Sparrow has been downloaded more than 150 000 times since its release on October, the 4th 2010. Thanks to all of you for your valuable feedback and happy new year!

Sparrow Beta 7

It’s Christmas time and we are both proud and glad to offer you Sparrow Beta 7. Our little bird had a serious face lift and performance boost.

Feature

• Progress Bar
• Gmail shortcuts 
• Quick labeling
• Quick Labeling and Archiving
• Smart recipient auto-complete
• ‘Download message on demand’ option
• Auto-restart on Menu Bar/Dock settings
• Quicklook in the compose window
• Horizontal scrollbar
• Plain text option

Shortcuts

• ⌘-L Quick labelling
• ⇧-⌘-L Quick labeling & Archiving
• ⌘-K  to insert link in the compose window

General improvements

• Message list scroll performance
• Category/account switch performance
• Auto-detect SMTP port failures 

UI

• New compose window design
• New conversation view design
• Message list re-design

Bug fix

• Printing bug
• ⌘↵ shortcut fix
• Search crash
• Sync issues
• Forwarded message not shown
• Dragging selection scroll
• Labels randomly turns black
• Encoding issues
• Empty message bug
• URL not converted to link
• Scattered space
• And a gazillion other bugs 

‘Download on demand’ in the Advanced Preference Panel will allow Gmail users with large mailboxes to limit the synchronization between Sparrow and their account.

Sparrow is also becoming Mac AppStore compliant and resource location have been changed. You will now find your mail database in LIbrary/ApplicationSupport/Sparrow and your preferences file in Library/Preferences named com.sparrowmailapp.sparrow.plist.

We are also testing advertising in this version of Sparrow. Of course, you’ll be able to turn the ads on & off at your convenience in the Preferences Advanced panel by clicking on ‘Disable Ads’.

Grab your Sparrow Beta 7 copy here or simply ‘Check for update’. 

Merry Christmas to you all and happy new year!

Sparrow Beta 6

Sparrow is faster than ever with IMAP-IDLE!

As we have improved performance on many levels, a full new sync will be done on all your mail accounts connected to Sparrow. During this first sync, Sparrow won’t be in IMAP-Idle mode. It will become active once the first sync is completed.

Features:

• IMAP Idle 
• Report Spam 
• ‘Add label’ from the right pane 
• Notifications when pane is open ‘à la Gmail’ 
• Inserting new line in reply 
• Creating links 
• Drag & Drop attachments made right

Shortcuts:

• ⌘-⌫ to delete
• ⌫ to archive 
• ⌘-A is back! 
• ⇧-⌘-J to mark as Spam 
• Configurable HotKeys in Preferences (new mail & Sparrow window)

General improvements:

• Search performance 
• Switching category/accounts performance 
• Message loading performance 
• Higher level for sounds

UI:

• Message list redesign 
• ToolBar icon hover 
• Cell selection fade-in has been deleted Menu layout

Bug fix:

• Permanent loading issue 
• Alias name editing 
• Label assignment 
• Sync between all windows 
• Application won’t stay minimized 
• Focus problem when switching apps 
• Search crash 
• Quicklook crash 
• Label with [Gmail]/ prefix 
• Text encoding (Chinese, Cyrillic) 
• Attachments in replies
• And many, many more that we won’t list here.

We also have improved many of inconsistent behaviors that have been reported by our remarkable community of users. Once again, we would like to thank all of you who are helping us refining Sparrow.

Check for updates of download Sparrow Beta 6 here.

Sparrow Beta 5

Labels! Here they are! 

Thanks for your patience. 

Label implementation on Beta 5 is really basic but be sure that we will add a lot more useful features in the next release.

Sparrow Beta 5 will begin a new full sync between your gmail account and your Mac. Labels will be the last thing to sync so don’t panic if they don’t show up right away. 

The app should be syncing for some time at first launch. We had to do this in order to improve Sparrow’s behavior and overhaul performance.

New features

• Labels
• Quicklook on attachments
• Save Cc/Bcc state
• Click on a sidebar icon (inbox, favorite…) get you to the top of the list
• ‘Move to inbox’ from archive and search sections
• Memorize main window size
• Attachments saved in ‘downloads’ folder

Shortcuts

• Cmd + Enter for send
• Esc to close the window
• Space to open/close a message in the message list
• Open link in background (cmd + click)

General improvements

• ‘Me’ in conversations
• CPU/ memory usage
• Scroll speed

UI

• New toolbar
• New message list buttons
• New sounds
• Label and alias icons in preferences
• New selected cell color

Bug fix

• Single account alias
• Avatar transparency
• Email auto-scrolling to the bottom bug
• Sending issues
• Removing account crash

We’ve done a lot more than what you see in Beta 5. We’ve got to surprise you with Sparrow 1.0.

Beta 6 will be the last Beta. After this, Sparrow will go 1.0.

Thanks for following.

Go and get Sparrow Beta 5 for free here. 

A few more days

We need to test Sparrow a bit further before releasing Beta 5.

We are sorry for the delay. While we were implementing labels, we stumbled upon an important performance issue that had to be fixed. 

Don’t worry, we’re not going Letters here. Sparrow Beta 5 will be released soon.

We need a few more days to give you the update you deserve. We want to make sure that the experience you have with Sparrow will be more than satisfying.

More reliable, faster and more beautiful, Beta 5 will hit your desktop soon.