Remember when “You’ve Got Mail!” was an exciting thing? After a decade of spam email, the non-stop CCs of business email, and daily offers of riches from Nigeria, anything that reminds me of more email is not my friend.
Unless it’s free and cool. Email is a love hate thing. I want to know what’s arrived, but it’s a chore to dig through email and be so disappointed. Harold to the rescue.
Herald Harold’s Arrival Via Email
Herald is a notification plugin for Mail on your Mac. I call it Harold because my husband and I are into personifying cool things. I like the name Harold, and the app Herald is cool.
The only bad thing Herald does is notify me of incoming email.
Unfortunately, that’s the only good thing Herald does.
Other than Herald is free (as in donationware). Oh, and Herald has all kinds of tweaky geeky settings to help massage your obsessive compulsive disorder.
What Herald does is notify you when email arrives. That’s it? Hey, not bad for free. But Herald actually does a little more. Herald can be customized so the pop up matches your mood. Blue for blue. Red for angry. Green for envy. Translucent for shallow. You get the idea.
Herald’s pop up looks something like this.
Settings abound in Herald. Four tabs give you control over Herald’s function and appearance, and which email boxes to use.
As a Mail plugin (keep your mind out of the gutter), Herald’s settings are in Mail’s Preferences and fine for the tweaky geeky set of Mac users. There’s more to Herald than a mere notification.
Herald’s pop up window features a Quick Action Toolbar so you can read, reply, or delete without digging into Mail. You can even scroll through the whole email message in Herald.
Sweet, huh? Caveat emptor, dear aficionado of Friday Freebies. Herald comes with a gotcha. From Herald’s bit daddy:
Mail plugins are not officially supported by Apple. While Herald has been thoroughly tested, it’s possible it may cause unintented (sic) conflicts with Mail or with other unofficial Mail plugins, especially after OS updates. It’s recommended that you backup your computer before installing Herald or any other Mail plugin, and always before installing any updates to Mail or OS X.
Uh oh.
That means Herald is all that and more, with the more being something dangerous. Or, not. Maybe. You just never know until it’s too late.
It’s like watching 60-second television commercial for various medicines.
There’s 32-seconds of feel good visuals of obviously healthy people who take the aforementioned medicine, followed by 28-seconds of fast-talking disclaimers and a list of side effects so horrible you’ll be afraid to eat. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Or, not.
Herald is handy and unobtrusive, certainly less so than the plaintiff cry of AOL’s “You’ve Got Mail!” from the last century, back when email was fun and useful.
About Alexis Kayhill
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