Share your feedback!

Let us know how we can improve Swift Mail.

Keyboard navigation including single-key reading

In order to use Swift Mail as an efficient daily driver, I need to be able to read mail without reaching for my mouse/trackpad. The most common way email clients have implemented this over the years is by mapping Spacebar globally to page-down (so you can hit this key even if keyboard focus is in the message list, rather than the message content pane), except when the current message is already scrolled to the bottom, in which case Spacebar selects the next message. While I'd love Swift Mail to support this "single-key reading" shortcut, at a minimum I feel it should support standard macOS keyboard navigation of the message viewer scroll pane. Right now if I use the Tab key to move through the keyboard focus points in the Swift Mail UI, there are tab stops for the folder list, the message list, an invisible stop that doesn't seem to do anything, and for the search box. I feel that invisible stop should be for the message list (so it's easy to Tab and shift-Tab between the message list and message viewer), enabling the message view to be scrolled with arrows and page-up/down keys. I also checked if this was any better with macOS's "Keyboard Navigation" option enabled, but while this made more controls accessible with the Tab key, such as the New Message button, this didn't help me read emails that require scrolling with the keyboard.

Kevin Yank 4 months ago