
Sylpheed
Lightweight and user-friendly e-mail client
What is Sylpheed?
Sylpheed is a simple, lightweight but featureful, and easy-to-use e-mail client (mailer, MUA).
Sylpheed runs on many systems such as Windows, Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and other Unix-like systems.
Sylpheed uses GTK+ GUI toolkit. The newest version of Sylpheed works with GTK+ 2.4 or later (2.6 or later is recommended).
Sylpheed is a free software distributed under the GNU GPL (the library part is GNU LGPL). You can freely use, modify and redistribute it under the license.
Sylpheed Screenshots






Sylpheed Features
Sylpheed information
Supported Languages
- English
Comments and Reviews
Tags
- Email Client
- non-html
- mua
Category
Office & ProductivityRecent user activities on Sylpheed
thinks Thunderbird is an alternative to Sylpheed
BaronVonButtholeDownvoted a comment on Sylpheed
Sylpheed is very good, for what it does, but with one *very important* caveat. Sylpheed stores all your passwords in plain text. As to why the authors choose not to use encryption is beyond me. Encrypting user credentials is essential. It should never be optional. FileZilla is another example of an extremely popular program that leaves users exposed in precisely the same way. Tsk! This lapse in security seems not to bother some people. Although it should. So please be aware and be safeBaronVonButtholereviewed Sylpheed
It's nearly 2023 and yet here is an email client that can't display HTML messages as HTML.
Dropped using my 365 online email account as I found it slow and clunky.
Sylpheed with an inbox open is using 11.4MB, with the same inbox open via Office365 in Firefox it uses 81.7MB! I just need to check and answer my email - that's it. Sylpheed is fast and does the job.
[Edited by mrbogus, May 26]
Finally a mail client that won't slow down my ancient laptop to a halt when I have stuff open besides it, but with a little problem: If you're using GMail two-factor authorization, you need to create an “app password” for it because Sylpheed can't get the GMail log-in credentials via a web page. It also displays HTML mails in a rather primitive way (like Lynx, Links or W3M on the console).
Sylpheed is very good, for what it does, but with one very important caveat. Sylpheed stores all your passwords in plain text.
As to why the authors choose not to use encryption is beyond me. Encrypting user credentials is essential. It should never be optional. FileZilla is another example of an extremely popular program that leaves users exposed in precisely the same way. Tsk!
This lapse in security seems not to bother some people. Although it should. So please be aware and be safe
Is this still a fact as of 2020?
Reply written ago
Why not just encrypt the drive it's on? Now that everyone is moving to SSD practically, it doesn't affect the speed and is a very good security practice.
Reply written ago
I tried Sylpheed very briefly and forgot to check to see if my password was stored in plaintext. But if someone has access to the password in Sylpheed's settings, then they have access to the email it accesses anyway. I'm not saying that storing it in the clear is ideal, and I understand that email passwords may be the same as for other things (e.g. hosting account FTP and/or admin access). As far as encrypting the drive, that's a good idea, but it goes out the window if someone has access to your computer while you're logged in.
Reply written ago
It's nearly 2023 and yet here is an email client that can't display HTML messages as HTML.
Doesn't support folder selection or address book ldap.
Looks good - seems to be easy and well stuffed. Layout is somehow aged. May be a relaunch might help.
i like it, set up was a breeze.