Boomerang Mail App Is a Beautiful and Powerful Email Client, but Needs Polishing

At the core of Boomerang Mail App is a host of really smart features. Among the best is the personal assistant you can make use of to streamline your day.

Start off your day by telling Boomerang, "Brief me." The app will show you how many unread email messages you have in your Primary category since yesterday, as long as they haven't been archived. It also displays the number of emails you need to respond to, along with the estimated amount of time it will take you to address all of your messages.

You can also integrate with your calendar, but the assistant features for that aren't quite perfect yet. When I ask Boomerang Mail what's on my schedule for tomorrow, it tries to create a new event. I suspect the key word "schedule" only has one meaning in Boomerang's vocabulary now, but that may change with future updates.

What seems to be missing, unfortunately, is the email tracking functionality that Boomerang's Gmail extension offers. I hope we'll see that in an update before too long.

You can also take advantage of several other time-saving features. Swipe from left to right to delete an email. The real power of the app opens up when you swipe right to left instead. When you do that, you'll see multiple options for how to handle your messages. You can archive, move, snooze, and delete messages from one smooth action.

You're also able to turn on a "key phrase" feature in settings, which can be a real time saver ... or time waster. When you have this feature enabled, just saying "Hey Boomerang" activates the voice command feature. This is quirky right now, and sometimes misunderstands commands.

The voice assistant also doesn't seem to recognize multiple spellings of the same name — when I ask Boomerang to show me all messages from Bryan Wolfe, for example, the app shows me no emails at all. That's because it's looking for the more common spelling, Brian, in spite of the fact that I have the other spelling in my Contacts.

If you're looking for an email client with smart features, take a good hard look at Boomerang. It's got lots of potential.

The Boomerang Mail client is really quite good, in spite of its quirks and possible bugs. I am looking forward to seeing what else the developers have in store for us, and will be switching to this app for at least my morning email checks. The "Brief Me" feature is simply too compelling to ignore.