Claws Mail

Why use Claws Mail?  (I'm asking that question in Linux, but it's available for Windows too.) Well, when I looked at email clients that worked on my Debian XFCE installation, I found Thunderbird using 600MB of RAM and Evolution using 300MB. Even GMail open in a browser tab uses 300MB. Claws Mail, on the other hand uses 73MB of RAM:

This would certainly make it useful on an old computer with little memory available, but doesn't it look like some relic from the Windows 95 era? No, it supports GTK3 and at least in Debian some nice themes are available. Still old school but looks OK:

So here is the full list. Why use claws mail?

• Lightweight, low memory usage, but still full featured. Does filtering and processing. Fits in to the XFCE desktop well. In Gnome I use Geary for casual emails and Evolution for more serious use, but Claws does both.
• Supports GTK3 and has a wide range of themes available, from old school to modern.
• Supports OAuth2, the authorisation protocol used by GMail and other email providers now.

There are also some features that Claws Mails does not have that may be reasons not to use it. On the other hand, they may be features you do not need or want:

• Push emails are not a feature. You have to wait until Claws Mail check for new mail, at whatever interval you set.
• New email desktop notifications from GMail don't work because GMail doesn't mark any messages as 'New'. There is a patch available to change behaviour to notify for unread messages, but it involves compiling Claws from source code.
• Emails are displayed by default as plain text, not HTML. There is a plugin to switch to HTML view, but if you prefer the formatting, fonts and background images of HTML mail, Claws is probably not for you.
• Claws Mail doesn't do the modern tiled subject column that Geary does. Layout is strictly old school.

So there you have it, a lightweight, minimal (but still powerful) email client to keep open if you don't like web mail or the size of some other email clients, and are not put off (or in fact enjoy or want) basic email features.

 

Email clients for GMail in Debian Bookworm

I've been using the Thunderbird email client in Debian Bookworm XFCE for a while, but it seems to have a bug causing it to use 50-60% of the CPU and 500-600MB of RAM constantly, so I thought I would try out the alternatives.

I tried Geary but that won't run without the Gnome online accounts service, so I tried Claws Mail. That can read emails from GMail with an application password, but cannot send emails by SMPT, [See correction below] I suspect because GMail is constantly imposing increasingly restrictive security requirements. Claws now supports OAuth2, Google's latest security hoop, but getting an authorisation code is a process intended for software developers and not users. I tried it at one point, but gave up when I was asked for my credit card details. It's a shame because Claws seems quite suited to the feel of XFCE.

Which left me with Evolution, actually my favourite email application in Gnome. It installs without bringing down a lot of Gnome stuff with it, and runs OK.  Unlike Thunderbird it only uses 300MB of RAM, and CPU usage at idle is 0-1%.

It's a shame only big projects can afford the cost of enabling OAuth2 login for users (for which Google apparently charges a fee). GMail users on XFCE really only have the option of using Evolution a the moment it seems. I would be nice is there was a more minimalist option like Geary is in Gnome. Claws could be that option, but at the moment it is crippled by Google's security restrictions.

 

Update: Correction, Claws can send emails with a GMail application password, just, for some reason, not to yourself, which is how I was testing it. LinuxQuestions.

I also managed to get it to work with OAuth2 (entirely by accident) without giving Google my credit card details. I will try to work out how it happened in a future post.

Folder retention policy in Thunderbird

I have a folder of promotional emails which I look at from time if I need some service parts for the car or a new cartridge for the printer because sometimes there are sales or discounts worth taking advantage of. In Thunderbird I set the retention policy to delete messages more than 30 days old, because obviously these offers expire after some time.

I checked the folder recently and found that all my emails were still there.

After quite a bit of checking and searching, I found that you have to run File/Compact Folders to make the policy active for the first time.

Red Hat Bugzilla

A feature not a bug, apparently.

 I entirely agree with Mike A. Harris' comment on the bug report.

I chose "File->Compact Folders" in 2.0.0.21 and it does not seem to work, however if I right click directly on the folder with a retention policy and choose the "Compact" option, it causes the folder to flush mail older than the retention timeframe. I'm not sure if thunderbird will auto-flush mail in that folder afterward or not, or if you have to constantly manually choose "compact".

Personally, I still consider this a bug because the majority of users who choose to set a retention policy of n days are neither informed that, nor are they likely to guess that they have to perform another action like "compact". So if it isn't considered a bug per se. then it definitely is a design flaw. Having said that, it probably belongs in the upstream bugzilla I guess. 

Hopefully thunderbird 3 has a more intuitive design that works like one would expect. :)

I checked my promotions folder again today, and it seems the retention policy is now in force, as emails older that 30 days have been deleted. As Mike pointed out, you need to right click the folder and choose the Compact option for the policy to work.

Filter emails in Evolution

Here is a quick tutorial on how to filter emails in Evolution. It took me a while to work out how to do it, so I thought I'd make a note of what I did to remind myself when I inevitably forget later on, and to help anybody who wants to do the same thing.

First, right click on the folder where you want to create a new folder to put your filtered emails in. Click on (you guessed it) New Folder. I put mine in Google Mail > All Mail.

To filter emails by sender, right click on an email you want to create a filter for and select Create > Create a Filter Rule for Sender.

In the dialogue that appears, select the folder you created in the first step.

Click on Add Condition if the sender uses more than one address to send emails from. (My daughter's school has used four different domains to send emails, so I had to add four conditions.)

To apply the filter, click on Message > Apply Filter.

To filter all existing emails, select you inbox and click on Edit > Select All then  Message > Apply Filters.