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Mailtags

7 points by hasitseth ↗ HN
#mailtags A hack is to use hashtags in emails. I have been using it since a year and it's worked out fabulous. This is how it works: if you include custom hashtags, the emails are far more searchable. It's like poor man's Slack!

The main benefit is the flexibility of creating hashtags based on projects, people, phases of an arbitration, categories of projects, etc. The great benefit of custom mail hashtags is that it needs no plugin and no additional steps. Just type the hashtag in footer of emails and make it far more search friendly.

It's easy to mess this up if the hashtag usage is not consistent. Also, the recipients of your emails may find the hashtags to be a curiosity. Best to keep a 'Note' or a sticky to keep hashtag usage consistent across all mails.

I had thought of filing a patent on this, but felt that getting over a 35 USC 101 or 103 would be hard :-)

7 comments

[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 30.3 ms ] thread
CelticBard
First time I’m hearing out this, gonna check it out. Thanks
joshu
Adding tags to your things so you could find them again was the original intent for tagging.

I think the ancient pachyderm mail client could do stuff like this. Iirc google hd to license something from them way back…

funcDropShadow
There is a plugin for Apple Mail called MailTags [1], which allows the recipient (and sender) to attach the tags he or she wants to attach to an email. Other MUAs (mail user agents, i.e. mail programs) have supported tagging for decades. Just look at Thunderbird, or some of the Emacs-based mail programs. I am sure there is a way to tag mails in mutt as well. And all that works without requiring coordination between sender and recipient. These tags are not part of the body of an Email and can therefore be used in specialised searches without risking accidental matches.

[1]: https://smallcubed.com/support/mt/manual

hasitseth
All of them still need plugins. This is just a plain user hack to include hashtags in the mail body itself. But thanks for all the interesting information. That said, I never believed it was any novel enough. Many must have thought about it earlier was my first thought.
funcDropShadow
> All of them still need plugins.

No. Thunderbird has it built in. mu4e has it built in.

nicolaslem
I believe that in email-land what you describe is usually referred to as labels rather than tags. Many email providers use labels under the hood for everything, Gmail being the most famous one. For instance the Inbox is just a collection of emails with the "new" label attached.

You can of course define your own labels, for example:

- https://fastmail.blog/productivity/fastmail-labels

- https://support.google.com/mail/answer/118708

Caveat, labels may be a bit clunky when using thrid-party clients and IMAP.

It is great that you have found a low-tech solution to a problem you have, but you may be reinventing the wheel a little.

masukomi
there's a key difference.

labels are applied _after_ the message is _received_. Their solution applies the tags _before_ the message is _sent_.

thus they're tagging the thread at the beginning of their interaction with it.