Using Hark

Everything on this page describes the app as it ships today. Where a limit is a beta limit, it says so. If something here is wrong, or your question is not here, write to support@souplin.com and a person will answer.

Requirements and installing

Hark runs on macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, on a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later). It needs a Gmail or Google Workspace account.

It arrives as a disk image. Open it, drag Hark into your Applications folder, eject the image, and open Hark from Applications. The app is signed with our Developer ID and notarised by Apple, so macOS opens it without a warning. While Hark is in beta, the download link comes by email when your seat opens; you can join the waitlist for one.

Signing in, and what Hark asks for

On first launch, choose Sign in with Google. macOS opens Google’s own sign-in page in a window it provides — Hark never sees your password, and two-step verification or a security key works there as it does anywhere else. When you are done, the window closes and your inbox loads.

Google’s consent screen lists what Hark is asking for. In plain words, and with the reason for each:

• Read, organise and send your Gmail. The mail client itself: showing messages, marking them read, labels, archive, snooze, drafts and sending. Hark deliberately does not ask for the permission that allows permanent deletion, so it can only ever move a message to Trash.
• Basic Gmail settings. Your signature, vacation responder, filters and send-as addresses, so you can manage them in Hark’s Settings and the change shows on the web.
• Your calendars. Viewing, creating and editing events, answering invitations, showing and hiding calendars, creating and sharing them.
• Your tasks. The Google Tasks panel beside the calendar.
• Your contacts, read-only. Completing a recipient or a guest as you type, and showing a sender’s photo. Hark never writes to your contacts.
• Drive files you pick. Attaching a Google Drive file you choose in Google’s own picker. Hark can see only the files you pick, never your Drive.
• Your email address and name. To label the account inside Hark.

“Google hasn’t verified this app”

Every app that reads Gmail goes through a review by Google, which includes an independent security assessment, and until Hark’s is complete Google’s sign-in page may show this notice. It describes the review’s status, not what the app does with your mail — that is on the privacy page and, in detail, on a Gmail client that never sees your mail. To continue, click Advanced on that screen and then the link to go to Hark.

Workspace accounts

A Google Workspace account signs in the same way, provided your organisation allows third-party apps. If it does not, Google shows its own message on the sign-in page and Hark cannot proceed; your administrator can allow Hark from the Workspace admin console.

One account, for now

The beta connects one Google account per install. The unified inbox across several accounts is built and switched off while the beta is small; there is no Add account entry until it is switched on.

Updates

On its second launch Hark asks whether it may check for new builds on its own. Say yes and it checks about once a day (hourly on beta builds) and tells you when one is ready, with a notification even if Hark is in the background at the time. To check now, choose Check for Updates… from the Hark menu.

Every update is signed, and the app verifies that signature before it installs anything. Installing replaces the app in place; it does not ask for your administrator password. About Hark, in the Hark menu, shows the version and build you are running, which is useful to include in a bug report.

Notifications, the Dock and the menu bar

Until you decide, Hark shows a bar at the top of the window asking to turn notifications on; click Turn On and macOS asks whether it may. The same request is the Allow… button under Settings › General › Desktop notifications. If you said no and change your mind, it is in System Settings › Notifications › Hark.

What Hark notifies you about is under Settings › General › Desktop notifications: new messages; calendar invitations, changes and cancellations; whether a notification shows the subject and a preview; and whether it plays a sound. Hark stays silent while it is the active app — a sound for something already on your screen is just noise.

The Dock badge shows the unread count of your inbox, the same number Gmail shows; switch it off with Show unread count in Dock, under Settings › General › Appearance. The menu-bar item gives a glance at what has just arrived without bringing the window forward.

Mail

Your labels are in the sidebar and on messages, and they are your Gmail’s labels — a change made in Hark shows on the web and on your phone. The reading pane has the actions you expect: archive, label, star, mark unread, snooze until a time you pick (Hark, not Google, brings it back, so Hark has to be running for it to return), mute a conversation, move to Trash. Mailing-list mail shows an Unsubscribe link at the top.

• Search. Gmail’s own operators — from:, has:attachment, is:unread, older_than:1y— go to Google as typed, and the results are Gmail’s. A search you want to keep can be turned into a Gmail filter with Create filter, and the filter then runs on Google’s side for every device.
• Writing. Composing happens in a real macOS text view: bold, italic and underline from the formatting bar, links, inline images, the system spell checker. Drop a file on the message to attach it, or attach a Google Drive file from the picker. Undo Send holds a message for a few seconds after you send it (5 to 30, under Settings › General › Sending). Schedule Send saves the message as a draft and sends it at the time you choose — Hark has to be running then, or it goes out when Hark next opens, because Gmail’s API has no scheduled send of its own.
• Trash, not delete. Hark moves messages to Trash and never deletes permanently, by design; emptying Trash is done on Gmail on the web.
• Images in messages. By default Hark shows a message’s remote images. To be asked first, set External images to Ask before displaying under Settings › General.
• Settings that live on the web. A few Gmail settings are not available to any app. Hark lists them in Settings with a link that opens Gmail on the web at the right account, rather than pretending they are not there.

