Fastmail Release Notes

Last updated: Apr 4, 2026

  • Mar 5, 2026
    • Date parsed from source:
      Mar 5, 2026
    • First seen by Releasebot:
      Apr 4, 2026
    Fastmail logo

    Fastmail

    Multi-window support and a better compose experience

    Fastmail releases a major interface update with multi-window composing, inline replies, a cleaner compose experience, reading pane placement below the inbox, signature controls, and desktop find-in-conversation.

    Today we’re releasing a major update to the Fastmail interface, with improvements focused on making mulitasking and compose better. Here’s what’s new.

    Multi-window support

    Sometimes you need to reference one email while replying to another, or draft several messages at once. Fastmail now supports opening compose and conversation views in separate windows.

    Hold Shift when clicking reply, forward, or any compose action to open it in a new window. You can also use Shift+R to reply in a new window, or Shift+A to reply all. Or pop out a whole conversation into its own window by shift-clicking in the message list, or using the button next to the subject in the top right if it’s already open.

    Your undo send timer works across windows too — if you send from a pop-out window, the undo notification appears in your main window so you’re still in control.

    Inline replies

    Replying to a message in a conversation now keeps you right where you are. Instead of switching to a separate compose screen, your reply appears inline within the thread, so you can see the full conversation while you write. It’s the most natural way to reply — you stay in context, and your draft lives alongside the messages you’re responding to.

    If you’d rather compose in a focused view like before, you can expand your reply to full screen at any time. We’ll remember your preference.

    A cleaner compose

    We’ve unified the look of our compose view across mobile and desktop, giving you a cleaner, more consistent interface wherever you’re writing.

    A few highlights:

    • Switch between Reply and Reply All mid-compose without losing your work. A new button in the compose header lets you change your reply mode on the fly, and Fastmail will intelligently recalculate the recipients for you.
    • Hide the formatting toolbar if you prefer a distraction-free writing area. A toggle in the toolbar lets you show or hide formatting options with a single click, and your preference is remembered.
    • Drag and drop recipients between To, Cc, and Bcc. The Cc and Bcc fields appear automatically when you start dragging an address, and tuck away again when you’re done if not needed. You can select multiple recipients using Shift-click for a range, or Cmd/Ctrl click to select individually.
    • Quickly add a recipient to your contacts or view their contact information if already a contact. Just click the recipient to select their token, then click again to get a menu of options.

    Move the reading pane below your inbox

    You’ve always been able to show a reading pane to the right of your message list. Now you can choose to place it below instead. This horizontal split gives you the full width of the screen for reading, which is especially useful on narrower monitors. You’ll find the option in your mail preferences.

    And more

    For those of us who don’t want our signature repeated in every thread, there’s now an option to turn off signatures on replies, forwards, or both. Head to Settings → Mail preferences to choose whether your signature appears above or below quoted text — or not at all.

    We’ve also added find-in-conversation to our desktop app. Just hit Cmd-F on Mac, or Ctrl-F on Windows/Linux, to get a search box letting you quickly find text in a long conversation.

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  • Oct 13, 2025
    • Date parsed from source:
      Oct 13, 2025
    • First seen by Releasebot:
      Apr 4, 2026
    Fastmail logo

    Fastmail

    Introducing the Fastmail desktop app

    Fastmail releases a dedicated desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux, bringing standalone convenience, offline support, native notifications, and default email client integration for a smoother, more focused mail experience.

    Fastmail is now available as a dedicated desktop app for Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s the same Fastmail you know and love, now with the focus and convenience of a standalone app.

    With our desktop app you can:

    • Launch Fastmail from your dock or taskbar and find it in your platform’s app switcher.
    • Make Fastmail your default email client, so email links create a new message directly in Fastmail.
    • Work whenever, wherever, with full offline support, just like our mobile apps. You can always read your mail, manage your calendar, and write replies — your changes sync back seamlessly when you reconnect.
    • Whether you’re on macOS, Windows, or your favourite Linux distribution, you’ll find the app feels right at home on your platform, with native notifications, menus, and system integrations.

