I don’t understand why that is necessary. In what cases do you need POP3 as a backup?
@ByteHamster: I dont trust IMAP in that regard that it only stores mails online (on server). I want local copy (at least 1) also. Most on my work emails contains attachments. Its nice to have them locally available when needed.
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Exactly. I have more than 10 years of my own emails safely backed up, after moving my own domain name and email account across multiple email hosts during that time. POP3 is used by many K9 users, most of whom don’t visit forums like this.
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Messages are also locally available with IMAP (you can choose to have only the most recent ones or all, depending on how much storage space you want the app to take).
Safely backed up in K-9 Mail? I wouldn’t use K-9 for backups, as phones can easily get lost, broken or stolen.
No, backed up via my Outlook. That’s why I don’t want to use IMAP with K9. I download disposably in K9.
I don’t understand that sentence, sorry. I’m missing the step where connecting K-9 via IMAP prevents you from backing up via Outlook. Do you want to be able to manually delete emails in K-9 that then still get backed up by Outlook?
Yes, as I said above
“I use Outlook desktop as my main email interface. Throughout the day I may check email on my cellphone or from a web interface. I want to be able to delete (or do anything else) to emails I have read on my cellphone without having ANY effect on their retrieval to my Outlook when I return to my desk.”
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First, I do not want my mail synchronized across devices. Second I want to be able to access my mail when offline, or in places with spotty connections. Third, I like keeping a local copy of my emails so I am not reliant on a server. Finally, why get rid of it? Why do I constantly feel obligated to defend my work flow to the devs?
Based on history here, I’d guess this “survey” is not a survey, but an announcement, and the next example of the “I will only support my own use case and if you do things differently you are wrong” mentality here.
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After reading this thread, I’m not sure users realize that IMAP can do vs POP3. Most of this comes on the apps features, so you will see different settings and features between K9, Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.
Looking at the K9 settings for an IMAP account, under Fetching, changing these will give you a very different settings and close to what one needs for IMAP.
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Sync server deletions - if unchecked, when deleted on the server it should stay on your phone. I think some past posts might want that effect.
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When I delete a message - probably set this to “Do not delete on server” such that when you delete on the phone it stays on the server. Some others may want this to keep email on the server for other apps to pick it up.
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Local folder size: you may want more than the default 25. To be able to hold more messages offline and be able to read them. Assuming you can find them first.
IMAP can be used in offline mode. I often do that (train through tunnels, airplanes before wifi or free wifi, highways in the middle of nowhere, etc). Of course, in offline mode, you will only see the last messages sync’d. Your next sync will do the normal update and download unless you change some of the settings I pointed out.
A past job knew I had landed on a plane trip because a pile of email would usually come in once I sync’d on wifi.
Maybe a future ask if the developer gets more $$$ might be cool to have some or all the local phone folders made into mbox format files and then shared to Google Drive / OneDrive / Dropbox or whatever one can share with another app on their phone. Hrm! Think of it like an export function.
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I do not understand why the developers and some commenters here think it’s appropriate to try to manage the behavior of thousands of users. This isn’t a corporate Slack channel, this is a support forum that only a tiny proportion of users even know about, let alone visit. No matter what your personal preferences, many, many people use POP3 for their email. There is no reason to remove support for it from this software.
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You could have formulated this as a question, e.g.: Why are you trying to dissuade K-9 Mail users from using POP3?
The answer is quite simple. We get a lot of support requests from users having problems with POP3 accounts. Sometimes this is because users don’t seem to be aware of the limitations of the protocol. Sometimes it’s because users are missing functionality that a “download and delete from server” email client should have.
The focus of K-9 Mail has always been the “IMAP model” of managing emails on the server. The app only has very limited support for use cases where (local) changes are not synchronized with the server. And this support is not exclusive to POP3 accounts in K-9 Mail. Any account can be configured to not sync server deletions and to not delete a message from the server when it has been deleted locally. Messages are always downloaded, so they are available when the user is offline.
Most of the problems people have with POP3 accounts in K-9 Mail could be avoided if they used IMAP. The other problems are best solved by using a client that embraces the “manage email locally” approach. K-9 Mail is not that client. And it most likely won’t be in the foreseeable future.
