I’m posting this here rather than GitHub as they are not bugs, but suggestions.
I Just tried 5.801 - some small changes, but a great improvement
The auto-expand a folder when account selected is great.
Would it be possible to have a “clear all local messages” option available in the 3-dots menu on the “Manage Folder” tab? This would allow locally stored messages in all folders to be cleared with one command (as was available under the “long press on an account menu” in 5.6) rather than having to go through each folder individually?
If possible I’d prefer that pressing the back button went back through the ‘hamburger’ menu rather than a direct exit from the folder being viewed, i.e. ‘back’ be made to open the hamburger menu when a folder is being viewed. If landing on the ‘hamburger’ menu tab from a ‘back’ instruction could have the account drawer expanded by default that would be useful.
I make these suggestions after deciding to give 5.801 a trial & finding the the simple addition of auto-expanding the folder came very close to the 5.6 functionality I have grown used to.
I’m curious. What’s your use case for this? Do you regularly experience bugs that would require getting rid of downloaded messages? Are you moving messages to folders that are not synced and the local copies just pile up there taking up valuable space?
I’m not a fan of users having to manage local messages. Ideally K-9 Mail should automatically clean up messages that are no longer needed. We currently don’t have that feature, which is why “clear local messages” was kept (or rather re-added during the beta). But I consider it a workaround, not a solution to the actual problem. See Bring back "clear local messages" · Issue #4684 · thunderbird/thunderbird-android · GitHub
I’d consider this a horrible abuse of the back button. Drawers are not supposed to work that way. But I now understand that going back to the account overview using the back button is important to some people’s workflow. So the preliminary plan is to add a new account overview screen that is used as start screen (if enabled). Selecting an account in that screen will open the auto-expand folder, showing basically the same message list screen as you see now in 5.800. The only difference will be that we hide the account switcher in the drawer (since people now use the account overview screen to switch accounts).
Note: Multiple topics/questions in one thread (forum topic) often make discussions hard to follow. Please try creating one forum topic per discussion topic/question in the future.
I use K-9 with POP as described in : Why was the account overview screen useful? - #13 by pmontra . My android devices are only used for mail when away from my primary PC. All outgoing messages are bcc’d to the relevant email address so my primary PC ends up with copies of all incoming & outgoing emails. This means that messages build up & aren’t cleared in K-9. Once I’ve returned home & downloaded with my primary PC, which is set to delete from the server, I wipe the copies on my android devices. This is where the “Clear messages” is useful.
I have noticed that occasionally the size of a mailbox doesn’t return to the minimum (104.4 KB)with “Clear Messages”. In this case the “Recreate Data” option is required to wipe the remaining unwanted data. I haven’t investigated why this happens other than checking for any messages remaining (never found any). It doesn’t affect all accounts at any one time, or for any obvious reason. I wouldn’t have been aware of this memory ‘leak’ if K-9 didn’t display the account size or if I didn’t enable its display, but now knowing that it can happen would leave me wondering if it still happens with v5.8, but not being able to track, other than looking at the storage usage in android App Info.
I agree, not an optimum use of the back key. I suggested it as it follows the workflow of previous versions of K-9: In v5.6 pressing back from an inbox takes you to the account overview page, pressing the K-9 logo from the inbox of an account displays the account folders. The latter is the same pressing as the hamburger from the inbox in v5.8.
Have you considered using IMAP on the phone? When you download and delete messages with your primary PC, the messages would automatically disappear from K-9 Mail during the next sync (with IMAP).
Long-term there’s a decent chance POP3 support will be removed from K-9 Mail. We don’t support the download and delete from server model that POP was built for. Also, we don’t want to be the single store of a user’s messages. That will only end in tears if there’s a bug in K-9 Mail that destroys the database, if the device is lost or stolen, or if the device breaks. For non-rooted users it’s not possible to get to the database if e.g. the app doesn’t start anymore due to another bug.
I’m not saying POP3 is not useful. But I think a mobile app with proper POP3 support should offer extensive backup functionality and the capability to manage local messages and folders. K-9 Mail is not that app and likely won’t be in the future.
I’m using “deleting local messages” and view of size of mailbox in megabytes with imap accounts to clear application “cache” without clearing settings before titanium backup of k9, to clear storage after some emails rare checking too. My imap folders (inbox, archive, etc…) on server always growing and I do not want to have all that messages on my phone memory after some searches where I need to load more messages from server.
I’ve thought about that, but sometimes I do keep messages locally on my android device after they have been deleted on the server by my primary system doing a download & delete from server. These might be things like emails for orders that I am going to collect & need to show a copy of the email, booking receipts, etc. All will eventually be wiped from the android device, but may persist there longer than on the server. So I’d end up setting IMAP not to delete messages on server nor delete local messages when deleted on server. In this case the “Clear Messages” option would still be needed to clear the local store of messages.
I can’t completely agree with your argument concerning K-9 ending up being the sole repository of someones email when using POP vs IMAP:
Anyone using POP has to know what they are doing & manually set it up as the default is to set up IMAP. So they are likely to be more aware of the potential issues & have backup in place.
2.With the default settings IMAP will delete all copies of emails across multiple devices with one wrong click. Unless the default setting is “Do Not delete on Server” or “mark as read on server” IMAP has just as much potential to end in tears.
This is absolute nonsense and sounds like it was written by someone who doesn’t know how POP works.
That’s fine because I have never used the download and delete model either. Always leave mail on the server so I can download it again from other devices.
This just sounds like a list of excuses for why you don’t want to do it, not valid reasons for why you shouldn’t.
You aren’t a single store of my messages, they are left on the server and also downloaded by other devices which are the primary store. I couldn’t care less about keeping/storing messages on my mobile devices. They are all treated as volatile storage, everything is backed up or stored elsewhere, the mobile device is just a viewer.
Leave it as it is then. “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it”. Never had a problem with the POP model or K-9 POP handling. Only issues I ever have are with IMAP which doesn’t suit me at all.
I often download the mails of individual folders to my smartphone (I have hundreds of folders), for example for a current project.
When the project is no longer current, the mails should no longer burden my smartphone, but of course remain on my PC.
For this, the option to recreate the data for a whole account (I have three), that is, to download only the mails in the push folders, was very important and helpful.
I think this is an important feature for people who work a lot with mails professionally.