11 ms·

K-9 Mail is back

270 points by jlelse 5y ago

chucky 5y ago
> This version of K-9 Mail only runs on Android 5.0 and newer. That's an impressive "only"! Android 5.0 was released ín 2014.
- jackewiehose 5y ago
  It's a real shame that nowadays 7 year old devices are considered to be out of scope for support even though they would still be perfectly fine otherwise. Fuck google etc. and this whole throw-away society.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    Not supporting old OSes is fine. The blame is squarely on the phone manufacturer for not allowing upgrades to OSes that receive security patches.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      How do you imagine budget or mid-class 7 year old phones running a new Android release? The specs are too weak.
      - hulitu 5y ago
        I would say the bloat is too big. The difference between Android 2 and 9 is some fine grained permissions.UI is the same.
        selfhoster11 5y ago
        I agree, the bloat is significant. To nitpick, I'd say that the UI has actually worsened between 2 and modern versions.
      - remram 5y ago
        You expect that none of Android would work but all of K-9 should work?
        selfhoster11 5y ago
        Yes. K9 hasn't bloated much over the years, and I've been using it for the past 10 years so I'm quite certain of this.
  - bastawhiz 5y ago
    That's not really a fair assessment. The Nexus 4 was released in 2012 and runs Android 5.1. The devices that didn't get Android 5 are pretty much a decade old. And essentially all of them can be rooted and upgraded to a more modern version of Android, if you want to. Do you want to, though? Probably not: even if the batteries in them still held a decent charge, the devices that didn't get Android 5 almost all have less than 1gb of RAM (Nexus S had 348MB non-gpu memory) and only one or two CPU cores, with a bunch of older devices shipping without 3g. Having internal storage measured in gigabytes was at the upper end of the market (Nexus One, Google's flagship device from 2010, had 190 megabytes of app storage). "Perfectly fine otherwise" really doesn't apply to the overwhelming majority of folks who use their phones more than any other device (hours each day).
    - throwaway81523 5y ago
      I'm typing this on a Thinkpad X220 released in 2011, and running the current Debian.
      - bastawhiz 5y ago
        Did Lenovo push the current Debian to your device? Have the apps when you bought your laptop increased in resource use by an order of magnitude? It's not the same kind of device running with the same constraints. Phones were pushing the limits of miniaturization. The difference in the underlying technology is vastly different. Comparing a laptop from 2002 trying to run the current Debian is more apt.
        throwaway81523 5y ago
        I don't understand what you're getting at. I bought this X220 about a year ago on Craigslist for $100 and installed Debian on it. The main app on it whose resource use has bloated a lot since 2011 is Firefox, and that's a persistent sore point for me, since it's the web that has bloated rather than just the browser. The other stuff I use (mostly Emacs, Python, and Xchat) hasn't really bloated. I have a Thinkpad X40 (from 2004) that I used for similar purposes but its hardware eventually got too flaky. I would say I keep a lot more data on the X220 (using a 0.5TB SATA SSD) than I could store on the X40 which had a 40GB PATA drive. It had USB2 and SD card ports though, so I could in principle have added a high capacity SD card or whatever. The X61 of the same era is still a viable machine and I think it had a SATA drive slot, which means it would be pretty usable with today's ssd's.
  - tomjen3 5y ago
    Most devices I have seen gets 2-3 years of updates, so you are looking at devices that are about a decade old at that point: exactly how long do you think it is fair that the manufacturer pays for updates to your phone?
    - bbarnett 5y ago
      My thought on this is, if you cannot update the device yourself, manufacturers should be mandated to support the device for 4 or 5 years past last point of sale. If they unlock it, and release full sources so you can access all the hardware in alternative builds, then fine, they can drop support when they please. It isn't an either/or, in my world they could keep it locked for 3 or 4 years, providing full updates, then provide unlock and a year later drop security updates. My point is, security updates need to come before profit, and no one should be selling phones a year before updates end. Or even, not even do updates!
      - tomjen3 5y ago
        That actually sounds pretty fair, with the proviso that I would say 4 years after the sale of the phone, rather than that phone model. But given that we are talking about Androids here, why should they be required to release full source? Shouldn't it be enough that they release driver code?
        bbarnett 5y ago
        Sure, I think the key part is sources so you can fully support the hardware yourself.
  - jchw 5y ago
    No, not supporting 7 year old software is not the same as not supporting 7 year old hardware. My 2012 Nexus 7 runs Android 7(!). Of course, my 2012 Nexus 7 is more obsolete than an iBook G4 by this point. Why? Because in 2012, phones and tablets were basically insecure little toys compared to what they are today. We witnessed the birth of a new computer market, and like the 90s era of computing, it generated landfills worth of eWaste. You can argue (validly!) that some of it was obsoleted quicker than necessary due to poor support or bloated software, but let’s face it; by and large, old phones and tablets are the victims of progress. The 2012 Nexus 7 is never going to be useful even with postmarketOS, because it simply runs poorly with any reasonably modern software stack, not just more modern Android. I’m not suggesting that this is a good thing, but it’s not a conspiracy. Even if vendors were forced to support devices for longer, I super sincerely doubt we’d see people running around with 7 year old phones. In 7 more years? Absolutely. Just like you now see people running around with 7 year old laptops today. A real issue is probably just that Apple and Google and other flagship phone vendors continue to pump out a new phone every year even though it is clearly wasteful and pointless. Removing features just to bring them back sometimes is a truly pointless and stupid rigmarole when we could surely just wait 3 more years so that improvements can be made that aren’t pointless tradeoffs. But that is a different story, and arguably is a lot more than just an issue for the computer industry...
