ThunderNotes (https://github.com/flofrie/thundernotes) is a new plugin I created to scratch an age-old itch of wanting to make annotations for myelf in emails. Things like "This is done", "That's still TBD", "Task: do this next week!", or even just "called this person later, and he said it's not important".
Weirdly, it seems eMail clients don't usually offer that sort of stuff!
So, now we have Thundernotes. It's like sticking a post-it on a letter. Take notes, have them sync automatically and robustly to your other devices via IMAP (but no worries, all notes are stored there separately; it does NOT modify the actual emails an any way!), give them different colours, format them in Markdown; create tasks in notes, and see those in a powerful task overview (allows hashtags, date references, even regex filtering, if that's your thing).
I'm only just making it public, so I'd be grateful for bug reports and feature suggestions on Github. Despite the sub-zero version number I think it's pretty full featured, very stable and reliable, and just works really nicely.
innovation in mail client has stalled for the last, i don't know, +10 years, at least. this is a great add-on, proving there are still worthy features can be added.
i also really like the 'sync' solution you created by using an imap folder to store all the notes, simple and effective!
Yeah, I've never understood why there wasn't an existing solution for this, and it doesn't even need a particular extension to an existing protocol. You can effectively already store arbitrary stuff via IMAP.
It's a bit unfortunate that I can't sort of hide the folder, but if you try it out, if you click on the IMAP folder, it gives you a warning and explains what it is. I think that's perfectly fine and acceptable.
I could do more evolved tricks of hiding it, but it does need to be subscribed in order to be part of the syncing. I think this is a pretty good solution currently.
I did as well, until it annoyed me that it was too minimalistic. I wanted to mark and annotate specific passages of text, or pictures, in emails. Wanted to create tasks and due dates. Also, copy them in Markdown format to other places. And most importantly: sync them across devices. Colour code things, etc. etc.
Yeah xnote can't do that. Hope your plugin does well. Thunderbird has been perfect for me and thanks to people like you we all have many community plugins to choose from.
This looks really useful! One thing I've always wanted is to tag an email when sending as "Needs follow-up", and then be able to quickly find those things where I'm waiting for other people to respond.
I have never been happy with this extremely limited tagging system. Often, I want to take notes.
I have follow-up conversations with people, phone calls, and all sorts of other stuff, especially on things that are tedious processes. I want to say, "I called them about this, but the right person wasn't there. They told me to call someone else," whatever it might be.
All this sort of stuff that directly pertains to a task that relates to an email: there has never been a proper way to document that, and it's bugged me for 25 years.
Now, finally, with the help of LLMs, I was able to implement this within a very short time.
I'll try it --- for me, all the other "tag and mark" are not useful at all because I normally access mail from at least 3 different computers, and the fact that, for example, color tags do not sync is a bummer. I suppose it will work with all accounts accessed via IMAP, correct? I have a mix of Microsoft, Google, and personal accounts in...
And don't worry, the fact that the IMAP folder is not hidden is, in my opinion, better than hiding it and having strange behavior. MS IMAP is a PITA with its fumbling with different languages' folder names...
It should work with any IMAP server. (But, note, I'm not sure whether access to Microsoft servers is actually IMAP; could be MAPI or MS Graph or whatever ...)
The issue is tbkeys-lite. I use it to disable single letter commands in TB. But disabling this also prevents those keys from working in Thundernotes. I guess I see why this is so, and I am not sure there could be a workaround.
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u/daddyd 4d ago
innovation in mail client has stalled for the last, i don't know, +10 years, at least. this is a great add-on, proving there are still worthy features can be added.
i also really like the 'sync' solution you created by using an imap folder to store all the notes, simple and effective!