Multi-window support and a better compose experience

Today we’re releasing a major update to the Fastmail interface, with improvements focused on making mulitasking and compose better. Here’s what’s new.

Multi-window support

Sometimes you need to reference one email while replying to another, or draft several messages at once. Fastmail now supports opening compose and conversation views in separate windows.

Hold Shift when clicking reply, forward, or any compose action to open it in a new window. You can also use Shift+R to reply in a new window, or Shift+A to reply all. Or pop out a whole conversation into its own window by shift-clicking in the message list, or using the button next to the subject in the top right if it’s already open.

Your undo send timer works across windows too — if you send from a pop-out window, the undo notification appears in your main window so you’re still in control.

Inline replies

Replying to a message in a conversation now keeps you right where you are. Instead of switching to a separate compose screen, your reply appears inline within the thread, so you can see the full conversation while you write. It’s the most natural way to reply — you stay in context, and your draft lives alongside the messages you’re responding to.

If you’d rather compose in a focused view like before, you can expand your reply to full screen at any time. We’ll remember your preference.

A cleaner compose

We’ve unified the look of our compose view across mobile and desktop, giving you a cleaner, more consistent interface wherever you’re writing.

A few highlights:

• Switch between Reply and Reply All mid-compose without losing your work. A new button in the compose header lets you change your reply mode on the fly, and Fastmail will intelligently recalculate the recipients for you.
• Hide the formatting toolbar if you prefer a distraction-free writing area. A toggle in the toolbar lets you show or hide formatting options with a single click, and your preference is remembered.
• Drag and drop recipients between To, Cc, and Bcc. The Cc and Bcc fields appear automatically when you start dragging an address, and tuck away again when you’re done if not needed. You can select multiple recipients using Shift-click for a range, or Cmd/Ctrl click to select individually.
• Quickly add a recipient to your contacts or view their contact information if already a contact. Just click the recipient to select their token, then click again to get a menu of options.

Move the reading pane below your inbox

You’ve always been able to show a reading pane to the right of your message list. Now you can choose to place it below instead. This horizontal split gives you the full width of the screen for reading, which is especially useful on narrower monitors. You’ll find the option in your mail preferences.

And more

For those of us who don’t want our signature repeated in every thread, there’s now an option to turn off signatures on replies, forwards, or both. Head to Settings → Mail preferences to choose whether your signature appears above or below quoted text — or not at all.

We’ve also added find-in-conversation to our desktop app. Just hit Cmd-F on Mac, or Ctrl-F on Windows/Linux, to get a search box letting you quickly find text in a long conversation.