    - jackewiehose 5y ago
      I agree with most of what you said but ... > My 2012 Nexus 7 runs Android 7(!). why not Android 11? The Nexus is from Google as well as Android. So at some point they must have pushed some "useless" new features into Android that makes it incompatible with the older hardware. I say "useless" because besides gaming or probably video telephony there's nothing we do today with our phones that couldn't be done with those older devices so I don't see a reason why they shouldn't be able to run the newest Android. > but it’s not a conspiracy conspiracy is probably not the right term but I also don't think it's just a matter of circumstances. In the end they want us to buy new hardware every few years so I claim that the situation is brought to us intentionally.
      - Zhenya 5y ago
- citrin_ru 5y ago
  I have a phone I bought around 2015. It has Android 4.4 and the vendor provided only minor bug fixes for a very short time since then. I think it is quite typical for Android phones. HW is still OK but more and more apps drop support for such old OS.
- cketti 5y ago
  The note is primarily there to let people know whether or not they can update to the latest version. K-9 Mail 5.600 supported Android 4.0.3 and newer.
- beermonster 5y ago
  And also no longer in support https://endoflife.date/android https://endoflife.date/android
- agilob 5y ago
  I have 5 android devices at home, 3 of them are android 4.4, not planning to upgrade until hardware fails. One LG phone doesn't even get updates for google play
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
Funny, I've been using it for years and never knew it was gone :coldsweat:
- pja 5y ago
  Dev work stalled for quite some time as (I believe) a lot of work needed to be done to update the App for newer versions of Android.
- sam_lowry_ 5y ago
  Neither did I.
- SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
  I've been using K9 email on my android phone for ages, and it just works. Anyway, there's an app update today, a major one. There have been recent updates, but only minor ones.
johnchristopher 5y ago
How long before the update hits the Google Playstore ? Bonus point: if I install k9 through f-droid or the APK, will it keep my settings ?
- mdaniel 5y ago
  For the latter question, only if they have the same signing key, otherwise Android considers them separate apps, AFAIK
- cketti 5y ago
  We're doing a staged rollout. Current status available here: https://forum.k9mail.app/t/k-9-mail-is-back-5-800-release/1164/3 https://forum.k9mail.app/t/k-9-mail-is-back-5-800-release/11... Switching between the F-Droid version and the official APK (Google Play version) is not possible. You'll have to uninstall the old version first (and that will remove all settings). However, K-9 Mail supports settings import/export.
  - johnchristopher 5y ago
    Thanks for the detailed explanations ^^.
  - zvr 5y ago
    The status page says "Google Play: should now be available to 100% of users" and, true to that, I got the update! First impressions: looks good! Many thanks for all your work!
na85 5y ago
A few years ago I had trouble with K9 going into "sync disabled mode", for lack of a better term. Push notifications simply didn't work no matter what I tried and I missed lots of emails as a result. Switched to FairEmail[0] and have been a happy user since. [0] https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail
- kijin 5y ago
  That's when Android started to kill background apps very aggressively, more or less requiring the use of Google's own Firebase service if you wanted to get realtime push notifications. It was a monumentally stupid "feature". Even Samsung's default email app on my Samsung flagship phone only detects new emails every 20 minutes or so, which suggests that top-tier OEMs also have trouble getting past the ruthless background app killer. I'm glad that at least a couple of FOSS apps have found a way around this problem. I'm curious how FairEmail (and now K9, too) pulled it off. Is there an official "do not kill" flag now, or are they just using some sort of loophole that allows IMAP IDLE connections to be kept alive in the background?
  - cketti 5y ago
    Most apps use a foreground service. Using that the app is treated like an app running in the foreground and not like an app running in the background. https://developer.android.com/guide/components/foreground-services https://developer.android.com/guide/components/foreground-se...
    - kijin 5y ago
      Foreground services require a persistent notification, which looks more like a nasty hack than a proper workaround.
  - Saris 5y ago
    As far as I know the app can just ask to run in the background and then it works. Problem is many apps don't use the native dialog box to request it, and instead ask the user to go to settings and do it manually.
gspr 5y ago
Wonderful news! Hands down the best app for email on phones (a terrible, terrible concept made serviceable with K9).
vsviridov 5y ago
Too late... Switched to FairEmail some time after learning about broken push in K9.
- mbeex 5y ago
  Same here, not looking back.
jlelse 5y ago
Just blogged about it (https://b.jlel.se/s/49e https://b.jlel.se/s/49e) after musing about the Holo design in 2018 (https://b.jlel.se/s/9a https://b.jlel.se/s/9a). Great work! Just set up a Liberapay donation.
GordonS 5y ago
I moved into Nine a while back - it's great, and in fact the only Android app I've ever paid money for! It works well with my self-hosted email accounts, and before I went full time on my own business, it worked well with O365 and Exchange too - and it didn't force Exchange PIN-lock policies on me. It also seems to allow customisation of just about everything, from view density to font sizes. Highly recommended it.
dredmorbius 5y ago
Google Gmail authentications broke K-9 mail usage with Gmail accounts a couple of years back. Has that been addressed? (Why I still have gmail accounts is a separate issue. Working on that.)
- cketti 5y ago
  https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7126229#zippy=%2Ci-cant-sign-in-to-my-email-client https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7126229#zippy=%2Ci-ca...
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Thanks.
- yshalsager 5y ago
  You can use app passwords to add a Gmail account with 2fa enabled to K-9, works flawlessly for me.
  - dredmorbius 5y ago
    Y'know, I actually knew that too, set up a MacOS Mail.app profile with that for a friend. Thanks to you and others.
beermonster 5y ago
What happened to it, for it to come back?
- cketti 5y ago
  "The release of the latest stable version of K-9 Mail (5.600) was in September 2018" https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail
