I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time. Up until now, on my Chromebook, I’ve had to rely on various takes on webmail to read email from my many and varied email accounts. In some cases, that’s fine. But when you have a number of email accounts, adding that many tabs to your Chrome window (especially on a Chromebook) that can seriously clog up your tabs.

Prior to the latest iteration of CloudMagic, working with a Chrome-based IMAP email client was an exercise in futility and frustration. Now, however, the developers of this Chrome addon have succeeded in making a worthy tool for your email needs.

CloudMagic started out (and still is) an Android email app. It works quite well and allows you to house numerous email accounts in one, well-designed, home. But, before we get going with this, CloudMagic on ChromeOS isn’t nearly as polished as its Android counterpart (yet). It is a bit slow, doesn’t offer all the features you might want/need in an IMAP client, and it does have a few bugs (such as the inability to do multi-select and you can only delete two consecutive emails before you have to go back to the left pane and select the next email to delete).

The good news is that CloudMagic isn’t just an IMAP client. It actually supports:

  • Google Apps
  • Outlook 365
  • Exchange
  • Yahoo Mail
  • Outlook
  • Gmail
  • iCloud
  • IMAP

You can set up multiple accounts, star emails, get instant push notifications, and more. So it is definitely worth trying.

How do you try? Simple. Let’s add an IMAP email account to CloudMagic. Here’s how:

  • Install the app from the Chrome Webstore
  • Start the app from your ChromeOS menu
  • When prompted click GET STARTED
  • Click IMAP from the list of supported account types (See below image)
cloudmagica.png
Selecting IMAP as your account type.
Image: Jack Wallen
  • Fill out the necessary information for your IMAP account (See below image)
  • Check the box for I am not a robot
  • Select whatever images you are prompted to prove you are not a robot
  • Click Add

That’s it. You should now have the IMAP account added. You can either click ADD MORE to add more accounts, or click GO TO INBOX to read your IMAP email.

Once installed and running, you can pin CloudMagic to your dock for easier access (Open CloudMagic, right-click it’s icon in the dock, and select Pin.

You now have a simple to use IMAP email client for your Chromebook. No longer will you have worry with adding tab after tab on your browser to view your various email accounts.

We’re not finished yet! CloudMagic also includes a card system that allows you to get more done from within the client itself. You’ll notice, within the email reading pane, a small CARDS icon:

Click on the Cards icon and a new popup will appear allowing you to connect Todoist, Evernote, and Pocket to your account, as seen below. Once connected, you can quickly save an email to one (or more) of those accounts for further action.

NOTE: You must have accounts for these various services in order for them to work.

Have you found a better way to deal with email on your Chromebook? If so, share with your fellow TechRepublic readers.

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