Configuring e-mail

Handling emails under Haiku is possible via two native applications:

• The E-mail preferences application for setting the email accounts
• The Mail application to write and send the emails

Let's review how it can be done.

This article is more a crash test about what is working today fine on Haiku, than having email working 100% under that system. Indeed it was quite a challenge for me to have my emails accessible with the default applications available. I've tried to use :

• a Google account
• an account from a french provider, Free

So it will be a good test to verify if Haiku is handling correctly these providers :)

Google account

First, let's configure the google email account. One bad news : your standard password will not be recognized by default under Haiku. Indeed, you need to define what is called an "app password" which is a less secure process.

For that go to the official Sign in with app passwords page.

Login with your google account and click on the "Create and manage your app passwords" link in the page as per the screenshot below :

Then enter the label for this password and click on the "Create" button :

A password will be generated and will consist of 16 characters (you can ignore the white spaces inside it).

It will not replace your existing e-mail password. Note carefully this password.

Open the E-mail preference application. In the Accounts tab, click on the "Add" button :

Then indicate your email, login and google "app password" :

The real name is important because it's the one which will be displayed in the email exchanges.

The account name is useful to indicate which provider you're using (Google, Apple, Free, Orange, ...), but you can give the name you want:) Click on "Next". Click on "Apply" to finalize the setup of the account :

You should see the below mailbox icon in the Deskbar :

And the messages retrieved from the IMAP servers should start to be received on your system :

If it's not the case, try to use the "Check for mail now" in the pop-up menu from the Mailbox icon in the Deskbar :

You can also decide to automatically check the mailbox on a regular basis if you want.

For that, tick the corresponding checkbox in the E-mail settings tabs, and indicate the number of minutes :

You can also customize the mailbox menu by clicking "Edit mailbox menu".

Let's check now the emails retrieved so far. For that, you need to go into the "/boot/home/mail" folder :

As you can see, the folder inside "mail" directory is the account name previously defined (DigitalBox98).

Inside that directory, "Inbox" will contain all the incoming emails :

From that folder, if you right-click on one of the email and select "Add-ons", you can mark the corresponding e-mail as read:

Let's open one of them via the Mail application :

Well... it seems only text emails are recognized.

If this email in HTML format was correctly recognized, it should be displayed like this :

It's a bit disappointing :/

Once you are in the Mail application, you can use the "Next" and "Previous" buttons to browse your various emails located in the Inbox folder :

Ok, what about sending an email from Haiku from that Google account ?

Let's write one, like below :

Click on "Send".

The sending is working fine ! And after a few minutes, it will be displayed in the corresponding folder ("Messages envoyés")

What about having it in the "Inbox" as the email was sent to myself ?

Second big disappointment : all the new emails sent/received after the first retrieval of existing emails from the IMAP server, are not downloaded and visible under Haiku.

With Google email account under Haiku, it means I have two issues :

• the emails are correctly sent, but they will never appeared in the "sent" folder on the machine
• the emails received after the first retrieval of existing emails are not downloaded from the IMAP server

So the current workaround is to go to the Google email website with your favorite browser under Haiku.

Free account

Let's see if with the Free account it will be better.

For that you need to go into the E-mail preferences to add a new account like below :

The two accounts are now visible in the settings :

Click on "Apply".

Nothing happens...

Ok let's check the details.

I don't know why but the incoming/outgoing "connection type" was not correctly setup, and I have to indicate manually "SSL" for both :

 

When theses changes are applied, I can see the new messages coming from the Free IMAP server :)

The same folder structure is visible in "/boot/home/mail".

The account name defined (DigitalBox-Free) has became a folder in which all the others folders from the IMAP server are retrieved (like "Inbox", "Sent", etc) :

The "Inbox" folder contains all the messages retrieved from the server :

Good point :)

Now let's try to send an email from the Free account to the google email account :

Well, well, well... Not working.

Third disappointment. I have changed the "connection type" to different values, but it was not resolving this issue.

Sending an email from Google account to Free account is working fine as per below :

With Free email account under Haiku, it means the situation is worst :

• the emails can't be sent as the SMTP is rejecting the authentication
• the emails received after the first retrieval of existing emails are not downloaded from the IMAP server (same problem than for Google)

Moving forward

Having email working fine under Haiku is really a challenge for the moment.

It has been reported as working fine with mailbox.org and gmx.com email providers.

Do you have more success on your side, and if so, what is your provider and setup under Haiku ?