  - beermonster 5y ago
    Thanks
neilv 5y ago
K-9 Mail makes the very crippled Replicant on ancient hardware still be much better at accessing my email than my current iPhone is. https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxySIIIGTI9300 https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxyS...
- atatatat 5y ago
  You're not hooking that up to a cellular network, are you?
  - neilv 5y ago
    Just WiFi; I didn't try cellular (and dislike what I understand of the cellular integration in the hardware). Unfortunately, the onboard WiFi in the i9300 needed some closed device firmware blob, which I cannibalized from an old version of Cyanogen or Lineage. I've heard some people use a more Linux-friendly WiFi chipset with the i9300, via the OTG port, but that'd put it to the point of non-viable to me. So, as an stopgap measure open source handheld, I have an impure and not-much-trusted device that can do email, chat, SSH, and other non-Web network stuff pretty well anywhere I have WiFi.
brylie 5y ago
> You’re welcome and sorry. I realize this was tongue-in-cheek, so should probably be "You’re welcome and we're sorry."
- cketti 5y ago
  Thanks. https://github.com/k9mail/k9mail.github.io/commit/fc497cd5655b1ef7b946258a02f098cacb6b5206 https://github.com/k9mail/k9mail.github.io/commit/fc497cd565...
nanomonkey 5y ago
>The user interface has been redesigned. Some of you will love it, some will hate it. You’re welcome and sorry. This is great, except now all of the UI elements are at the top of the screen, which on modern large phones is very awkward, even with my long fingers. Looking over the github repo, it appears that I'm not the only one with this concern, and that the author isn't interested in making this configurable. Too bad, this is the only thing that is keeping me from upgrading Lineage, as the older version of K-9 will no longer work. Anyways, thanks for all the hard work. Excellent tool.
- zootboy 5y ago
  I'm in the same position, and I've been considering wading into the misery that is Android app development just long enough to add a setting to move the action bar to the bottom of the screen. I've also been considering switching to FairEmail, though it has its own share of UI / user flow weirdness.
- 411111111111111 5y ago
  > This is great, except now all of the UI elements are at the top of the screen, which on modern large phones is very awkward, even with my long fingers. I've always found it easier to reach the top of the phone than the bottom, so his sentence is spot on: Some love it, other like you hate it.
  - nanomonkey 5y ago
    Interesting. How do you hold your phone with one hand, in such a way that it is secure, and you aren't accidentally hitting the buttons, or having the meat of your hand make contact with the screen? My pinky is normally a hard stop for the bottom of the phone,so that I don't have to apply much pressure with my other fingers or the meat of my hand. My thumb therefore can reach the bottom half of the phone easily, but needs to be readjusted to reach the top. This image leads me to believe that I'm not the only one with this problem: https://www.apptentive.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Screen-Shot-2016-10-27-at-1.05.53-PM.png https://www.apptentive.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Screen...
Animats 5y ago
Oh, nice. I see it's on F-Droid, which is worth mentioning. My own phone is set up for F-Droid only; no Google.
- spinax 5y ago
  Not only is the new stable there, cketti has been posting all of the betas leading up to this on F-Droid for quite awhile. :) You have to manually look once in awhile in the F-Droid client for newer beta builds to opt into using.
  - summm 5y ago
    Unfortunately 5.800 is not yet on F-Droid. I am looking forward to it.
    - spinax 5y ago
      F-Droid builds in batches, about 3 days per batch (see monitor.f-droid.org). All the APKs are signed at once and published together so it should show up soon. Per the dev, the last beta is essentially what became the stable release so you could start today and just upgrade in a bit.
      - cketti 5y ago
        The only change between 5.740 (available on F-Droid right now) and 5.800 are updated translations.
  - sicco 5y ago
    The betas have been great indeed! You can enable the 'Unstable updates' option in F-Droid's settings to receive notifications for new beta versions to avoid having to check manually. The downside is that you'll receive these updates for all apps, so be sure to check if a new version is a beta version for apps that you want to keep on stable versions.
10GBps 5y ago
Nice. I have been following the betas so this update isn't really much different for me. I didn't see the update in F-Droid. I had been manually installing the apk and had to do the same for 5.800. I especially appreciate that it works on my Android 6 device. My MotoX from 2013 is still my primary phone and it has no newer updates (running LineageOS).
dane-pgp 5y ago
> Various improvements and bug fixes related to end-to-end encryption (Autocrypt, OpenPGP). Great to see that Autocrypt is still a priority. It's just a pity that Thunderbird isn't as enthusiastic about it: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/openpgp-thunderbird-howto-and-faq#w_does-thunderbird-support-autocrypt https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/openpgp-thunderbird-how...
drdebug 5y ago
I've been using K-9 Mail for years, I love it, great work! If you can spare the time, can you please add a simpler way to donate? I really don't want to create yet another account (liberapay?), please just let me pay with paypal directly.
- sicco 5y ago
  If you have a GitHub account then you can use that to donate: https://github.com/sponsors/cketti https://github.com/sponsors/cketti But I can really recommend creating a Liberapay acccount (it accepts PayPal) as many FOSS projects use it to receive donations and Liberapay is open source itself and run by a non-profit. Let's get K-9 to its goal of $1000: https://liberapay.com/k9mail https://liberapay.com/k9mail
Fuzzeh 5y ago
Wait... where did it go, I've still got it on my phone and it's the only mail client I use. confused face
- forbiddenlake 5y ago
  The release of the latest stable version of K-9 Mail (5.600) was in September 2018, nearly three years ago. It "died" (but didn't really) More info: https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail.html https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail.html
gizdan 5y ago
I've only ever used FairEmail, can anyone who has tried both (and not rage quit either) give a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of both? Also, can K9 do a "disable work emails outside of work hours" kind of thing? FairEmail (as far as I can tell) doesn't have this, and it gets a tad annoying to get emails at 9pm when my colleagues at the other side of the world.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  The biggest difference is that the fairEmail interface felt more in place compared with modern apps. I imagine with updates that will change.
- cketti 5y ago
  > Also, can K9 do a "disable work emails outside of work hours" kind of thing? K-9 Mail has a "quiet time" feature that will not create notifications during the quiet period. It applies to all accounts, though.
- sureglymop 5y ago
  I have used both and prefer FairEmail. Do note though that while FairEmail is free (and free) software, what makes it really great are it's paid pro features.
vzaliva 5y ago
I remember using it under Symbian OS at my Nokia phone.
Qub3d 5y ago
I switched from GMail to a paid SMTP service and had been using the gmail client until I found out about the K-9 beta. Super pleased with it so far, and its nice to have every step of my mail from server to client (that I can reasonably control) open source! I highly recommend giving a little via Librapay or GitHub sponsors if you use the app and want to see it keep long term support ;) https://liberapay.com/k9mail/donate https://liberapay.com/k9mail/donate https://github.com/sponsors/cketti https://github.com/sponsors/cketti
- wayne 5y ago
  How was the paid STMP service you were using? Been trying to find one and most seem to be used for email marketing/spam, so it's hard to know what would work reliably for small scale personal email.
  - edoceo 5y ago
    Postfix on BSD is bulletproof.
    - jjkkknnn 5y ago
      Irrelevant. The GP asked for a paid SMTP service. GP, FastMail is very good. edoceo, the reason your flippant comment is irrelevant and unhelpful is that running an SMTP service means dealing with often intractable deliverability problems that are only surmountable by having your mail sent by a server that sends a large volume of legitimate email to build reputation as a sender. It doesn't matter if you use postfix, exim, sendmail, BSD, Linux, or TempleOS, or manually wiggle magnets towards an open socket to send email, the reason the GP wants paid SMTP is so that he can rent access to a server with adequate deliverability to actually use his email.
      - bityard 5y ago
        Hmm, I've been running my own SMTP server on a VPS for over a decade with very few issues.
omnibrain 5y ago
I used K-9 on Android (phone and tablet) and after switching to iOS (iPhone and iPad) it‘s the only App I miss. I would pay 10€ for an iOS version.
- cengizIO 5y ago
  Sadly, there are 0 (ZERO) iOS e-mail clients that support monospace font rendering. (Having plain-text is not enough for LKML). It would really be a game changer if there was a K-9 port for iOS (or iPadOS).
Markoff 5y ago
does it support Exchange? what benefits it has over Aqua mail feature wise (besides being open source)?
tjoff 5y ago
I've been afraid that I was going to loose K-9 (due to it becoming incompatible with a newer android or something). Thanks! One note, If I opt out of giving the app contacts permissions I get nagged about it each time opening the app and composing a new mail etc. etc.
- cketti 5y ago
  See https://forum.k9mail.app/t/cant-deny-contacts-permission-without-being-asked-to-grant-it-again/1158 https://forum.k9mail.app/t/cant-deny-contacts-permission-wit...
  - tjoff 5y ago
    Thanks, as the nag-screen happened before the request I assumed androids do-not-ask-again wouldn't matter for the nag-screen. But it did! Thanks
gnufx 5y ago
It's a pity it seems not to have incorporated the xoauth2 implementation contributed at one time. I had to move to fareemail just for that.
LeoNatan25 5y ago
In a previous work, an adjacent team used the K9 mail source code to implement a secure mail client. The consensus among the team was that the source code was terrible in many ways. On iOS, we had written our own mail client, but on Android, for various reasons, it was decided to use an open source instead of implementing our own. Not sure what amount of research was invested in investing alternatives, but for years the team complained about the quality of K9. This was 6-8 years ago.
- cketti 5y ago
  If the team complained about their code base for _years_, I'd say the quality of the code base they started out with wasn't the only problem. Especially considering that you had the resources to write an email app from scratch. While it's true that parts of K-9 Mail's code base are gruesome (even today), I can't remember any significant contributions from teams that have built products based on K-9 Mail.
  - LeoNatan25 5y ago
    Agreed. The entire Android side of the product was not managed well from the start. The product started as iOS only, because top management had iOS devices. Suddenly they had the shocking realization that Android is very strong in Asia and Europe, and tasked a different team with creating a quick Android POC. That team chose the K9 codebase. The POC team then handed whatever they did to a new dedicated Android team which did all the complaining. They were a small team, but still. My team wasn’t really larger, and we did build a mail, contacts and calendar client. I guess management just couldn’t agree on the commitment.
kilodeca 5y ago
K-9 Mail doesn't send format=flowed https://forum.k9mail.app/t/k-9-mail-is-not-sending-format-flowed-for-plain-text-nor-hard-wrapping/1086 https://forum.k9mail.app/t/k-9-mail-is-not-sending-format-fl...
- cengizIO 5y ago
  Whenever I see a limitation on plain-text (and monospace fonts), I tend to avoid that client. K-9 is not one of them. Plain-text works OK with LKML and patches are very readable.
  - kilodeca 5y ago
    This issue is about sending a plain-text email. https://useplaintext.email/#etiquette https://useplaintext.email/#etiquette
- e12e 5y ago
  Seems the bug will be prioritized? https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/issues/3868 https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/issues/3868
  - kilodeca 5y ago
    That's a different issue.
shdon 5y ago
Does it solve the crash I often experience when deleting messages from large IMAP folders?
jonah 5y ago
My favorite mobile email client of all time was ProfiMail[1] on my Symbian OS based Nokia 6682[2] way back in the day. [1] https://www.lonelycatgames.com/apps/profimail https://www.lonelycatgames.com/apps/profimail [2] https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Nokia-6682_id1108 https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Nokia-6682_id1108

270 points by jlelse 5y ago

> This version of K-9 Mail only runs on Android 5.0 and newer. That's an impressive "only"! Android 5.0 was released ín 2014.

jackewiehose 5y ago
It's a real shame that nowadays 7 year old devices are considered to be out of scope for support even though they would still be perfectly fine otherwise. Fuck google etc. and this whole throw-away society.
- kortilla 5y ago
  Not supporting old OSes is fine. The blame is squarely on the phone manufacturer for not allowing upgrades to OSes that receive security patches.
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    How do you imagine budget or mid-class 7 year old phones running a new Android release? The specs are too weak.
    - hulitu 5y ago
      I would say the bloat is too big. The difference between Android 2 and 9 is some fine grained permissions.UI is the same.
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        I agree, the bloat is significant. To nitpick, I'd say that the UI has actually worsened between 2 and modern versions.
    - remram 5y ago
      You expect that none of Android would work but all of K-9 should work?
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        Yes. K9 hasn't bloated much over the years, and I've been using it for the past 10 years so I'm quite certain of this.
- bastawhiz 5y ago
  That's not really a fair assessment. The Nexus 4 was released in 2012 and runs Android 5.1. The devices that didn't get Android 5 are pretty much a decade old. And essentially all of them can be rooted and upgraded to a more modern version of Android, if you want to. Do you want to, though? Probably not: even if the batteries in them still held a decent charge, the devices that didn't get Android 5 almost all have less than 1gb of RAM (Nexus S had 348MB non-gpu memory) and only one or two CPU cores, with a bunch of older devices shipping without 3g. Having internal storage measured in gigabytes was at the upper end of the market (Nexus One, Google's flagship device from 2010, had 190 megabytes of app storage). "Perfectly fine otherwise" really doesn't apply to the overwhelming majority of folks who use their phones more than any other device (hours each day).
  - throwaway81523 5y ago
    I'm typing this on a Thinkpad X220 released in 2011, and running the current Debian.
    - bastawhiz 5y ago
      Did Lenovo push the current Debian to your device? Have the apps when you bought your laptop increased in resource use by an order of magnitude? It's not the same kind of device running with the same constraints. Phones were pushing the limits of miniaturization. The difference in the underlying technology is vastly different. Comparing a laptop from 2002 trying to run the current Debian is more apt.
      - throwaway81523 5y ago
        I don't understand what you're getting at. I bought this X220 about a year ago on Craigslist for $100 and installed Debian on it. The main app on it whose resource use has bloated a lot since 2011 is Firefox, and that's a persistent sore point for me, since it's the web that has bloated rather than just the browser. The other stuff I use (mostly Emacs, Python, and Xchat) hasn't really bloated. I have a Thinkpad X40 (from 2004) that I used for similar purposes but its hardware eventually got too flaky. I would say I keep a lot more data on the X220 (using a 0.5TB SATA SSD) than I could store on the X40 which had a 40GB PATA drive. It had USB2 and SD card ports though, so I could in principle have added a high capacity SD card or whatever. The X61 of the same era is still a viable machine and I think it had a SATA drive slot, which means it would be pretty usable with today's ssd's.
- tomjen3 5y ago
  Most devices I have seen gets 2-3 years of updates, so you are looking at devices that are about a decade old at that point: exactly how long do you think it is fair that the manufacturer pays for updates to your phone?
  - bbarnett 5y ago
    My thought on this is, if you cannot update the device yourself, manufacturers should be mandated to support the device for 4 or 5 years past last point of sale. If they unlock it, and release full sources so you can access all the hardware in alternative builds, then fine, they can drop support when they please. It isn't an either/or, in my world they could keep it locked for 3 or 4 years, providing full updates, then provide unlock and a year later drop security updates. My point is, security updates need to come before profit, and no one should be selling phones a year before updates end. Or even, not even do updates!
    - tomjen3 5y ago
      That actually sounds pretty fair, with the proviso that I would say 4 years after the sale of the phone, rather than that phone model. But given that we are talking about Androids here, why should they be required to release full source? Shouldn't it be enough that they release driver code?
      - bbarnett 5y ago
        Sure, I think the key part is sources so you can fully support the hardware yourself.
- jchw 5y ago
  No, not supporting 7 year old software is not the same as not supporting 7 year old hardware. My 2012 Nexus 7 runs Android 7(!). Of course, my 2012 Nexus 7 is more obsolete than an iBook G4 by this point. Why? Because in 2012, phones and tablets were basically insecure little toys compared to what they are today. We witnessed the birth of a new computer market, and like the 90s era of computing, it generated landfills worth of eWaste. You can argue (validly!) that some of it was obsoleted quicker than necessary due to poor support or bloated software, but let’s face it; by and large, old phones and tablets are the victims of progress. The 2012 Nexus 7 is never going to be useful even with postmarketOS, because it simply runs poorly with any reasonably modern software stack, not just more modern Android. I’m not suggesting that this is a good thing, but it’s not a conspiracy. Even if vendors were forced to support devices for longer, I super sincerely doubt we’d see people running around with 7 year old phones. In 7 more years? Absolutely. Just like you now see people running around with 7 year old laptops today. A real issue is probably just that Apple and Google and other flagship phone vendors continue to pump out a new phone every year even though it is clearly wasteful and pointless. Removing features just to bring them back sometimes is a truly pointless and stupid rigmarole when we could surely just wait 3 more years so that improvements can be made that aren’t pointless tradeoffs. But that is a different story, and arguably is a lot more than just an issue for the computer industry...
  - jackewiehose 5y ago
    I agree with most of what you said but ... > My 2012 Nexus 7 runs Android 7(!). why not Android 11? The Nexus is from Google as well as Android. So at some point they must have pushed some "useless" new features into Android that makes it incompatible with the older hardware. I say "useless" because besides gaming or probably video telephony there's nothing we do today with our phones that couldn't be done with those older devices so I don't see a reason why they shouldn't be able to run the newest Android. > but it’s not a conspiracy conspiracy is probably not the right term but I also don't think it's just a matter of circumstances. In the end they want us to buy new hardware every few years so I claim that the situation is brought to us intentionally.
    - Zhenya 5y ago
citrin_ru 5y ago
I have a phone I bought around 2015. It has Android 4.4 and the vendor provided only minor bug fixes for a very short time since then. I think it is quite typical for Android phones. HW is still OK but more and more apps drop support for such old OS.
cketti 5y ago
The note is primarily there to let people know whether or not they can update to the latest version. K-9 Mail 5.600 supported Android 4.0.3 and newer.
beermonster 5y ago
And also no longer in support https://endoflife.date/android https://endoflife.date/android
agilob 5y ago
I have 5 android devices at home, 3 of them are android 4.4, not planning to upgrade until hardware fails. One LG phone doesn't even get updates for google play

