MailTones FAQ - iPhone & iPod Touch

Here are the answers to some of the questions iPhone and iPod users have been asking...

• How does this work?

  When you first use MailTones we create a special, unique, email address for you at mailtones.net. Anything you send to this mailtones.net email address will be "delivered" to your iPhone as a notification alert using Apple's Push Notification Service. You can control how the alert behaves through MailTones on your iPhone. You can forward a copy of your email to this address and receive notifications of all your email, or be more selective in what you forward, so you only get some notifications.

• What about Privacy?

  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.

• What is my mailtones.net email address?

  You can find this in the MailTones iPhone application - simply press Mail Forwarding in the Settings section towards the bottom of the screen.

• MailTones stopped working when I got a new phone

  The MailTones forwarding email address is actually tied to your phone, so when you get a new phone its very likely that we'll have assigned you a new address. You'll need to change your email forwarding to use this new address and then everything will work fine for you.

• How do I forward email to my mailtones.net address?

  Really it depends on your email provider - for GMail, go to "Settings" (in the top right corner) then "Forwarding and POP/IMAP". Then choose "Forward a copy of my incoming mail to" and enter your mailtones.net email address. Make sure you leave "keep Google Mail's copy in the Inox" chosen, as otherwise you won't have a copy of your email to read.

• GMail wants to send an authorisation code to the forwarding address - how do I read it?

  We've added some smarts to MailTones so that it spots this message and displays the code on your iPhone screen. If this doesn't work, make sure your GMail account is set to use English when you set-up the forwarding. You can change it back to your own language once the forwarding is set-up.

• Yahoo wants to send an authorisation code to the address - how do I read it?

  Sadly you can't, as you can't read email that goes to mailtones.net (see privacy, above). What we recommend is to set up a free GMail account, then forward your Yahoo Mail to that - then in turn use GMail to forward a copy of your email to your iPhone.

• Can I choose my own tones?

  Sadly not, the way MailTones works is such that it can only play the tones we put in the application. We tried hard to choose a good set, but let us know if we missed any kinds of tones you'd like.

• Can I control vibrate?

  At this time, Apple's Notification Service doesn't let us control vibrate - it is always on when you show alerts, always off otherwise. Hopefully they'll improve this in the future.

• I'm not getting notified - what's up?

  Please make sure you have authorized MailTones to notify you - this is in Settings on your iPhone. If you are trying a test message, be aware that sending a message to yourself from your own gmail account won't work - try sending a message direct to your mailtones.net address instead. If a message sent directly to your mailtones.net address alerts you but a messge sent to your regular email address doesn't, then check your email forwarding settings very carefully. If the address in email forwarding doesn't match the mailtones address exactly, then you won't be able to get MailTones alerts.

• Does MailTones work with Exchange?

  MailTones will work with Exchange for sounding alerts on forwarded messages. We have found that Exchange forwarding changes the recipient address of a forwarded message, so you may have trouble setting up contact metching. It might be helpful to forward Exchange test messages to an email address you have access to and then examing the email headers so you can configure your matching rules with more accuracy.

• I'm drowning in a sea of notifications - help!

  You can be smart about how much MailTones notifies you - first you can use the "ignore" setting in the iPhone application to ignore either all your email apart from messages which match certain senders or subjects, or you can use filters at your email provider (eg. GMail) to only forward some of your email to your mailtones.net address. With these two tools in hand, so you should be able to just get notified of the things that really matter to you.

• Can I send you feedback and ideas?

  Yes, definitely - we'd love to know what you like (and don't like) about MailTones - the best way is to send an email directly to mailtones@electricpocket.com. We'll do our best to get back to you quickly!

MailTones FAQ - BlackBerry

Here are the answers to some of the questions BlackBerry users have been asking...

• How does this work?

  Its simple on the BlackBerry, just set the email sound in your profile to Silent, and let MailTones control the sounds you hear when email arrives.

• Can I choose my own tones?

  Yes, just use our file browser to pick MP3's from your card - you need to choose short sounds or alerts though, as they play right through.

• Can I send you feedback and ideas?

  Yes, definitely - we'd love to know what you like (and don't like) about MailTones - the best way is to send an email directly to mailtones@electricpocket.com. We'll do our best to get back to you quickly!

 

We hope this helps you enjoy MailTones!