Tired of boring beep when new email arrives? MailTones lets you pick a fresh new email sound, and set custom email tones for different friends, subjects, and email domains.
Now there’s something that lots of iPhone users have been wanting for a long, long time. I was very happy to get an offer from the folks at Electric Pocket to take a look at this app – and I haven’t been disappointed.
MailTones lets you do all of the above and a bit more. I’ve been testing it out just quickly this afternoon and it works well and just as advertised.
The app includes 25 custom tones that you can assign to contacts, subjects (keywords), or domains. The tones include things like:
- A female voice saying ‘You have mail’
- A couple of different siren sounds
- A Big Ship Horn
- A very loud submarine ‘Dive’ sound
- Sad and ‘wah wah’ tones
- Printer noise
- Cheers (like a crowd cheering)
- Laser and guitar sounds
So, of course, I have set it to play the sound of a cheering crowd when a mail from my spouse comes in. And a blaring big ship horn when a mail involving site comments moderation arrives, as well as a couple of goofy sounds for mails from Josh and Thomas.
When you first launch MailTones it’ll ask if you’re OK with it sending you push notifications. You’ll need to setup mail forwarding on the account you want to use MailTones with to make these work. If you’re using Gmail or MobileMe or similar this is very simple. It just requires you to use the ‘forward a copy to’ setting and put in the forwarding address given to you within the app. You don’t need to share your mail account details in the app or anything similar.
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Please Note: Setting up forwarding of your email is a required part of push setup for this app. For those who have privacy concerns with doing this, there is an FAQ page at Mailtones.net (where mail is forwarded to) that addresses this subject. Check that out HERE. Here’s their answer to the main ‘What about privacy?’ question:
We do not store any email addresses or message contents, or require your email credentials. Incoming messages are scanned by computer to see if they match your alerts or settings, and then a notification is sent you. We discard your email immediately, so please ensure you are only sending a copy of your messages to your mailtones.net email address.
I may be wrong, but this strikes me as a fairly standard approach on this issue, inline with what Boxcar and other push service providers are doing.
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You can choose to get just the sounds only for new mail or to see alerts as well.
There’s not much more to say on this app. It’s one of those apps that does something quite simple, but that also has been on iPhone users’ wish lists for ages.
It’s certainly a keeper for me.
You can grab MailTones in the App Store now, and it’s priced at $2.99.
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Awesome, I can't wait to get this one. By any chance can u upload your own tone…. Thanks again Patrick.
I don't see any allowance for that in the app right now.
From the settings, it doesn't look like you can add your own tones. Now, all they have to do is create the same again, but for SMS; smstones
Totally Agree Ivan. As soon as I read Patrick's review that is exactly what I was thinking. I hope they do a SMS app next…. That would really be a great thing.
SMS Please. Even the crappiest cheap Mobile does that and with continuous repeats.
Oh Dear. I bought it without reading the requirements. I'm with “Privacy”, there is no way I'm giving my main email address out like that. Waste of my money a s I will never use it like that. No way to get it back I suppose. Please be more clear when writing reviews like that.
OK, have updated the post now, to hopefully make things more clear on this portion of things. Text added is as follows:
Please Note: Setting up forwarding of your email is a required part of push setup for this app. For those who have privacy concerns with doing this, there is an FAQ page at Mailtones.net (where mail is forwarded to) that addresses this subject. Check that out HERE. Here’s their answer to the main ‘What about privacy?’ question:
We do not store any email addresses or message contents, or require your email credentials. Incoming messages are scanned by computer to see if they match your alerts or settings, and then a notification is sent you. We discard your email immediately, so please ensure you are only sending a copy of your messages to your mailtones.net email address.
I may be wrong, but this strikes me as a fairly standard approach on this issue, inline with what Boxcar and other push service providers are doing.
Agreed, I thought you made it pretty clear in your review the mail does get forwarded. Anyway, many other applications that I use do the same thing as you mentioned with Boxcar. So far I have not had any problems with privacy & typically I don't e-mail sensitive information that would be put me @ risk. I just think it comes down to common sense, you should not be sending sensitive information in an email that would be your privacy at risk.
I did specifically mention in the post that you'll need to setup mail forwarding in order to make push notifications work. Sorry if that wasn't clear enough. I'm going to update the post to make it a little clearer, and also to point out the privacy policy being employed by Mailtones.net (where mail is forwarded to) – which seems pretty standard, inline with what's offered by Boxcar and other push services etc.
Interesting. I need to turn off my forwarding to test if MailTones will still play the tone I have selected for ALL emails.
I don't care about specific tones for specific people. I just like a different tone to the standard one…
I work in a noisy enviroment and it is nice to be able to tell when I get messages that are ho hum and important messages and not have to keep looking as I can't hear the phone.
Cool. I'm enjoying the loud ship horn.
The dive sound would probably cause me flashbacks.
LOL – that naval background 'resurfacing'
Now THAT was a very POOR attempt at humor. Excuse me while i laugh.
I know – I sunk my own battleship or something.
this app does not work on hotmail or msn live accounts
LOL. My bad. Let me get a system for that setup – I'll use a special code word and you can assign it whichever is the very loudest of the custom tones (think it's the 'dive' entry).
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