Jack Wallen/ZDNET
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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- Linux has several email clients, but this new one is tops for me.
- Aerion is clean, easy to use, and lightweight.
- This app supports several email accounts, is free to use, and is open source.
For the longest time, Geary has been my default email client. It’s lightweight, simple, and offers a nice, modern GUI. But I’ve always been bothered by certain issues with this client.
For example, if I use Geary with a tiling window manager, the GUI doesn’t always behave properly depending on where I place it. If the Geary window isn’t wide enough, when I click an email, the email consumes the entire app (instead of leaving the email list and sidebar visible). Also, when I launch Geary on Pop!_OS, the app sometimes doesn’t appear until I run the geary command. Although these aren’t exactly deal-breakers, they’re annoying.
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So, when I heard about a new, cross-platform email client available for Linux (as well as MacOS and Windows), I had to try it out.
The client in question is called Aerion, an open-source app that is Linux-first, privacy-focused, lightweight, and efficient. The GUI is well laid out, so anyone can jump in and start using the app right away, with no learning curve. Aerion is sponsored by 3DF, a Hong Kong-based IT consultancy that calls itself “Asia’s leading technical operations partner.” For those concerned about the trustworthiness of 3DF and Aerion, you can view the source code for the email app in the official GitHub repository.
Aerion isn’t chock full of features, so you don’t have to worry about getting overwhelmed; it’s basic, easy, and clean. Aerion supports email accounts such as Gmail, Outlook/Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, iCloud Mail, ProtonMail Bridge, Fastmail, Zoho Mail, AOL Mail, GMX Mail, Mail.com, and IMAP/POP. It includes rich-text message formatting, theming, in-window or detached-window composing, read receipts, remote image loading enable/disable, signatures, contacts, email archiving, a spam filter, focus mode, email filtering, tracking element removal — and that’s about it.
Aerion might not have a ton of features, but what it does have is useful.
Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
That feature list is just enough to make Aerion useful, while keeping it simple.
Also: This is by far the best Linux email client I’ve used – and I’ve tested them all
It’s all about the UI
For me, the best part of Aerion is the UI; it’s modern enough to look right at home on any OS. You get an account pane, an email list pane, and a viewing pane. If you go to Settings > General, you can also select the type of title bar (Native, Aerion, or Disable — I go with Native, because Aerion adds a secondary title bar that isn’t necessary on Linux), the language, and the theme.
The Aerion email client has a clean, modern UI.
Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
One feature I especially appreciate is Focus Mode, which switches the UI so that you only see the currently viewed email.
Focus Mode is helpful when you need to see only one email and nothing else.
Screenshot by Jack Wallen/ZDNET
To enable Focus Mode, click the small square to the left of the printer icon near the top right. To get out of Focus Mode, click the same icon.
You can add as many email accounts as necessary and easily manage them from the left sidebar. There’s also an All Inboxes view, so you don’t have to bounce between email accounts.
Installing Aerion
Although Aerion is still in pre-release, I found it remarkably stable.
To install Aerion on MacOS and Windows, grab the necessary installers from the official download page. Once you’ve downloaded the correct installer, double-click it and follow the installation wizard.
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On Linux, Aerion is installed via Flathub, so you’ll need a Linux distribution with Flatpak installed. The Aerion installation command is:
flatpak install –user io.github.hkdb.Aerion
Once installed, open the app, add your email account(s), and start using this clean, modern, and lightweight app.
