Gmail API.I’ve been using Mailplane as my email client for something like a decade. Unfortunately, back in June the makers of Mailplane announced that they were letting the app die due to Google banning embedded browsers from Gmail.

I mourned, of course. My frustrations with Apple Mail had driven me to Gmail, and Mailplane was the perfect way to use Gmail on a Mac—in a separate app, with Mac keyboard shortcuts and drag-and-drop support and everything else, while still keeping the speed and efficience of the Gmail web interface.

I went through the stages, as you do. I tried to run Gmail in a single-site browser. It didn’t really take. I opened Apple Mail and… nope. It doesn’t work the way I want my email to work, and it’s inconsistent and slow in just too many ways. I’m not going back to that relationship.

Instead, I found Mimestream, by former Apple Mail engineer Neil Jhaveri. It’s a dedicated Gmail client app for the Mac that’s more app-like than Mailplane, while keeping the consistency and speed that Gmail offers over Apple Mail. I’ve been using it for a couple of months and I full intent to pay for it when it emerges from beta testing.…