Spark Desktop electron app lacks automation for linking

Readdle has released an electron version of their “Spark” email software. It’s called “Spark Desktop”. It is an electron app. It has been getting a lot of feedback from past Spark users. It does not seem to have automation for linking, so don’t expect it to work with Hook or any other linking automation. Looking at their email apps and their PDF Expert over many years, as far as I can tell, Readdle is not committed to interoperability of linking. We ( CogSci Apps Corp. and Hook customers) have contacted them many times asking them to spend the half day required to add automation to their software for linking, but this has gone nowhere. We advise customers who care about interoperability and hyperlinking to look elsewhere. Plenty of PDF apps and email app developers have done the work.

To learn more about automation of linking check out:

and

and plenty of linkable apps here:

Link-friendly Mac Apps – Hook

– the post was written because we get several requests for linking to the apps.

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BTW, if one does switch from Spark to 2 to Spark Desktop (electron), as long as the electron app provides some UI to get the URL of the email, you will be able to use Focus on Link in Clipboard in Hook to access the links. Or you can paste and quote part of the link in Hook’s search.

To use a web URL example, if you’ve hooked this web page to something, then you can search for the bookmark in spark-desktop-electron-app-lacks-automation-for-linking/5763 and navigate from there.

There does seem to be a growing awareness among developers, of the benefits of an API that allows interoperability. Even so, there are still developers out there that fail to see the expectations of consumers and industry development trends. Readdle, who left me no choice but to switch to Pen Pro due to the lack of an API is unfortunately one of the declining number of developers who fail to broaden their horizons. On another note I’m not sure what reason they had to convert Spark to Electron.

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It seems there is an option to get a deep link now. Would this improve things?

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The deep link directly opens the email within the Spark desktop app.

Thank you for the info, @vcbrewers , @DeLub .

We have added the support for Spark Desktop. But Hookmark is unable to get the subject of the email. So the url will be the title of a bookmark. You can rename it in Hookmark.

The script is UI based so sometime you might need run Hookmark more than one time.

Please update the script and see if it works. Script version is 316.

Thank you

Thanks for the quick action @bchend .

Unfortunately, it does not seem to work. If I invoke Hookmark, I consistently get “No linkable item found”. Pressing command-L on the same mail does work.

Is there something I can do to help find the cause?

Thank you, @DeLub .

What is your Hookmark version(in Hookmark about window) and macOS version?

Do you have clipboard manager running? I found I need quite Paste.

If you open an email in Spark, then copy the following script to Script Editor, run the script, what the output?

Thank you

Script

tell application "Spark Desktop"
	activate
end tell


set the clipboard to ""
delay 0.1

tell application "System Events" to tell process "Spark Desktop"
	keystroke "l" using {command down}
	delay 0.2
	repeat 10 times -- poll clipboard for ~1 seconds. Sometimes set x to the clipboard throws exception
		try
			set theUrl to the clipboard
			if theUrl is not equal to "" then
				exit repeat
			end if
			
		end try
		delay 0.1
	end repeat
	
	
end tell
return "[" & theUrl & "](" & theUrl & ")"

Unfortunately, this is not working for me either.

Hookmark: Latest Version (including Scripts)
Spark: Latest Beta Update
Clipboard Manager Status: None Running

Thank you, @vcbrewers .

What’s your macOS version?

How can I get the beta?

Could you please try the script in this post:

Thank you

macOS version: Sonoma 14.4 (Developer Beta)
Spark Desktop (Beta): https://sparkmailapp.com/beta3/mac/fP8pJ9BJU/download
Script: I attempted to use the updated script but it doesn’t work.

Thanks!

Thank you, @vcbrewers .

Is there any error message?

No error message. Just the standard messaging when a link isn’t available.

Thank you, @vcbrewers .

We added support for SparkDesk beta, @vcbrewers , @DeLub .

The script version is 317.

Could you please update the script and see if it fixes the problem?

Thank you

Problem is fixed, although it still doesn’t retrieve the title of the email. I am a paying user of Spark and more than happy to make a feature request to make the email title compatible with Hook …. I just need to know what to request.

Thank you!

Thank you, @vcbrewers .

A keyboard shortcut to get the email subject would be nice. Or a keyboard shortcut to get a markdown link, e.g., [title](email URL).

Thank you

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