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

Funny, I've been using it for years and never knew it was gone :coldsweat:

pja 5y ago
Dev work stalled for quite some time as (I believe) a lot of work needed to be done to update the App for newer versions of Android.
sam_lowry_ 5y ago
Neither did I.
SideburnsOfDoom 5y ago
I've been using K9 email on my android phone for ages, and it just works. Anyway, there's an app update today, a major one. There have been recent updates, but only minor ones.

johnchristopher 5y ago

How long before the update hits the Google Playstore ? Bonus point: if I install k9 through f-droid or the APK, will it keep my settings ?

mdaniel 5y ago
For the latter question, only if they have the same signing key, otherwise Android considers them separate apps, AFAIK
cketti 5y ago
We're doing a staged rollout. Current status available here: https://forum.k9mail.app/t/k-9-mail-is-back-5-800-release/1164/3 https://forum.k9mail.app/t/k-9-mail-is-back-5-800-release/11... Switching between the F-Droid version and the official APK (Google Play version) is not possible. You'll have to uninstall the old version first (and that will remove all settings). However, K-9 Mail supports settings import/export.
- johnchristopher 5y ago
  Thanks for the detailed explanations ^^.
- zvr 5y ago
  The status page says "Google Play: should now be available to 100% of users" and, true to that, I got the update! First impressions: looks good! Many thanks for all your work!

na85 5y ago

A few years ago I had trouble with K9 going into "sync disabled mode", for lack of a better term. Push notifications simply didn't work no matter what I tried and I missed lots of emails as a result. Switched to FairEmail[0] and have been a happy user since. [0] https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail https://github.com/M66B/FairEmail

kijin 5y ago
That's when Android started to kill background apps very aggressively, more or less requiring the use of Google's own Firebase service if you wanted to get realtime push notifications. It was a monumentally stupid "feature". Even Samsung's default email app on my Samsung flagship phone only detects new emails every 20 minutes or so, which suggests that top-tier OEMs also have trouble getting past the ruthless background app killer. I'm glad that at least a couple of FOSS apps have found a way around this problem. I'm curious how FairEmail (and now K9, too) pulled it off. Is there an official "do not kill" flag now, or are they just using some sort of loophole that allows IMAP IDLE connections to be kept alive in the background?
- cketti 5y ago
  Most apps use a foreground service. Using that the app is treated like an app running in the foreground and not like an app running in the background. https://developer.android.com/guide/components/foreground-services https://developer.android.com/guide/components/foreground-se...
  - kijin 5y ago
    Foreground services require a persistent notification, which looks more like a nasty hack than a proper workaround.
- Saris 5y ago
  As far as I know the app can just ask to run in the background and then it works. Problem is many apps don't use the native dialog box to request it, and instead ask the user to go to settings and do it manually.

gspr 5y ago

Wonderful news! Hands down the best app for email on phones (a terrible, terrible concept made serviceable with K9).

vsviridov 5y ago

Too late... Switched to FairEmail some time after learning about broken push in K9.

mbeex 5y ago
Same here, not looking back.

jlelse 5y ago

Just blogged about it (https://b.jlel.se/s/49e https://b.jlel.se/s/49e) after musing about the Holo design in 2018 (https://b.jlel.se/s/9a https://b.jlel.se/s/9a). Great work! Just set up a Liberapay donation.

GordonS 5y ago

I moved into Nine a while back - it's great, and in fact the only Android app I've ever paid money for! It works well with my self-hosted email accounts, and before I went full time on my own business, it worked well with O365 and Exchange too - and it didn't force Exchange PIN-lock policies on me. It also seems to allow customisation of just about everything, from view density to font sizes. Highly recommended it.

dredmorbius 5y ago

Google Gmail authentications broke K-9 mail usage with Gmail accounts a couple of years back. Has that been addressed? (Why I still have gmail accounts is a separate issue. Working on that.)

cketti 5y ago
https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7126229#zippy=%2Ci-cant-sign-in-to-my-email-client https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7126229#zippy=%2Ci-ca...
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Thanks.
yshalsager 5y ago
You can use app passwords to add a Gmail account with 2fa enabled to K-9, works flawlessly for me.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Y'know, I actually knew that too, set up a MacOS Mail.app profile with that for a friend. Thanks to you and others.

beermonster 5y ago

What happened to it, for it to come back?

cketti 5y ago
"The release of the latest stable version of K-9 Mail (5.600) was in September 2018" https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail
- beermonster 5y ago
  Thanks

neilv 5y ago

K-9 Mail makes the very crippled Replicant on ancient hardware still be much better at accessing my email than my current iPhone is. https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxySIIIGTI9300 https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxyS...

atatatat 5y ago
You're not hooking that up to a cellular network, are you?
- neilv 5y ago
  Just WiFi; I didn't try cellular (and dislike what I understand of the cellular integration in the hardware). Unfortunately, the onboard WiFi in the i9300 needed some closed device firmware blob, which I cannibalized from an old version of Cyanogen or Lineage. I've heard some people use a more Linux-friendly WiFi chipset with the i9300, via the OTG port, but that'd put it to the point of non-viable to me. So, as an stopgap measure open source handheld, I have an impure and not-much-trusted device that can do email, chat, SSH, and other non-Web network stuff pretty well anywhere I have WiFi.

brylie 5y ago

> You’re welcome and sorry. I realize this was tongue-in-cheek, so should probably be "You’re welcome and we're sorry."

cketti 5y ago
Thanks. https://github.com/k9mail/k9mail.github.io/commit/fc497cd5655b1ef7b946258a02f098cacb6b5206 https://github.com/k9mail/k9mail.github.io/commit/fc497cd565...

nanomonkey 5y ago

>The user interface has been redesigned. Some of you will love it, some will hate it. You’re welcome and sorry. This is great, except now all of the UI elements are at the top of the screen, which on modern large phones is very awkward, even with my long fingers. Looking over the github repo, it appears that I'm not the only one with this concern, and that the author isn't interested in making this configurable. Too bad, this is the only thing that is keeping me from upgrading Lineage, as the older version of K-9 will no longer work. Anyways, thanks for all the hard work. Excellent tool.

zootboy 5y ago
I'm in the same position, and I've been considering wading into the misery that is Android app development just long enough to add a setting to move the action bar to the bottom of the screen. I've also been considering switching to FairEmail, though it has its own share of UI / user flow weirdness.
411111111111111 5y ago
> This is great, except now all of the UI elements are at the top of the screen, which on modern large phones is very awkward, even with my long fingers. I've always found it easier to reach the top of the phone than the bottom, so his sentence is spot on: Some love it, other like you hate it.
- nanomonkey 5y ago
  Interesting. How do you hold your phone with one hand, in such a way that it is secure, and you aren't accidentally hitting the buttons, or having the meat of your hand make contact with the screen? My pinky is normally a hard stop for the bottom of the phone,so that I don't have to apply much pressure with my other fingers or the meat of my hand. My thumb therefore can reach the bottom half of the phone easily, but needs to be readjusted to reach the top. This image leads me to believe that I'm not the only one with this problem: https://www.apptentive.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Screen-Shot-2016-10-27-at-1.05.53-PM.png https://www.apptentive.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Screen...

Animats 5y ago

Oh, nice. I see it's on F-Droid, which is worth mentioning. My own phone is set up for F-Droid only; no Google.

spinax 5y ago
Not only is the new stable there, cketti has been posting all of the betas leading up to this on F-Droid for quite awhile. :) You have to manually look once in awhile in the F-Droid client for newer beta builds to opt into using.
- summm 5y ago
  Unfortunately 5.800 is not yet on F-Droid. I am looking forward to it.
  - spinax 5y ago
    F-Droid builds in batches, about 3 days per batch (see monitor.f-droid.org). All the APKs are signed at once and published together so it should show up soon. Per the dev, the last beta is essentially what became the stable release so you could start today and just upgrade in a bit.
    - cketti 5y ago
      The only change between 5.740 (available on F-Droid right now) and 5.800 are updated translations.
- sicco 5y ago
  The betas have been great indeed! You can enable the 'Unstable updates' option in F-Droid's settings to receive notifications for new beta versions to avoid having to check manually. The downside is that you'll receive these updates for all apps, so be sure to check if a new version is a beta version for apps that you want to keep on stable versions.

10GBps 5y ago

Nice. I have been following the betas so this update isn't really much different for me. I didn't see the update in F-Droid. I had been manually installing the apk and had to do the same for 5.800. I especially appreciate that it works on my Android 6 device. My MotoX from 2013 is still my primary phone and it has no newer updates (running LineageOS).

dane-pgp 5y ago

> Various improvements and bug fixes related to end-to-end encryption (Autocrypt, OpenPGP). Great to see that Autocrypt is still a priority. It's just a pity that Thunderbird isn't as enthusiastic about it: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/openpgp-thunderbird-howto-and-faq#w_does-thunderbird-support-autocrypt https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/openpgp-thunderbird-how...

drdebug 5y ago

I've been using K-9 Mail for years, I love it, great work! If you can spare the time, can you please add a simpler way to donate? I really don't want to create yet another account (liberapay?), please just let me pay with paypal directly.

sicco 5y ago
If you have a GitHub account then you can use that to donate: https://github.com/sponsors/cketti https://github.com/sponsors/cketti But I can really recommend creating a Liberapay acccount (it accepts PayPal) as many FOSS projects use it to receive donations and Liberapay is open source itself and run by a non-profit. Let's get K-9 to its goal of $1000: https://liberapay.com/k9mail https://liberapay.com/k9mail

Fuzzeh 5y ago

Wait... where did it go, I've still got it on my phone and it's the only mail client I use. confused face

forbiddenlake 5y ago
The release of the latest stable version of K-9 Mail (5.600) was in September 2018, nearly three years ago. It "died" (but didn't really) More info: https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail.html https://k9mail.app/2020/06/01/Whats-Up-With-K-9-Mail.html

gizdan 5y ago

I've only ever used FairEmail, can anyone who has tried both (and not rage quit either) give a summary of the advantages and disadvantages of both? Also, can K9 do a "disable work emails outside of work hours" kind of thing? FairEmail (as far as I can tell) doesn't have this, and it gets a tad annoying to get emails at 9pm when my colleagues at the other side of the world.

aidenn0 5y ago
The biggest difference is that the fairEmail interface felt more in place compared with modern apps. I imagine with updates that will change.
cketti 5y ago
> Also, can K9 do a "disable work emails outside of work hours" kind of thing? K-9 Mail has a "quiet time" feature that will not create notifications during the quiet period. It applies to all accounts, though.
sureglymop 5y ago
I have used both and prefer FairEmail. Do note though that while FairEmail is free (and free) software, what makes it really great are it's paid pro features.

vzaliva 5y ago

I remember using it under Symbian OS at my Nokia phone.

