I have an email account with fastmail (main@domain.com), and I regularly use new aliases (e.g. new@domain.com) that all direct back to the same main account
On the Fastmail client, if someone emails me at new@domain.com, when I hit reply it automatically configures it to send from the new alias new@domain.com, even if I haven’t explicitly set up that alias. However, on the Mailspring client I am only able to reply from my main address. Is there a way to configure the client so it can reply from the address the original email was sent to? I understand it may be possible if I go and set up that alias in the settings, but I don’t want to have to set up a new alias on the client every time I use a new one.
Although Mailspring does (as you’ve spotted) allow aliases for an account, it always seems to use the main email address for the account when replying. As you say, it would be nice if it would detect the address the original email was sent to and use that address to reply from - it would make aliases a more integral part of the app rather than a tacked-on extra. However, the ability to create new aliases on-the-fly (which is effectively what you’re asking for) might cause more trouble than it’s worth with e.g. BCCed emails or mailing lists, where there might be all sorts of email addresses in the original email that you wouldn’t want used as aliases! (In your case, your aliases are all from the same domain, by the sound of it, but that’s not the case for everyone and so Mailspring can’t assume that to be the case. Perhaps a wild-card fallback alias might be possible, but it’s probably an edge case because most people probably don’t create new identities on the fly as you seem to.)
Perhaps raise this as a feature request in the relevant area of this forum? I suspect a feature “Use alias as From address when replying to emails” is easier and more likely to happen than “Auto-create aliases from address in original email” because of the false-positive issues mentioned above, but it’d be worth listing both parts IMO.
Thanks John, I did want to verify that this isn’t possible before making a feature request. It’d be interesting to see how other clients do it, since it seems a common enough feature. Hopefully it’s not too tricky to implement but I understand if it’s not up there on the priority list.
This is the very feature that makes me keep using the Fastmail client (the 3rd party app FMail2, to be precise) as my primary email client.
Background: I use a dedicated email address under my domain for every counterparty, such as mailspring@example.com, github@example.com, etc.; I don’t create them a-priori, but rather have a wildcard set up (*@example.com).
Fastmail/FMail2 will automatically use the correct address as “From”-address when replying to an email sent to one of these addresses; it will also allow me to manually change the From-line on the fly when composing a new email:
To @JohnP’s points, I think there 2 parts to the question: (1) separating the final “From”-value of an email from accounts/aliases/etc. and allowing arbitrary values to be used (aliases [wc]ould serve as templates for the From-value); and (2) detecting the default From-address for an email based on the email it is a reply to, if any, and using it rather than the Alias’ default email.
Item (1) would already get me personally very far, just being able to change the From-address on-the-fly would be fantastic.
I had a topic here where I asked about the possibility of implementing it as a plugin. It led to checking the codebase and seeing that it is very complex to add this feature:
But if someone wants the feature and absolutely wants a desktop email client, then Thunderbird can do it with this plugin:
