I have a few questions about Mailpile.
Hello Nebucatnetzer,
The default interval for checking incoming mail sources is 5 minutes. This is configurable on each source. The parameter is called “interval” and the default is 300 s.
By default Mailpile BCC’s outgoing emails to the sending account, so other mail clients will receive the BCC. This can be changed by clicking on the gear icon and setting “Always BCC self when sending mail” to Off.
Sorry, can’t help on the Archive question, I’ve never used that feature.
Jack,
Where is the “interval” option? I can’t seem to find it in the account settings.
Tx
Hi @neurokrish,
Changes to the “interval” option are uncharted territory! There are a lot of threads running in Mailpile - results might not be as expected, so use caution. Which is probably why it’s not on an easily accessible screen in the GUI. It can only be accessed through the CLI. See the wiki for examples of changing configuration parameters e.g. https://github.com/mailpile/Mailpile/wiki/Development-guide
If you want to explore that, the first step is to print the configuration for a mail source:
print sources
This will print a big data structure which starts like this:
{
"sources": {
"[hex number]": {
…
Once you have the [hex number] you can narrow down the print command to just print the one parameter:
print sources.[hex number].interval
Then you can change the parameter using (spaces are required):
set sources.[hex number].interval = [interval in s]
e.g. on my configuration
set sources.45ee73745792.interval = 300
Be careful!
@JackDca, many thanks for the information. I will probably leave it at the default setting but was curious to know where the setting is.
It’s also worth mentioning that e-mail will often arrive much more quickly than that interval suggests; Mailpile will make use of technology called IMAP IDLE to immediately find out when new mail arrives, even in the middle of the “quiet interval.”
Most modern IMAP servers support IDLE, so the interval shouldn’t matter much in practice for receiving mail. It will still control how long it takes for Mailpile to notice a new folder though.
Some of your other questions derive from your assumption that Mailpile will write changes back to the IMAP server as you read, write and sort your mail. This is not the case. Mailpile reads from the IMAP server, and it may delete from the IMAP server, but currently no other changes get synced back. This is probably the apps’ biggest current limitation for most people. It cannot currently be changed, as the code hasn’t been written (yet).
That’s also why we BCC the outgoing mail by default, so your other mail clients have a chance to see it.
I wondered about the interval because my phone got the emails much quicker than Mailpile.
Not much of a problem however.
Aye that’s what I was hoping for :).
Another thing which surprised me was that tags get removed when you archive an email.
I thought it would work similar to Gmail, which I don’t use anymore but find the tagging and archiving system there quite nice.
Edit, nevermind the last question. It’s something you already mention on the main site :).
Is there a way to use Mailpile as an IMAP server for mobile clients?
In Mailpile, archiving means stripping all the tags off. The message is still there, can be found by searching, but it doesn’t clutter up normal tag views.
Maybe it should behave differently!
No, Mailpile does not have a built-in IMAP server, sorry.