Qub3d 5y ago

I switched from GMail to a paid SMTP service and had been using the gmail client until I found out about the K-9 beta. Super pleased with it so far, and its nice to have every step of my mail from server to client (that I can reasonably control) open source! I highly recommend giving a little via Librapay or GitHub sponsors if you use the app and want to see it keep long term support ;) https://liberapay.com/k9mail/donate https://liberapay.com/k9mail/donate https://github.com/sponsors/cketti https://github.com/sponsors/cketti

wayne 5y ago
How was the paid STMP service you were using? Been trying to find one and most seem to be used for email marketing/spam, so it's hard to know what would work reliably for small scale personal email.
- edoceo 5y ago
  Postfix on BSD is bulletproof.
  - jjkkknnn 5y ago
    Irrelevant. The GP asked for a paid SMTP service. GP, FastMail is very good. edoceo, the reason your flippant comment is irrelevant and unhelpful is that running an SMTP service means dealing with often intractable deliverability problems that are only surmountable by having your mail sent by a server that sends a large volume of legitimate email to build reputation as a sender. It doesn't matter if you use postfix, exim, sendmail, BSD, Linux, or TempleOS, or manually wiggle magnets towards an open socket to send email, the reason the GP wants paid SMTP is so that he can rent access to a server with adequate deliverability to actually use his email.
    - bityard 5y ago
      Hmm, I've been running my own SMTP server on a VPS for over a decade with very few issues.

omnibrain 5y ago

I used K-9 on Android (phone and tablet) and after switching to iOS (iPhone and iPad) it‘s the only App I miss. I would pay 10€ for an iOS version.

cengizIO 5y ago
Sadly, there are 0 (ZERO) iOS e-mail clients that support monospace font rendering. (Having plain-text is not enough for LKML). It would really be a game changer if there was a K-9 port for iOS (or iPadOS).

Markoff 5y ago

does it support Exchange? what benefits it has over Aqua mail feature wise (besides being open source)?

tjoff 5y ago

I've been afraid that I was going to loose K-9 (due to it becoming incompatible with a newer android or something). Thanks! One note, If I opt out of giving the app contacts permissions I get nagged about it each time opening the app and composing a new mail etc. etc.

cketti 5y ago
See https://forum.k9mail.app/t/cant-deny-contacts-permission-without-being-asked-to-grant-it-again/1158 https://forum.k9mail.app/t/cant-deny-contacts-permission-wit...
- tjoff 5y ago
  Thanks, as the nag-screen happened before the request I assumed androids do-not-ask-again wouldn't matter for the nag-screen. But it did! Thanks

gnufx 5y ago

It's a pity it seems not to have incorporated the xoauth2 implementation contributed at one time. I had to move to fareemail just for that.

LeoNatan25 5y ago

In a previous work, an adjacent team used the K9 mail source code to implement a secure mail client. The consensus among the team was that the source code was terrible in many ways. On iOS, we had written our own mail client, but on Android, for various reasons, it was decided to use an open source instead of implementing our own. Not sure what amount of research was invested in investing alternatives, but for years the team complained about the quality of K9. This was 6-8 years ago.

cketti 5y ago
If the team complained about their code base for _years_, I'd say the quality of the code base they started out with wasn't the only problem. Especially considering that you had the resources to write an email app from scratch. While it's true that parts of K-9 Mail's code base are gruesome (even today), I can't remember any significant contributions from teams that have built products based on K-9 Mail.
- LeoNatan25 5y ago
  Agreed. The entire Android side of the product was not managed well from the start. The product started as iOS only, because top management had iOS devices. Suddenly they had the shocking realization that Android is very strong in Asia and Europe, and tasked a different team with creating a quick Android POC. That team chose the K9 codebase. The POC team then handed whatever they did to a new dedicated Android team which did all the complaining. They were a small team, but still. My team wasn’t really larger, and we did build a mail, contacts and calendar client. I guess management just couldn’t agree on the commitment.

kilodeca 5y ago

K-9 Mail doesn't send format=flowed https://forum.k9mail.app/t/k-9-mail-is-not-sending-format-flowed-for-plain-text-nor-hard-wrapping/1086 https://forum.k9mail.app/t/k-9-mail-is-not-sending-format-fl...

cengizIO 5y ago
Whenever I see a limitation on plain-text (and monospace fonts), I tend to avoid that client. K-9 is not one of them. Plain-text works OK with LKML and patches are very readable.
- kilodeca 5y ago
  This issue is about sending a plain-text email. https://useplaintext.email/#etiquette https://useplaintext.email/#etiquette
e12e 5y ago
Seems the bug will be prioritized? https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/issues/3868 https://github.com/k9mail/k-9/issues/3868
- kilodeca 5y ago
  That's a different issue.

shdon 5y ago

Does it solve the crash I often experience when deleting messages from large IMAP folders?

jonah 5y ago

My favorite mobile email client of all time was ProfiMail[1] on my Symbian OS based Nokia 6682[2] way back in the day. [1] https://www.lonelycatgames.com/apps/profimail https://www.lonelycatgames.com/apps/profimail [2] https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Nokia-6682_id1108 https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Nokia-6682_id1108