    Getting started is simple. Download the app for your platform, sign in with your Fastmail credentials, and you’re ready to go.

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  • Aug 26, 2025
    • Date parsed from source:
      Aug 26, 2025
    • First seen by Releasebot:
      Apr 4, 2026
    Fastmail logo

    Fastmail

    Work offline with Fastmail

    Fastmail adds full offline support across its apps and webmail, letting users read, reply, manage contacts and calendar, and sync changes back when they reconnect. It also offers browser offline mode with settings controls and automatic rollout on mobile.

    The internet is available in more places every day, from subways to aeroplanes. But it’s still not universal, and it always seems to disappear at the most inopportune time. The overwhelmed mobile network cuts out just when you need that concert ticket. You realise you don’t have the address of your hotel just after landing in a country with no roaming agreement.

    Today, we’re pleased to announce full offline support for all our customers, in our apps and even on the web. No internet? No problem.

    How do I turn on offline support?

    We’ll be automatically enabling offline support for users of our iOS and Android apps progressively over the coming weeks. But if you can’t wait, or want offline support in your web browser, you can turn it on in Settings → Offline.

    Depending on the size of your account and the speed of your internet connection, it can take a few minutes or sometimes longer to do the initial sync. To allow the syncing to occur just leave the tab open in the browser (even in the background) until it shows it’s ready. Due to background processing restrictions on mobile platforms, our app can only do this initial sync while running in the foreground, but you can keep using it as normal while this is happening.

    By default, we’ll download the contents of recent messages, plus messages you open on your device. You can change this to all messages in the settings. Attachments are only cached for offline use when opened on the device.

    A few things to note if you want to enable offline support in your web browser:

    • You must tick “Keep me logged in” when logging in to be able to turn on offline support.
    • Offline support requires a modern browser — if you’re running something we can’t support, you’ll see a banner telling you this on the settings page.
    • Remember to bookmark your inbox to make it easy to get to. If you usually use a search engine to get to Fastmail, this won’t work without internet. A bookmark lets you open Fastmail’s webmail directly, which will load even when offline.

    What if I don’t want offline support?

    You can turn it off at any time in Settings → Offline. Turning it off will delete the local mail cache, so you will have to download it again if you change your mind.

    Is there anything I can’t do offline?

    We wanted to make the online-offline transition seamless, so you mostly shouldn’t need to think about it. Almost everything you can do online you can do offline, such as reading mail, replying, viewing and editing your contacts or calendar, and changing most settings. As soon as you’re online again, it will all sync back to the server.

    There are however a few minor differences to be aware of when working offline:

    • Mail search will not look inside attachments, and will give slightly different results to when online. And of course if you don’t choose to make every message available offline, it won’t be able to match against content it hasn’t downloaded!
    • Snoozed messages will not move back to the inbox while offline.
    • Calendar reminders will not show a notification while offline.
    • You can’t delete attachments from a message you’ve received.
    • You can’t add or change users or domains, change your plan or update your billing details, or change your security settings.

    What’s the tech behind your offline support?

    Interested in how we made this all work? We wrote up the technical details of the general architecture, how we sync changes back to the server, and how we made offline email fast when we launched the public beta late last year.

    Fastmail remains at the cutting edge of web development, with one of the fastest and most sophisticated apps anywhere on the internet. We’re super proud of this huge step forward in functionality, and our biggest hope is you almost don’t notice it — Fastmail now just works wherever you need it to.

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  • Aug 5, 2025
    • Date parsed from source:
      Aug 5, 2025
    • First seen by Releasebot:
      Apr 4, 2026
    Fastmail logo

    Fastmail

    Better themes, better navigation, better search

    Fastmail releases a major update to its web and mobile apps with refreshed theming, faster navigation, smarter search refinement, easier undo and redo access, and simple plain text editing in Fastmail Files.

