Rocketbox: Mail Search, Done Right.

Do you know which Mail.app’s features I use more? Search and mailboxes. The basic functions, yet the most powerful I could ever ask for to get things done with my messages. Pretty much as if someone tells you he loves folders and Spotlight, I can’t live without these two simple things. But good things can always get better. What’s simple can be evolved, refined, made more powerful while still maintaining its original simplicity at the core. Take a look at your running machine, because its operating system is the best example of what I’m talking about.

I’ve already written about a great plugin for Mail I’ve recently discovered, it’s called MsgFiler and it lets me quickly move messages around without leaving my keyboard. And that’s for mailboxes. Now, what about the search function? While smart collections are indeed a great way to easily retrieve messages based on some user-assigned criteria, still I can’t find a better solution than the classic search bar when it comes to find messages. Either by content or original author, it usually takes between 10 and 20 seconds for me to find the information I’m looking for (an email address, a name, a macro) and use it somewhere else. I wish there was another way that combined with the simplicity of ⌘ + F and more advanced features like boolean operators and filters, as I really can’t stand clicking on those buttons in the toolbar. Turns out the in the same moment I was thinking about this stuff a rocket was launching.

It’s called Rocketbox, and brings email searching to a new level.

Rocketbox is a very advanced plugin for Mail.app that doesn’t act on the usual Mail window but opens a dedicated one instead. It’s basically an email search on steroids, which provides a huge set of advanced features that make going through a big email library a real pleasure. Once you’ve installed the plugin (it comes with an installer, requires 1 minute to be up and running) you just have to fire up Mail.app, hit the default hotkey (⌘ + ⌃ + F) and start searching. Rocketbox’s window is very similar to Mail’s one: there’s a sidebar on the left, which contains Flags, Accounts and Mailboxes. These are the “filters” that you can use to refine your searches and get better, more focused results. The greatest feature about Rocketbox is the people suggestions: as you start typing a name in the search bar, the app quickly scans each of your contacts and presents a beautiful HUD-ish dropdown menu with names that match what you were typing. Sounds complicated, but it’s really simple and useful. Instead of going through 300 + mails from a “Mike” contact, you can instantly choose to load mails from “Mike Ross”, for example. As I mentioned above you can apply some filters from the sidebar: you remember you had this mail from Tom with an attachment? Type Tom, choose the contact, select “has attachment” from the sidebar and here you go with the message you wanted.

Messages are listed right under the search bar: they have inline previews, so you’ll be able to see a part of the message body, together with the From, To, Date and Subjects fields. Also, each word you type in the search bar gets highlighted in yellow. To open a message you have to either double click or press Enter, but I wish there was support for Quick Look to quickly preview a full message and then close it again. Also, my only major gripe with Rocketbox is that sometimes the cursor doesn’t automatically go to the search field. Maybe this will be fixed with the future updates.

Let me end this review by mentioning one of the best feature of Rocketbox, the one I’ve been using for 2 days now: boolean searches. Start a new search, type “Mike subject: Review AND MacStories” and the app will retrieve all the messages from Mike with the words Review and MacStories in the Subject field. I could keep on writing examples for hours, but I just want to give you an idea of how useful this Rocketbox thing can be.

If you’re a Mail power user, you’ve got a huge mail library and you wish there was a better way to search through your messages, Rocketbox is aimed at you. It came out of nowhere, but it can seriously become one of the best Mail additions of this year. A 30 days free trial it’s available, you can purchase the full version at $14.95. The best about Rocketbox it’s that it seamlessly integrates with Mail, it feels natural and consistent.

After a few days of usage it doesn’t even seem it’s another app.

Giveaway

We’ve got 10 licenses of Rocketbox up for grabs. To enter the competition this time you’ll just have to leave a comment here, telling me what do you think of the app (download it here) and what else you’d like to see implemented.

I’ll announce the winners on Saturday, January 30th.