.NET Information center: OfflineIMAP

Monday, July 25, 2011

OfflineIMAP

Welcome to the OfflineIMAP project

OfflineIMAP is a tool to simplify your e-mail reading. You can read the same mailbox from multiple computers. You get a current copy of your messages on each computer, and changes you make one place will be visible on all other systems. For instance, you can delete a message on your home computer, and it will appear deleted on your work computer as well. OfflineIMAP is also useful if you want to use a mail reader that does not have IMAP support, has poor IMAP support, or does not provide disconnected operation.

It is a Free Software project licensed under the GNU General Public License (v2+). You can download it for free, and you can modify it. In fact, you are encouraged to contribute changes back to us.

OfflineIMAP is FAST; it features a multi-threaded synchronization algorithm that can dramatically speed up performance in many situations by synchronizing several different things simultaneously. The defaults are very conservative, so you might want to check the configuration page to learn how to enable multithreaded syncing.

OfflineIMAP is FLEXIBLE; you can customize which folders are synced via regular expressions, lists, or Python expressions; a versatile and comprehensive configuration file is used to control behavior; two user interfaces are built-in; fine-tuning of synchronization performance is possible; internal or external automation is supported; SSL and PREAUTH tunnels are both supported; offline (or "unplugged") reading is supported; and esoteric IMAP features are supported to ensure compatibility with the widest variety of IMAP servers.

OfflineIMAP is SAFE; it absolutely attempts to never ever lose one of your mails under any circumstances. Of course, legally speaking, OfflineIMAP comes with no warranty, so I am not responsible if this turns out to be wrong.

OfflineIMAP was originally written by John Goerzen, who retired from maintaining it at then end of 2010. It is now maintained by Nicolas Sebrecht. We are grateful for the great job John did and for having shared his project with us.