    Today we released another significant update to the Fastmail web and mobile apps, introducing more beautiful theming and faster navigation on desktop, plus a powerful new search tool to help you find the email you’re looking for.

    Beautiful new themes

    We’ve revised the Fastmail UI to make it more balanced, more focused, and pull in more color from your theme. Head over to the settings and you’ll find many beautiful new default themes to choose from, or make it personal with custom colors.

    Faster navigation

    The tab bar in our mobile app has allowed switching between your mail, calendar, and other apps in just one tap for years. Now, webmail gets quick app switching too. Just like on mobile you can choose which apps to show in the settings, or turn them all off to hide the navigation bar entirely.

    For our customers with multiple accounts, it’s now much faster to move between them with our new quick user switching in the top right. Log in to more than one account in our mobile app and you’ll see the quick user switcher appear there too.

    Finally, our calendar on desktop now has faster navigation between day/week/month view. Want something more unusual? Click on the selected tab again to customise the number of days/weeks on show.

    Fine-tune your search

    Our new search refinement toolbar lets you quickly add, remove, or change filters to narrow down your search.

    We already have intelligent autocomplete to start you off, but sometimes the first attempt doesn’t quite give you the results you’re looking for. Our new toolbar makes it faster to quickly add useful filters to find the email you want.

    Have you ever done a search and found your results are being dominated by a particular sender you’re not interested in, or from a folder you know doesn’t have what you need? We intelligently offer to exclude these with just a few clicks, based on the previous search results.

    We hope you find this useful in getting the most out of Fastmail’s powerful search.

    And more

    Mistakes happen. That’s why Fastmail has multi-level undo/redo support for almost every action. But after the initial notification disappeared, you had to know the keyboard shortcut. Now you can undo/redo from the actions menu in your inbox as well.

    Fastmail files makes it easy to host a basic website. Now we’ve added simple editing of plain text files, so you can make basic changes without leaving the app, or create a new text file on the go.

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  • Jun 13, 2025
    • Date parsed from source:
      Jun 13, 2025
    • First seen by Releasebot:
      Apr 4, 2026
    Fastmail logo

    Fastmail

    Introducing the twom database format

    Fastmail introduces twom, a new Cyrus IMAP database backend with MVCC repacks, xxHash, mmap reads and writes, starvation-free locking, and faster pre-allocated file growth. Fastmail says all email servers have used it since February 12, 2025.

    I wrote back in December about my ideas for a new skiplist based database format for the Cyrus IMAP server.

    I spent a bunch of time over the next month writing just that. It’s called twom, “two” for the dual level0 pointers (the same as twoskip) and “m” for mmap and mvcc. I had planned to pronounce it “tomb” (for “it has tombstone records”) but have wound up usually saying “two em” for clarity. Maybe as this is posted on a Friday 13th we can call it “tomb” just for today.

    All the code was in a merged pull request. The database itself is just a single standalone C language source file and associated header file. There’s also a cyrusdb interface wrapper, and a copy of xxHash directly in our source tree as well:

    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ wc -l lib/*twom* lib/xxhash.h
    421 lib/cyrusdb_twom.c
    3298 lib/twom.c
    157 lib/twom.h
    7091 lib/xxhash.h
    10967 total
    

    Amusingly, xxhash.h takes more space than anything else (and the lion’s share of the CPU usage as well, despite being much faster than crc32 as used in twoskip).

    Why a new database format?

    As I wrote during our advent series, twoskip has served us well, but it had a couple of major performance issues - particularly with our current ZFS on NVMe architecture. Retro-fitting some improvements to twoskip would have been possible, but it couldn’t do the most important thing (MVCC reads) because the on-disk format didn’t have the right structure.

    We wanted MVCC because you could then repack an entire database without holding a lock the whole time, and replay the log at the end. I discovered that I didn’t even need an exclusive lock at all to do a repack, it could all be done with short-lived readlocks.

