how to use mu4e and gmail on multiple devices

[Daniel Goldin]

Hi all,

Again, a disclaimer, I am a non-programmer who uses Mu4e for academic papers. It's a wonderful program, but I am struggling to figure out how to use mu4e in a coherent way across multiple devices (same gmail address). Right now, I am using rclone to bring Maildir back and forth between the two devices, but on my second device, the inbox shows up with 133 messages vs. the 3 in the inbox in the other device (the rest I sent to various folders under the maildir). Right now, all I am downloading from gmail is in the inbox. I am sure this is a clumsy system. Any hep of pointers would be greatly appreciated.

--

Daniel Goldin

Editor, Psychoanalytic Inquiry

626-817-2462

[Tim Cross]

I use mu4e on multiple devices with a gmail account. This is what I do.

- I use isync to synchronize local and gmail mailboxes
- I use the IMAP configruation options available in yhour gmail account
to set which mailboxes are available via IMAP

and thats pretty much it. I don't mess around with rclone or anything
else between devices. This is what IMAP takes care of. I do have my
isync setup so that the sent folders is uploaded/synchronised and when I
put something into trash locally, it expunges that message on the gmail
side as well (so that when I next check mail on the other device, it all
just works).

Likewise, this also 'just works' when using other clients, such as the
email client on my phone. Just let imap take care of it all.

[mag...@therning.org]

Tim Cross <theop...@gmail.com> writes:

> I use mu4e on multiple devices with a gmail account. This is
> what I do.
>
> - I use isync to synchronize local and gmail mailboxes
> - I use the IMAP configruation options available in yhour gmail
> account
> to set which mailboxes are available via IMAP
>
> and thats pretty much it. I don't mess around with rclone or
> anything
> else between devices. This is what IMAP takes care of. I do have
> my
> isync setup so that the sent folders is uploaded/synchronised
> and when I
> put something into trash locally, it expunges that message on
> the gmail
> side as well (so that when I next check mail on the other
> device, it all
> just works).
>
> Likewise, this also 'just works' when using other clients, such
> as the
> email client on my phone. Just let imap take care of it all.

Yes, exactly! I do the same, though I'm using offlineimap[1]
instead of isync.

It's worth noting that GMail's use of IMAP, in particular how they
map tags to folders, may result in duplicated messages locally.
[2] is a good starting point, but you may want to limit what
folders you sync.

[1]: https://www.offlineimap.org/
[2]:
https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e/Gmail-configuration.html

>> Hi all,
>>
>> Again, a disclaimer, I am a non-programmer who uses Mu4e for
>> academic papers. It's a wonderful program, but I am struggling
>> to figure out how to use mu4e in a coherent way across multiple
>> devices (same
>> gmail address). Right now, I am using rclone to
>> bring Maildir back and forth between the two devices, but on my
>> second device,
>> the inbox shows up with 133 messages vs. the 3
>> in the inbox in the other device (the rest I sent to various
>> folders under the
>> maildir). Right now, all I am downloading from gmail
>> is in the inbox. I am sure this is a clumsy system. Any hep of
>> pointers would be greatly appreciated.
>> --
>> Daniel Goldin
>> Editor, Psychoanalytic Inquiry
>> 626-817-2462

--
Magnus Therning OpenPGP: 0x927912051716CE39
email: mag...@therning.org
@mag...@mastodon.technology http://magnus.therning.org/

"In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of
people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

— The Book just racapping what happened in the last book.

[Tim Cross]

mag...@therning.org writes:

>
> It's worth noting that GMail's use of IMAP, in particular how they map tags to folders,
> may result in duplicated messages locally. [2] is a good starting point, but you may want
> to limit what folders you sync.
>
> [1]: https://www.offlineimap.org/
> [2]: https://www.djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e/Gmail-configuration.html
>

That is a good point. I forgot to mention that.

One of the things I have changed in my workflow is that I now use far
fewer mailboxes with gmail. Instead of mailboxes, I just rely on Mu's
fine searching capabilities.

Previously, I had a lot of different folders in Gmail and even ha quite
a few gmail filters which would automatically sort messages into
different folders. However, I now just have a couple of folders. My
basic workflow is

1. I just sync
- 'All Mail'
- INBOX
- sent
- bin/trash
- draft
- Refile

The 'Refile' folder is one where I put messages I've read, no longer
need in my INBOX, but I want to keep. Every few weeks I go through this
folder in Gmail and move messages to different folders in gmail. None of
these additional folders are synced locally. I found this gove me the
fastest syncing and minimal number of duplicates locally. I could get by
without the 'All Mail', but then again, if I want to search through my
messages with mu/mu4e, the All Mail mailbox is very useful.

Due to the way Gmail uses tags rather than real folders to store mail,
when I 'move' mail using the gmail interface (when processing my
'refile' folder), all that gmail is really doing is tagging messages. I
do this only because sometimes I do use different clients (such as on my
phone) where I don't have the power of mu4e/mu searches, so having
things tagged into different folders can make life a little easier.

Setting which 'folders' are visible via imap was really uiseful as it
made setting up the mbsyncrc file really easy. I just needed something
like

Channel gmail
Far :gmail-remote:
Near :gmail-local:
Patterns * !"[Gmail]/Important" !"[Gmail]/Starred"
Create Both
Expunge Both
SyncState *

If you don't set which folders are visible (via the gmail/google
settings), then you will get a 'mailbox' for every 'tag' in gmail and
the messages in each of those mailboxes will be duplicates of messages
in 'All Mail', so you willl be donwloading them twice! (or even more if
you have any with multiple tags)

I actually don't like Gmail and would move to something like Proton
Mail, but I've been using Gmail for so long and have so much associated
with that address, it is now just too painful to consider changing. I
could setup complicated forwarding and relaying, but that becomes a PITA
and getting it to work correctly wrt the many broken anti-spam systems
out there is simply a boring task I don't have the energy to maintain!

The great benefit of mu4e is that to a large extent, what I do now is
just dump all my messages into one big box and if I need to find some
specific message, I just use mu search.

[Jerry Lee Daniel]

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