Help wanted: Testing latest K-9 Mail beta

1

We think we’re close to a new stable release of K-9 Mail. It will contain the new account setup flow. The functionality has been available in beta versions for a while. But we haven’t gotten a lot of feedback (probably because most existing users don’t regularly set up new accounts). So we could use your help. If you have some time, please test the latest beta version (6.717).

Please be aware that installing the beta will replace an existing installation of K-9 Mail and a later downgrade (without uninstalling first) is not possible. So make sure to export your settings (under Settings → Export settings) before installing the beta. Updating an installation from F-Droid using the APK from GitHub is not possible. You’ll have to uninstall the app first.

Things we’d like you to test in particular:

  • The first time user experience. The best way to test this is to uninstall the app, then install the beta.

  • Try setting up various email accounts with different providers. Does the automatic setup work? If not, does it work in Thunderbird on desktop? Please let us know.

  • Try the automatic and manual setup flows (tap “Configuration found” to expand the server settings, then “Edit configuration” for the manual flow)

  • Updating server settings of an existing account (Settings → [Account] → Fetching mail → Incoming server and Setting → [Account] → Sending mail → Outgoing server)

  • Adding additional accounts via Settings → Add account

There’s some general instructions on how to become a beta tester. The beta is available on Google Play and F-Droid. But you can also grab the APK from GitHub.

2

Does the beta allow bold and italic in a new email?

3

No.

Please don’t ask for your favorite feature in this topic. This is about testing the new account setup.

4

Not necessarily a favorite feature, but for usability: Has the button to check for new mail been restored in this beta (as opposed to swiping down)?

5

The refresh button has nothing to do with the new account setup…

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6

Maybe something that is actually related to the account setup:

For most email addresses I use, it detects the server settings correctly but shows a “scary” warning saying that these cannot be trusted. Is this only because the mail server uses a different hostname or is something misconfigured on the server? What makes a server setup “not trustworthy” to K-9?

7

This happens when the config was retrieved via http (not https) or the config was only found after doing an MX DNS lookup. A future update will trust the DNS lookup when a response could be validated using DNSSEC.

If the email domain is under your control, you can avoid the warning by hosting the config under https://autoconfig.{emailDomain}/mail/config-v1.1.xml.

Currently the documentation for this is not great. It’s something I’m working on.

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8

Hi, is K-9 deliberately not to return any configuration that includes plain socket-type, (i.e., socketType == plain)? I tested the email domains included in the ISPDB (e.g., bay.wind.ne.jp) and my own test domain; however, once its configuration includes plain socket-type, K-9 requires manual configuration.

9

Yes, that’s intentional. We never want a configuration that doesn’t use any transport encryption to be used automatically.

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