    Overall these changes made twom faster. We don’t have performance data to show how much faster because we changed too many things at the same time to isolate it, but one simple repack test of a giant file showed repacks that had been 35 minutes with the twoskip file taking just over a minute with twom. A rather massive improvement! And even better, you could write to the file during the repack without losing data, while twoskip would have held an exclusive lock the entire time.

    These are the major changes:

    xxHash

    The performance of xxHash vs CRC32 over small amounts of data is much better.

    Twoskip and twom formats both hash blocks of about 40 bytes for the tracking pointers, and our keys and values are quite short in a lot of Cyrus formats too.

    A faster hash function for small amounts of data is a big win. We chose xxHash for its friendly license and great performance.

    MVCC repacks

    This is massive. We have databases in the tens of gigabytes on the largest accounts, and when one of those chose to “checkpoint” - rewrite to remove stale data, it could lock an account for 30 minutes. This is obviously unacceptable.

    The same repack taking one minute and allowing reads plus a thousand or so opportunities for writes during that repack is a completely different story; speaking of which…

    Starvation-free locking

    I can’t believe I got all the way to testing this thing to discover how little I knew about fcntl locking.

    TIL: fcntl isn’t fair. Releasing the lock didn’t magically let a waiting writer proceed, the same process would often pick up the lock again without giving another process a chance to. On busy files, writers could entirely starve.

    We decided to use a two-offset locking strategy within the single database file, so writers can queue up waiting while all the readers are busy, and be ensured of their place in the line.

    The git history will show I didn’t get this right the first time, and had to do a patch while testing across our fleet on just the statuscache file, an ephemeral database with high churn. The great thing about testing with statuscache is that users won’t notice if it breaks, since any error will just cause the status to be re-computed!

    MMAP for reading and writing

    Twoskip (and all the other Cyrus internal formats, like cache and index) uses mmap for read but write for writes. On most operating systems this is fine, they share a common cache, but it seemed simpler and nicer to use mmap for both reads and writes rather than creating in-memory structures to copy over.

    And yes, we did read and watch the arguments against it (video)!

    Of course we’re using msync to get reliable commits, and twom still has robust transactions with the same 3-syncs-per-commit pattern that made twoskip so solid.

    MMAP also reduces syscalls. With twoskip we had to make multiple seek and write syscalls for each update, as we rewrote the backpointers (the average record has level 2, so needs to write 2 different backpointers plus the record itself).

    This means that a single twoskip transaction writing to a single key/value pair makes an average of 19 syscalls (2 fcntl, 2 fstat, 6 lseek, 4 write, 2 writev, and 3 fdatasync).

    Even with the more complex locking, the equivalent twom change makes half as many (4 fcntl, 2 fstat, and 3 msync).

    But even better - a transaction which updates multiple key/value pairs adds an additional average of 6 syscalls on twoskip (3 lseek, 2 write, 1 writev) per record, while twom has no additional syscalls per transaction, no matter how many changes are made. This is particularly obvious during a repack, where the initial transaction on the new file contains every record in the database!

    Pre-emptive allocation

    Every time twom needs to make the file bigger, it extends it by 25% and then fills in the empty space. This seems a good tradeoff between low numbers of truncate and mmap operations, while not making files insanely large. It doesn’t actually use that space on most filesystems, the file remains sparse until writes fill the space.

    This was by far the biggest performance increase (and the one we tested) - we had noticed with twoskip that a large amount of CPU was going on munmap and mmap calls, as with every new record the file became longer than the mapped space, and had to be re-mapped before the next write.

    Twom decouples the file size from the committed size, which can leave junk from aborted transactions on the tail of the file, but the header length never gets updated until the third msync, so nothing ever reads that junk, and it gets overwritten as new commits come in.