Calendar and Tasks

Calendar is one click from your inbox on the left rail. Day, Week, Month, Year and Schedule views, plus 4-day, 2-week and 4-week spans; drag to create, drag to move or resize; an Undo toast after a change; recurring events edited for this event, this and following, or all. Calendars are shown and hidden from the sidebar, which also creates, shares and subscribes to calendars. Google Tasks opens in a panel beside the grid, and a task dragged onto a day is scheduled there.

An invitation that arrives in your mail shows Yes, No and Maybe on the message, and the answer writes straight through to the calendar. The full description is on Google Calendar as a native Mac app.

Keyboard

The set is deliberately small in the beta. Gmail’s full layer is being put back one binding at a time, each scoped so it cannot fire while you are typing in a message.

• j and k, or the arrow keys move through the list.
• Esc leaves a message and returns to the list.
• Bold, italic and underline have no key yet; they are on the formatting bar while writing.
• Zoom In, Zoom Out and Actual Size are in the View menu and change the size of message text.
• ⌘, opens Settings, as in every Mac app.
• ⇧⌘R opens Report a Bug.

Where your data lives

Hark has no server for your mail; everything it keeps is on your Mac. The credentials for your Google account are in the macOS Keychain. The cache of messages, events and tasks is a database under ~/Library/Application Support/Hark, one folder per account, its files readable by your user only. Downloaded attachments are kept separately under ~/Library/Caches/Hark; cached remote images, sender photos and logos under ~/Library/Caches/hark-url-cache, ~/Library/Caches/hark-image-cacheand in the app’s WebKit store — all inside your own Library folder. Your settings, your last 25 searches, and the ids of conversations you have muted are in the app’s ordinary preferences file.

Settings › Advanced holds the three controls that matter here. Clear cache removes cached images and downloaded attachments — your mail, drafts, snoozed conversations and accounts stay put, and images and attachments come back on next use. Send crash reports is off by default; on, a crash sends the stack trace, the exception type, signal and termination reason, which thread crashed, when it happened and macOS’s id for that crash, the app version, build and commit, and the macOS version and hardware model — never your mail. Look up avatars on gravatar.com is off by default; on, it sends a hash of each contact’s address to that service. The full picture, including what a bug report contains, is on a Gmail client that never sees your mail.

Signing out and uninstalling

To sign out, click your account photo at the top right of the window and choose Sign out of your address, or use Sign out under Settings › Accounts. Signing out does three things: it tells Google to revoke Hark’s access to your account, deletes the credentials from your Keychain, and removes that account’s cache from your disk.

To uninstall, sign out first — that is what revokes the grant at Google — then quit Hark and drag it from Applications to the Trash. To remove every trace, also delete ~/Library/Application Support/Hark, ~/Library/Caches/Hark, ~/Library/Caches/hark-url-cache, ~/Library/Caches/hark-image-cache, ~/Library/Caches/com.souplin.hark(the updater’s download cache), ~/Library/HTTPStorages/com.souplin.hark, ~/Library/WebKit/com.souplin.hark and ~/Library/Preferences/com.souplin.hark.plist.

If you removed the app without signing out, the grant is still in your Google account: open myaccount.google.com/permissions, find Hark under third-party apps, and remove its access. The Keychain items are in Keychain Access, named beginning with com.hark.oauth.

Reporting a bug

Choose Report a Bug from the Help menu (⇧⌘R), pick the part of the app it is about, and say what happened. The report carries what you typed, whether you marked it a bug or a request, the area you picked, any images you attach, the name-or-email field — pre-filled with your signed-in address; clear it if you would rather not be identified — and facts about the app and machine: version, build and commit, macOS version, hardware model, CPU core count, memory size, free disk space, locale, time zone, thermal state, low-power mode, hours since boot, the time you sent it, how many accounts are connected (a count) and a random per-install id. It never carries message content, subjects, anyone else’s address, tokens or logs. A screenshot is often the fastest way to show us a bug — and it is the one way anything from your inbox can reach us, so crop it if that matters.

Or write to support@souplin.com. Include the build number from About Hark if you can.

Language

Hark is in English and Simplified Chinese. Settings › General › Language sets both your Gmail display language and Hark’s own interface; Hark follows it where it is translated and stays in English otherwise. Restart Hark for the interface language to change.