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Linux has several email clients, but this new one is the best for me.

Aerion is clean, easy to use and lightweight.

This app supports multiple email accounts, is free and open source.

For the longest time, Geary has been my default email client. It is light, simple and offers a pleasant and modern graphical interface. But I have always been bothered by certain problems with this client.

For example, if I use Geary with a tiling window manager, the GUI doesn't always behave correctly depending on where I place it. If the Geary window isn't wide enough, when I click on an email, the email consumes the entire app (instead of leaving the mailing list and sidebar visible). Also, when I launch Geary on Pop!_OS, the app sometimes only appears when I run the Geary command. While these aren't really breakups, they are annoying.

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.

The client in question is called Aerion, an open source application that is Linux-first, privacy-focused, lightweight, and efficient. The GUI is well designed, so anyone can jump in and start using the app straight away, with no learning curve. Aerion is sponsored by 3DF, a Hong Kong-based IT consultancy that bills itself as “Asia’s leading technical operations partner.” For those worried about the reliability of 3DF and Aerion, you can view the source code of the messaging app in the official GitHub repository.

Aerion isn't packed with features, so you don't have to worry about being 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, composition in a pop-up or pop-up window, read receipts, enabling/disabling remote image loading, signatures, contacts, email archiving, a spam filter, focus mode, email filtering, removal of tracking items - and that's it.

This list of features is just enough to make Aerion useful, while still keeping it simple.

It's all about the user interface

For me, the best part of Aerion is the user interface; it is modern enough to adapt to any operating system. You get an account pane, a mailing list pane, and a display pane. If you go to Settings > General, you can also select the title bar type (Native, Aerion, or Disable -- I use Native, because Aerion adds a secondary title bar that is not needed on Linux), language, and theme.

One feature I particularly like is Focus mode, which changes the UI so you only see the currently viewed email.

To enable Focus mode, click the small square to the left of the printer icon in the upper right. To exit Focus mode, click on the same icon.

You can add as many email accounts as you need and manage them easily from the left sidebar. There's also an All Inboxes view, so you don't need to switch between email accounts.

Installing Aerion

Although Aerion is still in pre-release, I found it to be remarkably stable.

To install Aerion on MacOS and Windows, grab the necessary installers from the official download page. Once you have downloaded the appropriate installer, double-click it and follow the installation wizard.