    Just straight POSIX

    The twom library is written to be standalone. It doesn’t use any of the supporting libraries from Cyrus, opting to do fcntl locking and mmap manipulation directly. This allows it to keep a list of active transactions with their own mmaps so pointers remain valid; and for many other optimisations. Many things from twoskip were tightened up and simplified by not relying on other libraries.

    This makes twom easily portable, and since it’s written from whole cloth (and I’m the only author on twoskip as well) I was able to put it under the CC0 public domain license; though obviously if you want to use xxHash you need to follow its 2-Clause BSD license as well.

    Twom databases are a single file, containing an ordered key-value list. It’s transactional, with single threaded exclusive writers and multiple parallel readers. Twom files can be accessed by multiple un-related programs concurrently, so long as they all obey the locking rules.

    I plan to lift the code out into its own repository at some point, and test it against all the other usual suspects in the key-value database space. The lib/cyrusdb_twom.c file is just a lightweight wrapper around the twom functions to convert cyrusdb semantics to twom style, and to convert error codes on the way back.

    OK what does it look like?

    Cyrus comes with a tool ‘cyr_dbtool’ which can be used to interact with any database formats, so here’s some interactions with a new DB, setting and deleting some records, and showing prefix iterators and dump output.

    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ /usr/cyrus/bin/cyr_dbtool -n /tmp/test.db twom set a b
    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ /usr/cyrus/bin/cyr_dbtool -n /tmp/test.db twom show
    a b
    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ /usr/cyrus/bin/cyr_dbtool -n /tmp/test.db twom dump
    UUID: uuid=fe720dec-4525-4e5d-a3c4-da665f3b0b40
    FNAME: fname=/tmp/test.db
    CHECKSUM ENGINE: XXH64
    HEADER: v=1 g=1 fl=10000000 num=(1/1) sz=(00000000/000001B0/00000170) ml=1
    00000060 DUMMY kl=0 dl=0 lvl=31 ()
    00000170 00000000
    00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    00000170 ADD kl=1 dl=1 lvl=1 (a)
    00000000 00000000
    00000198 COMMIT start=00000170
    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ /usr/cyrus/bin/cyr_dbtool -n /tmp/test.db twom set xxa hello
    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ /usr/cyrus/bin/cyr_dbtool -n /tmp/test.db twom set xxb world
    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ /usr/cyrus/bin/cyr_dbtool -n /tmp/test.db twom show xx
    xxa hello
    xxb world
    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ /usr/cyrus/bin/cyr_dbtool -n /tmp/test.db twom delete xxa
    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ /usr/cyrus/bin/cyr_dbtool -n /tmp/test.db twom set xxa hi
    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ /usr/cyrus/bin/cyr_dbtool -n /tmp/test.db twom dump
    UUID: uuid=fe720dec-4525-4e5d-a3c4-da665f3b0b40
    FNAME: fname=/tmp/test.db
    CHECKSUM ENGINE: XXH64
    HEADER: v=1 g=1 fl=10000000 num=(3/5) sz=(00000048/000002C8/00000170) ml=3
    00000060 DUMMY kl=0 dl=0 lvl=31 ()
    00000170 00000000
    000001F8 000001F8 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    00000170 ADD kl=1 dl=1 lvl=1 (a)
    00000280 00000250
    00000198 COMMIT start=00000170
    000001B0 ADD kl=3 dl=5 lvl=1 (xxa)
    000001F8 00000000
    000001E0 COMMIT start=000001B0
    000001F8 ADD kl=3 dl=5 lvl=3 (xxb)
    00000000 00000000
    00000000 00000000
    00000238 COMMIT start=000001F8
    00000250 DELETE ancestor=000001B0
    00000268 COMMIT start=00000250
    00000280 REPLACE kl=3 dl=2 lvl=1 (xxa)
    00000250 <-
    00000000 000001F8
    000002B0 COMMIT start=00000280
    

    That’s a version 1 file, generation 1 (never been repacked), flags just means “using XXH64”, 3 commits, 5 records, some interesting sizes (last repack, current size, estimated repack size) - with the highest skiplevel of 3.

