Have you ever returned from a glorious stretch of PTO to an overwhelming number of emails, overflowing both your inbox and your brain? In an attempt to end the cyclical nature of email dread, I searched for a tool to support my digital-turned-mental state of clutter.
From talking fridges to iPhones, our experts are here to help make the world a little less complicated.
Step 1: Once Canary Mail is downloaded to your phone or computer, click on the application and make an account. There’s an option to upgrade your subscription to $3/month ($36/year) or to trial Canary Mail free for seven days.
Step 2: A tutorial pops up next, with information on navigating the tool and using it to draft email responses with a certain context or tone.
Step 3: Click on the “write email” button, which will pull up your inbox, now integrated within the Canary Mail app. (A welcome email from the company arrives shortly afterward.)
Step 4: Your inbox will take on a slightly different look. In response to my MacOS download and integration, my inbox is separated by labels on the left-hand side of the screen: All, For You, Team and Needs Reply.
Step 5: On the right-hand side, there’s an Alerts area and an AI-powered assistant below it for action-oriented prompts. Regardless of their label, all emails have an AI Summarization option available. I found this helpful for lengthy threads and their equally lengthy processes. The summarization is visible once you navigate to the thread, which serves as a project status reminder without you sifting through your inbox. Any email under Needs Reply will provide AI-generated responses in line with the thread’s context and tone, labeled as Quick Reply.
The organizational style of Canary Mail allows for additional interactions within each thread; you can like or save contacts’ information extracted from the email, use AI to reply to an Alert, or navigate to the top of the app and select Bulk Clean to identify unimportant emails.
Plus, Canary Mail features its own text formatting editor, for text style, color and alignment customization. Each message thread mimics Apple’s “dark mode,” and you can also snooze or pin emails, similar to iOS’ Messaging interface.
Canary Mail is one of the oldest email options offering AI-powered assistants and copilots; it launched in 2016 after competitors Superhuman and Proton Mail. (Its shift toward AI is fairly recent, following a collaboration with OpenAI in 2023.) Other competitors include Spark (2015), Shortwave (2022), Gemini for Gmail (2023), and Proton Scribe (2024). Canary Mail is also the cheapest, particularly compared to those that don’t offer a free trial.
Its privacy-minded security commitment may be what makes it particularly appealing. To protect user privacy, Canary Mail contains a multilayered AI-powered threat detection and a threat analysis system designed to block data infiltration and phishing attempts. It also offers end-to-end encryption and control over who can access your email metadata.
Alongside its ability to integrate with Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, iCloud and AOL, Canary Mail can provide a digital reprieve when you’re navigating that torrent of emails, and the percentage of those that are spam or a potential threat.
It’s something to consider before you head out on your next much-needed PTO.
