For two years, the most common message in my inbox has been some version of the same sentence:
“I love Talanoa on my Mac. But I read half my email on my phone, and going back to Gmail there ruins the whole thing.”
They were right, and it bothered me. An email client that only works when you’re at your desk isn’t really an email client — it’s a desk accessory. You sort your inbox by sender in the morning, feel calm for an hour, then open your phone at lunch and fall straight back into the chronological pile you were trying to escape.
So: Talanoa v0.10.0 brings the mobile app to iOS and Android. It’s in beta today.
The easy version of a companion app is a reader. Show a list, let people reply, ship it. I didn’t want that, because the thing that makes Talanoa useful isn’t the reading — it’s the structure.
So the mobile app carries the actual model over:
Plus the things a phone has to get right: full-text search, a real compose sheet with auto-saved drafts, snooze, folders (Drafts, Sent, Archive, Snoozed, Promotions, Spam, Trash), calendar-event cards in threads, light and dark themes, English and French.
This is the design decision that made mobile hard, and the one I refused to trade away.
Almost every mobile email app you can install works the same way: you hand it your credentials, its backend connects to Gmail on your behalf, and a fleet of servers you don’t control holds a copy of your mail so it can push notifications to you quickly. It’s the easy architecture. It’s also why “we don’t read your email” is a promise you have to take on faith.
Talanoa mobile has no backend. None.
Your phone talks to your provider directly — the Gmail REST API with incremental history sync, Microsoft Graph with per-folder delta sync, and for everything else a real IMAP/SMTP client running over TCP on the device. Your mailbox lives in a SQLite database on your phone. Your OAuth tokens live in the system keystore (Keychain / Keystore), not in a database I operate. There is no Talanoa server in the path, because there is no Talanoa server.
The honest trade-off, stated plainly: no server means no instant push. Background refresh on mobile is scheduled by the OS, and the floor is about 15 minutes — opportunistically on iOS. Open the app and it syncs immediately; leave it closed and your phone checks in when the OS lets it. Sub-minute delivery would mean a server holding your mail. I’d rather ship the 15-minute version and keep the promise.
Open Settings → Devices on the desktop app and you’ll get a QR code. On your phone, tap “Sync from Talanoa desktop” and scan it. Your accounts, sections, and preferences come across.
Your emails don’t travel between devices — each device syncs its own copy straight from your provider. There’s nothing to migrate, and nothing in the middle to intercept.
If you’d rather just look around first, there’s a demo mailbox on the welcome screen. No account, no signup.
Beta means the app is complete enough to be someone’s daily email client — I’ve been using it as mine — and rough enough that I want to hear about it when it isn’t.
What’s solid: onboarding and OAuth, incremental sync on all three engines, the sender/section model, compose and send, search, folders, offline reading.
What I’m still hardening: background sync timing on Android across manufacturer battery policies, a handful of IMAP servers with unusual folder naming, and attachment handling on very large threads.
What isn’t there yet: the Kanban board, the calendar availability picker, and push notifications in the sense you’re used to. They’re coming, in that order.
The beta isn’t public on the stores yet. To join:
Open the desktop app → Settings → Devices → “I want to be a beta tester”. That opens a pre-filled message; hit send and I’ll set you up with a TestFlight or Play beta invite.
I’m taking testers in waves so I can actually read and act on what comes back. If you write me a sentence about which provider you use and which phone you’re on, you’ll go to the front of the queue — those are exactly the two variables I need coverage on.
The mobile app is included in Power Mode. Not a separate app, not a separate subscription, not a separate purchase. If you’re on Power Mode — monthly, annual, or lifetime — your phone is part of the plan. Lifetime buyers who backed this thing early: this is what you bought.
Focus Mode users can use mobile too, with the same one-account limit as desktop.
Two years ago Talanoa was a desktop app with an opinion about how inboxes should work. Today that opinion follows you to the coffee shop, and it still doesn’t phone home.
Go grab it. Then tell me what’s broken.
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