There it is…staring at me…constantly. The little icon on my phone’s mail app notifying me that I have new emails waiting for me to read them. I give my most fervent effort to keeping that number low, but it feels a bit like trying to train my cat to do a cartwheel—futile, at best.

I know I’m not alone in this as I look over other people’s shoulders and see their phone’s mail app. “5”…”27”…”43”…or, my personal favorite, the triple digits. I know mom always told me not to compare myself to others, but gosh does it feel good to see someone’s mail app say “138” and know that at least I’m doing better than that guy!

I’ve read about some very interesting email apps that are supposed to help keep that dreaded number on the low end…or, dare I say it, non-existent. One such app is called Zero. It basically turns your inbox into a social-media-type feed. It has easy access buttons at the button to make filing, replying, downloading attachments or saving an email for later easy and streamlined. And with only a quick preview appearing for each email, it’s a very clean interface and easy to navigate.

The popular Mailbox app utilizes swipe commands to streamline your journey through the inbox. There is also a convenient feature to temporarily move a message out of the inbox for a specified period if you know you can’t address it until a later time. And over time, it learns which swipe patterns you do most often with certain messages and creates an auto-swipe gesture.

And the Boxer app has some pretty cool features, too. It combines all your accounts into one place and gives you a huge set of tools to choose from. Like sending notes to the cloud, replying with a canned response, adding your emails to your to-do list and being able to prioritize messages for easy referencing later.

Have you found a good app to streamline your email processes? Which is your favorite?