    Let’s repack it:

    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ /usr/cyrus/bin/cyr_dbtool -n /tmp/test.db twom repack
    brong@elg:~/src/cyrus-imapd$ /usr/cyrus/bin/cyr_dbtool -n /tmp/test.db twom dump
    UUID: uuid=fe720dec-4525-4e5d-a3c4-da665f3b0b40
    FNAME: fname=/tmp/test.db
    CHECKSUM ENGINE: XXH64
    HEADER: v=1 g=2 fl=10000000 num=(3/1) sz=(00000000/00000218/00000200) ml=2
    00000060 DUMMY kl=0 dl=0 lvl=31 ()
    00000170 00000000
    00000198 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
    00000170 ADD kl=1 dl=1 lvl=1 (a)
    00000198 00000000
    00000198 ADD kl=3 dl=2 lvl=2 (xxa)
    000001C8 00000000
    000001C8
    000001C8 ADD kl=3 dl=5 lvl=2 (xxb)
    00000000 00000000
    00000000
    00000200 COMMIT start=00000170
    

    All the tombstones removed, and the file is back in order. Any new writes will stitch themselves into the various linked lists by updating the back pointers. Finally, let’s look at the raw file:

    00000000 a1 02 8b 0d 74 77 6f 6d 66 69 6c 65 00 00 00 00 |....twomfile....|
    00000010 fe 72 0d ec 45 25 4e 5d a3 c4 da 66 5f 3b 0b 40 |.r..E%N]...f_;.@|
    00000020 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
    00000030 03 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
    00000040 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
    00000050 18 02 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 8a 57 92 ee |.............W..|
    00000060 01 1f 00 00 00 00 00 00 70 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........p.......|
    00000070 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 98 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
    00000080 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
    *
    00000160 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 6c d0 f8 56 00 00 00 00 |........l..V....|
    00000170 02 01 01 00 01 00 00 00 98 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
    00000180 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 d8 de f5 3d 84 a4 92 c8 |...........=....|
    00000190 61 00 62 00 00 00 00 00 02 02 03 00 02 00 00 00 |a.b.............|
    000001a0 c8 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
    000001b0 c8 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 8c 71 d7 70 cf ff c3 |..........q.p...|
    000001c0 78 78 61 00 68 69 00 00 02 02 03 00 05 00 00 00 |xxa.hi..........|
    000001d0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
    000001e0 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 19 cf b0 45 a7 69 06 9d |...........E.i..|
    000001f0 78 78 62 00 77 6f 72 6c 64 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |xxb.world.......|
    00000200 07 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 70 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 |........p.......|
    00000210 1d 44 bd 3d 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |.D.=............|
    00000220 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 |................|
    *
    00004000
    

    There’s not much fat in there! There is probably 50 bytes of overhead per record once you factor in trailing nulls on key and value, 8 bytes of header, 8 bytes of checksums, an average of 3 64-bit pointers, and padding out to an 8 byte boundary.

    Fastmail is running twom

    Since February 12, 2025, all Fastmail email servers have been using the twom backend in all the places they used to use twoskip. The switch was done in three phases over two days.

    I’m very happy to have removed one of the places in which Fastmail could fail to live up to its name! No more pauses for database repacks.

    I’m hoping that in some future release of Cyrus, the twom backend will be the default - but mostly, once twom was finished I was just glad to take a break from reading hexdumps and do something else for a while!

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  • Apr 28, 2025
    • Date parsed from source:
      Apr 28, 2025
    • First seen by Releasebot:
      Apr 4, 2026
    Fastmail logo

    Fastmail

    A revamped Fastmail inbox

    Fastmail launches a new inbox look for webmail and mobile apps, with a cleaner message list, avatars, one-click hover actions, and easier customization. It also improves iPad input support, adds new mobile navigation and swipe options, and refines message actions.

