recently tried to switch to desktop from web gmail -- logging into gmail with a client is terrifying and painful
typing my google password into a random popup isn't exactly confidence inspiring -- neither is the 'less secure apps' flow they invented
hard to set up threading, sync took forever before newest part of inbox was ready, unclear impact on how replies look
IMO it's 2022 and the open niche for email clients is 'offramp from gmail' -- how can I get a temporary gmail-like experience on desktop w/out an overnight sync, without a giant security hole, and with minimal changed experience. Solve this and you can eventually migrate people to other email hosting.
> neither is the 'less secure apps' flow they invented
You can't have done that recently. Less Secure Apps was recently deprecated and removed. They've been actively discouraging using it for around 5 years. Thunderbird has supported the OAuth flow for Gmail since at least 2017 (I swear it's been there longer, but 2017 is the earliest reference I can find). It's used it as the default option when detecting Gmail since before COVID at least. It did promote the use of "Less Secure Apps" previously and that option was still available after the introduction of OAuth, but not as the default.
I no longer use Thunderbird (I switched to Spark, which solved a number of issues I was experiencing with unread email counts), but it's been a pretty good experience for a long time. Especially if you have multiple email accounts from different providers.
typing my google password into a random popup isn't exactly confidence inspiring -- neither is the 'less secure apps' flow they invented
hard to set up threading, sync took forever before newest part of inbox was ready, unclear impact on how replies look
IMO it's 2022 and the open niche for email clients is 'offramp from gmail' -- how can I get a temporary gmail-like experience on desktop w/out an overnight sync, without a giant security hole, and with minimal changed experience. Solve this and you can eventually migrate people to other email hosting.