For some 1.4 billion users of the Spark email app, a growing fan base since its 2019 Android debut, its latest slew of updates that includes a Windows app promised a boost to productivity.
The developers behind Spark, considered by many as one of the best email apps around, touted the latest updates could help people prioritize their to-do list and remain focused.
Spark New Features
The latest batch of updates showcases some features new to Spark. One of these is the introduction of a Smart Inbox.
Android Police listed some of these interesting features of a Smart Inbox:
It prioritized unread emails against a backdrop of notifications and newsletters.
It grouped the emails by sender giving an easy-to-read "instant message" thread. A user can either mute or read this.
It can convert emails to tasks for the "to-do" type of users, which allows checking off a message if they have completed the tasks. They can also set tasks aside momentarily and return to them later..
Its Priority Email can highlight the recipients placing the unread responses at the top of the inbox. These unread responses will show up as notifications in the desktop once the Home Screen is turned on.
It allows desktop users to access custom shortcuts with ease via Ctrl + K or Cmd + K shortcut.
Users with attachments larger than 25MB need not worry. Spark has included in this latest batch of updates its own cloud infrastructure so that its users can send large files.
New Foundations: Intuitive Versus Productivity
Readdle co-founder Alex Tyagulsky explained the vision that underpins the new Spark.
In his blog, Tyagulsky said: "We live in an age of information and communication overload, with significant pressure to "do more" or "learn more"."
And the present tools from other email apps have not done something new so that people in the workplace will be on top of the situation amid this overload, he observed.
The current applications, Tyagulsky called intuitive productivity, are "natural but very inefficient and stress-inducing in the long-term."
He said the new Spark updates offer a new way of doing things amid the slew of information so that users can be more productive than before.
The principle behind the new updates is to abandon intuitive productivity for intentional productivity.
With the new apps, users need some thinking before they start doing things.
"You spend more time and energy planning and prioritizing but produce more results and feel happier in the long term," he said.
Spark's Slew of Improvements comes at a Price
Having said it all, this latest slew of updates has a price.
New features such as Priority Email, Mute Threads, Group by Sender, Large Attachment support, and Home Screen for Desktop are available only under Spark Premium.
Subscribers have to either pay $8 per month or pay $60 for the whole year.
Existing users, however, can get a 30 percent discount for annual subscriptions.
The old features are still available for free.
