No, the majority of users don’t install betas or are involved in the developer-process of an app.
They were surprised to see their app completely changed (badly) after a multiple years long update-pause in the Play Store. Thanks, but no thanks.
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I well know about beta channels, but I explicitly do not use them on apps I heavily rely on because of stability reasons!
I do help with apps and open source as far as I am able to, but k-9 is a mail client I need to use daily in production!
Being easy to use, fast and productive was what I used k-9 for since 10+ years!
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This has nothing to do with “power-users”. The most useful feature of K9 - compared to other mail clients out there - has been removed for no reason. I like the new UI in terms of design but it’s completely unusable without the account overview feature where I can select all unread or starred messages from a specific account with a single click.
Staying on 5.6 as well, the overview is a must-have for me. Otherwise I’d still be using the stock mail app.
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@h-2:
but none of you installed one of the many pre-releases that appeared on F-Droid and Play?
The new interface has been around more than a year. If you are indeed a power-user who so strongly relies on this app, maybe give one of those versions a try and give feedback early on?
In the Hitchhiker’s Guide universe, you’d be Mr. Prosser 
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Instructions on how to “downgrade” to an earlier version:
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Thank you cketti. As an addendum, if you want to prevent the play store from updating it at all you can get the APK from f-droid instead of github (K-9 Mail | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository).
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No, it’s true, I don’t. Sounds incredibly stressful whatever it is though! 
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This is not a point release, this is a major upgrade bordering on new product. I appreciate all the new whiz bang features. Encryption, yay.
But I have to agree that the new UI has made this once streamlined and intuitive application dumbed down click bloat. Removing controls doesn’t streamline the UI, it increases the number of operations required to accomplish a task.
No account summary on opening.
No account summary on ‘back’
No show only starred.
No show only unread.
No unique notification sounds per account.
And that’s after only a couple minutes exposure.
And I don’t know what the heck those “user icon” looking things at the top of the drawer are supposed to do. They seem unconfigurable and arbitrary.
I’m not looking forward to finding out what other subtle changes occurred that will disrupt my workflow.
It’s like someone walked into a pile of Git code without tribal knowledge and just decided to start dancing all Clockwork Orange on it.
I realize the app is free so we really don’t have any standing to complain. Maybe you’ll attract a grand new audience, at the expense of your once loyal following. Maybe that’s the goal. But catering to the lowest common denominator user makes product differentiation difficult.
I hate to see k9 become just another commodity app like Gmail.
I’ve managed to score a 5.6 apk. I’ll wait a little bit to see if the developers respond to users concerns.
If this is truly The New Way™, I’ll go back to 5.6 until it’s obsoleted by android.
This has been an unfortunate kick in the teeth for many, many users.
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Most of us had no idea that an essentially ‘dead’ but still useful app was being destroyed.
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I’m another user who just reinstalled v5.600 and happy with that.
Actually I DID remove the auto-update on Play Store immediately but last night the app updated anyway!!
BTW: on my Moto G5 plus with Android 8 the new icon background is a circle in a light rose color!!! …transparent would be better…
Me too I will keep an eye on what will happen in the next few months to eventually decide to upgrade or (sigh) remove K9 definitely… Even if I do not know what to use as a replacement since GMail app is not an option…
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On a positive note:
I can now show my email passwords.
That’ll make setting up 5.6 again easier.
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Go to your device Settings, Apps, See all apps, tap on K-9 Mail.
Then tap on Notifications and you’ll see a list of all your accounts and the options. Longpress on Messages - Advanced - Sound, there you can select any notification/audio file from your device. (Actual steps may vary depending on your device manufacturer, but on my OP7 that’s how to get there). The lightblue edits in my screenshot are the different email account names.
Repeat that for every email account and you can select seperate notifications for each one.
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I briefly tested the beta in the past, I mentioned that the new UI isn’t an “upgrade” (lack of overview screen, action buttons on top) and was met with “it’s gonna be this way, period”. I guess it came to fruition and i added k9mail to upgrade blacklist in f-droid. 5.600 just works fine and I don’t see any point in upgrading, despite so much effort put into it, sorry.
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Woah. That’s… convenient? Intuitive? Or not.
At least it’s effective.
Thank you. I would not have tried the long press. Now if I can remember all my old sounds…
Why not give K9 only fresh colors/optics and “under the hood”-improvements while maintaining the overall user experience?
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The unique sounds are still there but the unique vibrations (rhythm & number of vibrations) have gone missing:
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No idea about that, I have all vibrations disabled systemwide since I absolutely HATE them lol.
And I have all sounds disabled, vibration is less disruptive and works better in noisy environments.
Like the majority it seems, I hate the new UI, please give us the option to have accounts overview as the default display, starred messages and all those other features that made the old version so good. This new version does nothing for me that Gmail’s app doesn’t do. So why bother keeping k9 now? I can’t come up with a single reason to keep it.
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