I am sort of a minimalist. I am certainly a fan, advocate, and sucker for minimalistic design, and I love new apps and services that combine minimalistic aesthetics with great features. So in this short post, I want to talk about a new Mac app I just recently discovered.

What is it

This app is called Tempo and it is an email client for your Mac which at the moment only supports Gmail. But for many people that is exactly what they need. But I need to say one thing first: It’s not free. There was a free beta version until recently. Now it’s a paid app only, at a high 10€/month. But hear me out…

What it does

The email app Tempo is without any doubt the most minimalistic and purely designed email app I have ever used. It might actually be the most minimalistic app overall that I have ever used. And for a service that depends on reading and writing without many (or any) distractions that is exactly the right thing to do. You can focus on the important: your emails.

It is just so good. This simple design just disappears when you read or write.

With this simplicity come a variety of cool features. One of Tempo’s more advertised features is its batch function. For those people who want to receive their emails at specific times of the day all in one batch to answer them. You only get notified then about the new emails in one batch. And you get them done. Sounds easy. Well, maybe not if you’re one of those people that get thousands of emails in an hour. But for the rest of us, it might be just that simple.

There also is a to-do feature, of course. Mark emails for later. Every mail client should have that nowadays. You also get a quick reply in one spot, you can unsubscribe from spam and newsletters with one click, and archive all the rest of your mail when it’s done. So just as the design, the feature set is also simple, minimal, but just right for most people in my opinion.

So if you’re interested

check out Tempo for Mac and your Gmail account. And please tell me how you like it. The app is designed in Denmark (which might explain the perfect minimal design) and built-in Berlin, Germany. For me, this would be the perfect Gmail Mac app… if only I were using Gmail. But hopefully, Tempo will be available for other services (like iCloud) soon. They already have Android and iOS apps in the works. So stay tuned.