How do I disable classic emails by default?

Mutual Help
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1.38.2

I just want to disable classic emails on the android client by default. How can it be achieved ?

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It’s in the settings: FAQ - Delta Chat

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Thanks @missytake but I was looking to disable it in the code.

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With the latest version, previous messages are no longer downloaded so just change the setting right after setting up the account, why would you want to disable the option from the code?

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I want to share it as a chat-only app by default, that’s why.

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In the code you can change the setting show_emails to DC_SHOW_EMAILS_OFF (0).

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I think having this enabled by default is actually a UX problem.

I am a fairly technically capable user. I have friends who are not.

I had my friend install DC, but he kept telling me that he hated using it.
When I saw him in person, he showed me that his DC inbox was flooded with newsletters and work emails and so on- these days, an unruly inbox is the norm for most people. Defaulting to the setting to show all mail WILL turn people away from delta chat. It’s incompatible with how the average person uses email and is not a “sane default” for a chat app.

So, I showed him the setting to turn it on for “only accepted contacts”, which I think is a great feature! And removed all the local copies of non-chat emails.

However, the unrelated emails kept flooding in. All past emails deltachat received were apparently now considered accepted contacts, with no interaction on the user’s part.
Worse, there is no apparent way to view the list of “accepted contacts” and no apparent way to remove a contact either. From my own poking around, I do think one of the several different interfaces for removing an email thread also removes them from accepted contacts, but I cannot tell you which interface did it, and I think there is a catch-22 where, if the email thread exists locally, they will be added back to accepted contacts after you remove them, but if you remove all emails with the contact, it’s hard (impossible?) to find the interface to remove them as an accepted contact… And there certainly is no way to batch remove accepted contacts.

In the end, I had to delete his deltachat and start over. There was just no other way to get back to that clean initial state.

Lessons learned:

  1. Accepting all classic emails by default: absolutely must be changed.
  2. Ideally we need an interface for accepted contacts!

Thanks

4 Likes
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oth, several amount of other users prefer the “all mails” default so “absolutely must be changed” is not a fact,

in the past there was a bug that caused all old messages to load, that was fixed in the mean time, and it is much better now

if your friend is using an email account that is busy full of spam and normal classic email, issues are bound to happen, double notifications for incoming messages (yes, you can tell delta chat to work in “chat only” mode, but your classic email doesn’t have a “email only” mode, DC messages will ring notifications there)

the best in that case is to use another email address for delta chat or use only delta chat as email client, if you are using two email clients at the same time for the same inbox there will be annoyances

a way to hide unwanted messages is to block contacts you don’t want to handle in delta chat, besides a newsletter is easier to handle in delta chat than in classic email, you can mute the chat and even archive it if you don’t want to see it at all in the chat list, important chats can be pinned, etc.

what is worse is that some people miss important messages if they use Delta Chat and the “chat only” mode is enabled by default

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oth, several amount of other users prefer the “all mails” default so “absolutely must be changed” is not a fact,

Why do those users prefer all mails to appear in Delta Chat? Is it because they are trying to use Delta Chat as the one-size-fits all app for both chats (over email) and classic emails?

if your friend is using an email account that is busy full of spam and normal classic email, issues are bound to happen, double notifications for incoming messages (yes, you can tell delta chat to work in “chat only” mode, but your classic email doesn’t have a “email only” mode, DC messages will ring notifications there)

the best in that case is to use another email address for delta chat

Using two different email addresses adds a layer of friction. I’m barely able to get new users to login to their existing email clients with “just login to your email, this is just a chat-flavored email client” argument…adding a separate additional email sign up with phone number verification etc. sounds not ideal.

or use only delta chat as email client

Ah, I guess that answers my question about why some people use DC as their all in one email client. Some people to avoid double notifications are uninstalling their email clients to use Delta Chat for both classic and chat emails, gotcha. Not what I would do but seems reasonable.

I use Delta Chat for chats and my regular mail client for emails from the same account without annoyance, but I’m crazy. This won’t work for others. But just for compleness sake, I have an email sieve rule that creates folders/labels for me on demand, so I can direct emails to deltachat@example.org and all emails sent there will get placed into a folder called deltachat, and then I just mute notifications for that folder in my email client.

Delta Chat creates a DeltaChat folder on its own already, if I recall? Could those other email clients be configured to mute alerts for emails to that folder?

what is worse is that some people miss important messages if they use Delta Chat and the “chat only” mode is enabled by default

Perhaps we could introduce an onboarding question that asks ‘are you using delta chat alongside another email client with this same email address’ or something like that, with explainer text of how to pick which one?

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yes, they use delta chat as their only email client, they don’t want to use classic email app

this would probably be the more flexible approach, but sadly people also get stressed if you put too many questions before letting them just to use the app, maybe a setting/switch in the “advanced” option in the login screen

1 Like
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maybe we should just show the option on the account setup screen like @lk108’s deltatouch does?

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I use Delta Chat as an only e-mail client on Android. AFAIK there is no other client which supports Socks5,

1 Like
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I don’t get it.Why complicate things by using an app that is meant for chatting as an email client?! That’s just silly.
But, okay, there will always be silly people, so I guess there is no stopping them. What is even sillier, is to expect the makers of the app to cater to this silliness.
I am giving DeltaChat a try, because I am looking for a very simple, decentralized chat app with a clean interface. I very much like the chat over email approach for the obvious reasons. But I have absolutely no intention to replace the mail app I have been using for years. What I would like, is for DC to cut through the annoying clutter of my inbox, and show me the messages from friends and family without further ado.
Yesterday all mails of the day popped up in DC without me having asked for that to happen. I immediately switched on the ‘accepted contacts’ option, and I am really hoping that ended the clutter.
But I do think that should be the default setting. If not, expect people to give up on DC pretty quickly. So, stick to the core business.

Oh, and advising people to get a new email account specially for DC is also a great way to unnecessarily complicate matters. I have been using the same email domain for over a decade. The last thing I want to do, is tell people they can simply chat to me via email, but they will have to use a different email address for this than they do for regular emails.

For the rest: great, elegant idea, great app, keep up the good work. I will do my best to get people onboard.

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my opinion: just use a dedicated email account for deltachat. That is better anyway because then you can choose an email provider with better terms and less rate limits.
The best case would be using (or hosting your own) a chatmail instance: GitHub - deltachat/chatmail: chatmail service deployment scripts and docs which is an email server that is optimised for use with Delta Chat

Though I agree that changing the which emails to show setting should be better (deleting or fetching the other emails automatically if the user wants so you don’t have to delete or hide them all manually)