    Today we’re launching a new look for your inbox, in both our webmail and mobile apps. Familiar but refined, the message list is now cleaner and more focused. Avatars help quickly identify who’s in the conversation, and one-click hover actions let you easily archive or delete.

    Make it yours with easier customisation, with live updates as you try out different options. Don’t have a Fastmail account yet? Here’s what you’re missing:

    And more

    We’ve also focused on fixing the niggling small things. We’ve improved support for using a mouse or pencil in our iPad app. Made it easier to quickly create a contact or event while reading a message. Added an option to stop messages from being automatically marked as read when you open them. We’ve even moved the “report phishing” action to be next to “report spam”. Finally.

    On mobile you can also now choose what apps are shown in the mobile navigation bar at the bottom (or turn them all off to hide it). Missing your quick hover actions? Configure up to four custom swipe actions to fly through your mail on the go. To select a message, just press and hold, or swipe with two fingers.

    We hope you enjoy the new look. Thanks to all our beta testers for the feedback they sent in. If you too want to get a sneak peek of what’s coming next at Fastmail, just log in at beta.fastmail.com.

    Coming soon … full offline support!

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  • Dec 16, 2024
    • Date parsed from source:
      Dec 16, 2024
    • First seen by Releasebot:
      Apr 4, 2026
    Fastmail logo

    Fastmail

    Dec 16: Offline support now in public beta

    Fastmail launches public beta for offline support in its app, letting users read mail, reply, manage contacts and calendar, and change settings without a connection. It also explains how to join the beta and what features still need internet.

    This is the sixteenth post in the Fastmail Advent 2024 series. The previous post was Dec 15: Platform Team working agreement. The next post is Dec 17: Building offline: general architecture.

    On an aeroplane, or down a tunnel. Roaming in a foreign land, or just out for a walk in the country. There are still times when we aren’t connected to the internet. As a strong supporter of open standards, you’ve always been able to use Fastmail with any email app you like, many of which work offline. However, many of our customers prefer the Fastmail app (we certainly do!), and offline support there has been our most popular request for some time. As Bron foreshadowed last year, we’ve been working hard on this big project for some time, and and we’re very pleased to announce it’s now ready for public beta testing.

    What’s a beta?

    Fastmail runs a beta version of our app to allow our users that like to live on the cutting edge to get early access to new features before they’re finished, and send us feedback while we’re still working on them. Things may be broken occasionally, but generally it’s pretty stable.

    How do I get the beta?

    If you are using our iOS or Android apps:

    Check for updates in the app store — make sure you have the latest version.

    Go to Settings → Device settings → Show Advanced Settings, and change the “server backend” to “Beta”.

    If you are using Fastmail on the web, just log in at betaapp.fastmail.com.

    In either case, once on beta you will find a new settings screen — Settings → Offline — where you can toggle on offline support. You must have ticked “Keep me logged in” when you logged in to enable offline support.

    What can I do offline?

    Almost everything! You can read mail, reply, view and edit your contacts/calendar, change settings, etc.…

    Probably easier is to describe what won’t work offline:

    Mail search will not look inside attachments, and will give slightly different results to when online. If you don’t choose to make every message available offline, it won’t be able to match against content it hasn’t downloaded!

    Snoozed messages will not move back to the inbox while offline.

    Calendar reminders will not show a notification.

    You can’t delete attachments.

    You can’t attach files to a message you are composing.

    You can’t add or change users or domains, change your plan or update your billing details, or change your security settings.

    How do I send feedback?

    Found a bug? Got an idea? Something you like, or don’t like? Let us know! Our support team will pass all feedback on to the product team. We promise we read and carefully consider it all.

    What’s the tech behind your offline support?

    Interested in the technical details? Over the next few days I’m going to dive into how we built offline support into our app, starting with the general architecture.

    Original source Report a problem

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