And if the POP3 support currently available in K-9 Mail is good enough for you, switching to IMAP shouldn’t have a downside. Aside from the special folders Sent, Drafts, and Trash that are only available locally (and that you can’t export or back up), there’s nothing a POP3 account in K-9 Mail can do that an IMAP account can’t do.
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“Ask a question”? You have been very forthright in other threads that you are determined to remove POP support from this app. Many of us don’t want to lose POP support, regardless of your arguments. And many many more never visit these forums. If you’re annoyed at users asking POP support questions, create a simple FAQ and direct them there when you reply. You are treating this app like your personal property AND asking users to financially support you. Many of us don’t want to change our set-ups - we have systems that work for us, whether or not that meets your approval.
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IMAP leaves the mail on the server, with POP3 I pull down what I need and delete it from the server. My phone is not the master host for my email, my computer is. If something is not on my phone, no big deal. POP3 lets me get just what I want. I do know the difference between IMAP and POP3 and understand how short POP3 comes up and how IMAP is better for most cases/most of the world but it works for me.
Most of the issues I have encountered around POP3 are user error. Make IMAP default, make POP3 a hidden menu, stop support for POP3, but please don’t remove it from the app.
Dropping POP3 from K9 would have me find a different email client.
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My email server has limited storage. I archive 15 years’ sorted mail on my PC in Thunderbird Local Folders.
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@jon: I do the same, moving old e-mails from the server to a local archive, mainly in Thunderbird (for Windows) - but with IMAP. No need to switch to POP3 for that.
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My parents share an email address for invoice-related stuff, which they both use quite differently. My father marks as read and deletes everything he has seen, while my mother needs to make sure the invoices actually get paid so needs the emails to stay unread and undeleted until they’re dealt with.
That’s why my father’s client is set up to use POP3, so that he can’t affect the “todo list” of emails.
I know that I could use IMAP and disable “Mark as read when opened” and set “When I delete a message” to “Do not delete on server”, but then he could still manually mark the email as read and mess with my mother’s system. So POP3 seems great for this one odd use-case.
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Thanks, hlm.
I wish to delete every message on the server as soon as it has been downloaded to my phone.
If I use POP3 there is an optional K9 setting which does just that.
But if I use IMAP I canot find such a setting in K9.
Please tell me where to find it.
That’s not the case. K-9 Mail does not support automatically deleting messages after they have been downloaded.
Jon: As cketti wrote, this is not possible. Imap typically lets the emails stored on the server for later remote access. Deleting one deletes it on the server and they are no longer available, not even locally.
Thunderbird allows local folders. Emails can be moved there, and then they no longer take up space on the server. But K9 does not (yet?) support local folders.
In 2 words: DATA INTEGRITY. This is something easily done with POP3, but completely impossible with IMAP.
I put some of this into another much longer post at https://forum.f-droid.org/t/what-types-of-apps-are-you-missing-from-the-foss-ecosystem/183/617 but will snip a smaller part here:
These same apps that are pushing the IMAP model still seem to believe that IMAP is clearly superior because POP servers cannot leave the messages on the server even though many desktop users have been doing exactly that for at least the past 25 years. On the one hand you MUST leave it all on the server if you want to have access to it in the future after one of those inevitable data corruption incidents that seem more common on androids in general. On the other hand with no way to make local backups the situation is much worse for IMAP where that type of corruption will then get synced back to the server, thus corrupting the only possible backup, so you really can’t plan to keep it on the server reliably with IMAP either. At least with POP the corruption won’t reverse sync bad data back to the server to overwrite good data which then (for IMAP) would get synced to other devices, corrupting their message stores as well, so using POP and keeping messages on the server is much safer in terms of avoiding data loss.
This is not so good privacy wise, and very different from the desktop model where the user gets to choose whether to leave it there or not, plus the message store can easily be included in many types of backup and restored locally as needed… but it’s just not possible in the android ecosystem.
So no, IMAP is NOT always better, especially if you want to keep your older messages rather than just deleting them immediately.