I’ve tried many Linux email clients – why Aerion recently replaced Geary as my top pick

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Highlights taken by ZDNET

• Linux has several email clients, but this new one stands out for me.
• Aerion is clean, easy to use, and lightweight.
• This app supports multiple email accounts, is free to use, and is open source.

For the longest time, Geary has been my default email client. It’s simple, easy, and offers a nice, modern GUI. But I have been troubled by some problems with this client.

For example, when I use Geary with a tile window manager, the GUI doesn’t always behave properly depending on where I put it. If the Geary window is not wide enough, when I click on an email, the email consumes the entire app (instead of leaving the email list and sidebar visible). Also, when I launch Geary on Pop!_OS, the app sometimes doesn’t appear until I run the geary command. While these aren’t really criminals, they are annoying.

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So, when I heard about a cross-platform email client available for Linux (as well as macOS and Windows), I had to give it a try.

The client in question is called Aerion, an open source Linux-first, privacy-oriented, lightweight, and efficient application. The GUI is well laid out, so anyone can jump in and start using the app right away, with no learning curve. Aerion is sponsored by 3DF, a Hong Kong-based IT company that calls itself “Asia’s leading technology services partner.” For those concerned about the reliability of 3DF and Aerion, you can view the source code of the email application on the official GitHub site.

Aerion isn’t packed with features, so you don’t have to worry about getting overwhelmed; it’s basic, simple, 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, context, window or split window creation, read receipts, enable/disable remote image upload, signatures, contacts, email archiving, spam filter, focus mode, email filtering, tracking feature removal — and that’s about it.

That feature list is enough to make the Aerion useful, while keeping it simple.

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It’s all about the UI

For me, the best part of Aerion is the UI; it’s modern enough to look at home on any OS. You get an account pane, an email list pane, and a view pane. If you go to Settings > General, you can also choose the title bar type (Native, Aerion, or Disable — I’m going with Native, because Aerion adds a second title bar that isn’t needed on Linux), language, and theme.

One feature I really enjoy is Focus Mode, which changes the UI so you only see the email currently being viewed.

To enable Focus Mode, click the small square to the left of the printer icon near the top right. To exit Focus Mode, click the same icon.

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

Featuring Aerion

Although the Aerion has been released previously, 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’ve downloaded the appropriate installer, double-click it and follow the installation wizard.

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On Linux, Aerion is installed with Flathub, so you will need a Linux distribution with Flatpak installed. The command to install Aerion is:

installing flatpak –user io.github.hkdb.Aerion

Once installed, open the app, add your email accounts, and start using this clean, modern, and lightweight app.