Alongside an update to photo utility Shotwell comes a new version of Geary – the popular open-source desktop e-mail app.

It’s the first release by Yorba, the team behind the client, since it failed to make its $100,000 crowdfunding goal back in April.

The lightweight app, a firm favourite of mine for a long time, gains a number of new features in today’s update, many of which have long been requested.

Geary now has per-account searching, auto-saving of draft e-mails and a built-in security tool that checks outgoing links for malicious content.

The look of the app, which has always put focus on mail first and chrome second, has also been updated.

The sidebar, which now displays an unread count per folder, uses a new set of monochrome icons for accounts and folders; the toolbar has been refreshed with new ‘menu buttons’.

The e-mail list hides unstarred and read status icons by default, opting to reveal them on mouse-over. When checked, however, they remain visible.

Install Geary 0.4 In Ubuntu

If you’re using Ubuntu 12.10 or 13.04 then you can grab this release from the Yorba PPA.

Open up a new Terminal window and enter the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yorba/ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install geary

Ubuntu 13.10 users will find it available in the Ubuntu Software Center.