EmailViews 1.0-beta — Call for Testers

ilfelice · January 4, 2026, 8:32am

Hi everyone,

As you may already know, I’ve been working on a native email viewer for Haiku and it’s now ready for beta testing. I’d love to get feedback from the community.

What is EmailViews?

EmailViews is a fast, lightweight email viewer that uses live queries to organize and explore your emails. It’s a three-pane app (queries, email list, preview) that integrates with Haiku’s Mail Kit and leverages BFS attributes for efficient organization.

Features

Query-based email views (All, New, Sent, Drafts, Starred, With Attachments)
Custom queries with Tracker integration
Live updates via node monitoring
Reply / Reply All / Forward (opens in Haiku Mail)
Attachment preview, drag-and-drop, and save
Email starring
Deskbar replicant for new mail notifications
Trash management
Backup emails to ZIP

Prerequisites

64-bit Haiku
Email accounts already configured in Mail preferences
zip package for backup feature (pkgman install zip)

How to get it

If you want to test the beta version, contact me at jorge at ilfelice.online.

Reporting bugs

Please report issues on GitHub: GitHub · Where software is built

Note

This is beta software and may have bugs. Use at your own risk.

Thanks in advance to anyone who gives it a try!

dasouth · January 4, 2026, 5:02pm

Working good so far on GMX mail with a few emails. I’ll be getting more emails for testing later this evening.

shaka444 · January 4, 2026, 7:28pm

Love it! Works like a charm. Followed Humdinger’s tips on creating a link called “mailbox” in /boot/home/config/settings/Mail so when I click the Mail icon in the Deskbar systray, EmailViews opens. Sweet!

But… No source code available. Hmm

Also, I might not have it pop up a BAlert for every action, like deleting email. Feels a little naggy.

BlueSky · January 4, 2026, 7:45pm

Looks cool. But I’ll pass at testing binary only releases. Happy to test it when it comes out in source code form.

us3r1d · January 4, 2026, 7:49pm

There are source archive (.zip and .tar.gz) at the release link.

I haven’t tried actually building them, but they are there.

BlueSky · January 4, 2026, 7:52pm

You would have a pretty hard time doing so. Because there’s only the screenshot and the Readme in it.

us3r1d · January 4, 2026, 7:54pm

Well, that’s just not right.

nipos · January 4, 2026, 7:55pm

The screenshots look really nice,but I also prefer reading the source before I trust it with my data.

ilfelice · January 5, 2026, 12:22am

Hello,

Thank you to those have started testing EmailViews. It’s really appreciated!

@shaka444 I take notice on the nagginess issue. Let me think about this.

Regarding the source code, it’s not that I am being secretive. I want to release this under a MIT license, but I want to clear some license concerns related to using Santa’s Gift Bag column list view (which I adapted to EmailViews) first. I am unable to contact the author… I hope you understand.

From the screenshots, it does not look like you have tried creating custom queries from within EmailViews. Here is quick instructions on how to do it:

Run a search from the search box (ie., by Subject that contains ‘[haiku-bugs]’)
Click on the ‘+’ icon to the right of the search box.
A dialog is displayed; keep the default name for the query or change it, and click ok.
The custom query will be created and added to the left pane under the built-in queries!

Let me know if you have any questions!

shaka444 · January 5, 2026, 4:33am

Perhaps a shorter timeout of the notification (like 1 sec) would improve the feel.

PulkoMandy · January 5, 2026, 7:36am

Any reasons to use that over the libcolumnlistview that’s shipped with Haiku?

ilfelice · January 5, 2026, 7:49am

Hi Pulkomandy,

Any reasons to use that over the libcolumnlistview that’s shipped with Haiku?

I actually started with Haiku’s BColumnListView, and it was working well until I started testing with a large volume of emails (10K+); performance turned out to be very poor. That’s when I switched to Santa’s Gift Bag ColumnListView, which was already proven in Beam for the same use case. Much better performance, plus it supports batch loading optimizations.

jackburton · January 5, 2026, 9:02am

If I remember correctly, Santa’s gifts bag Is GPL.

ilfelice · January 5, 2026, 9:33am

Hi @jackburton

If I remember correctly, Santa’s gifts bag Is GPL.

Not according to…

github.com/HaikuArchives/SantasGiftBag

LICENSE.md

master

License
================================
The source code, object code, libraries, and the other components of Santa's
Gift Bag are being made publicly available and free to use in freeware and
shareware products with a price under $25 (I believe that shareware should
be cheap). For overpriced shareware (hehehe) or commercial products, please
contact me to negotiate a fee for use. After all, I did work hard on these
classes and invested a lot of time into it. That being said, DON'T WORRY I
don't want much. It totally depends on the sort of project you're working on
and how much you expect to make off it. If someone makes money using my work,
I'd like to get at least a little something for my contribution to that profit.

If any of the components of Santa's Gift Bag are is used in a shareware or
commercial product, I get a free copy.  The source is made available so that
you can improve and extend it as you need. In general it is best to customize
these classes through inheritance, leaving the original Santa's Gift Bag
source code unmodified, so that you can take advantage of enhancements and
bug fixes as they become available. 

Feel free to distribute any components of this archive, but you are required

This file has been truncated. show original

Or am I missing something?

BlueSky · January 5, 2026, 1:20pm

That’s a bad idea in the first place. It says “DO NOT USE FOR NEW PROJECTS” (in actual capital letters) on the Haikuarchives github page. What features do you need from the SGB column list view that our standard one doesn’t provide?

jackburton · January 5, 2026, 1:32pm

You’re right. I remembered It wrong

shaka444 · January 5, 2026, 1:36pm

Beta testing:

Delete function could use ‘undo’ (CTRL-Z)
Better handling of HTML

shaka444 · January 5, 2026, 1:37pm

Santa’s Gift Bag ColumnListView. He answered that here-

BlueSky · January 5, 2026, 1:55pm

Oops, sorry. Seems like I skipped over a few posts on the thread

shaka444 · January 5, 2026, 8:33pm

Kind of big issue with the Trash- If I delete a file from EmailViews and go to the Trash (the actual Trash on my Desktop..) and I try to Restore the file (right click→Restore..) nothing happens! However, if I use Haiku’s standard “New Email” Query to do the same action, it works as it should- Delete/Restore removes from Query and shows back up again in the query when restored.

Another issue- On the standard query templates you have like “New Emails”, “All Emails” etc.. the count in parentheses next to the name updates as you delete files (send to Trash). However, when you create/save a custom query, the email count in parenthesis next to the name does not update until you empty the trash.

Another thought- Maybe can move the mail to the actual Trash like any other Trash move? That action post a pop up window when moved anyway so you wouldn’t need the notifications at all.