I still can’t get it, why not to use K9 model of keeping messages that proved by time.
It really simple, - keep on device the only number of last messages user wants, for example 100/250/500/all and keep rest of messages on the IMAP server that can be pulled on demand if needed.
Messages that deleted on device should be deleted also from a server. Simple.
This way, those who has limited space on IMAP server can manage what to keep and what can be deleted. In the same time those who has “normal” or huge amount of space on the IMAP server, they can keep messages without killing mobile device by filling all its space (which is very easy to achieve with attachments) and be able in the same time get old messages if needed.
DC isn’t snapchat to exchange with kitten once and forget about it, but a communication program that utilized email protocol that assumed to keep message forever if it needed.
I already has two correspondents(a lawyers who exchanged a lot with attached documents) who stopped using DC because of this issue and early or later every1 will step on that if it wouldn’t be resolved.
AlexJ I was talking about to keep them forever in the server by default, but let people with small server storage opt-out, maybe you have almost infinite storage, but some people have only 100MB
actually I think that would be a nice (optional) feature for Delta Chat
According to the title of this topic, - the issue is that DC keeps locally, on the phone ALL messages including blobs and fill out device’s space.
I’m talking about majority of users who has more than 100Mb on IMAP server and proposed solution how it can be resolved, - the same way as it done in K9.
All phones I know allows for example to set preference - how many text messages to keep, the same option need to be implemented in DC to avoid putting smartphone to the knee.
Actually it should be more flexible to satisfy people like you who has limited space on the server and those who can at least use gmail or their “friends”.
I see it as an options:
Keep locally on device only last: 100/250/500/All cached messages and allow to pull older messages from IMAP server on demand
Automatically delete messages that older than: month/year/none(keep all)
If option #1 is set to “all”, then unhide option: Delete old messages if space occupied by DC exceed 0.1/1/2/5/10/9000Gb
I think it will satisfy all DC users, those who has plenty of space on IMAP server and those who has limited amount of space and what is most important phones won’t be overfilled by DC in all cases.
Properly solving the message history and storage usage (devices/server of any sizes) for all use-cases, while keeping it to a minimal set of user-visible options, isn’t trivial, but shouldn’t be too hard either.
IIRC the required user-facing items for the full solution are only three:
Additional message states: starred (never deleted, manual selection) and archived (usually remain only on device, automatic expiration). (The other (recent) messages get synced with the server and across devices. NOTE: The “archived messages” are different from the old “archived chats” which are only hidden/suspended from the chat list. The “archived messages” stay visible in the chat histories, are not synced with the server (and thus other clients) anymore, and default to remain only on the device.)
Max. number of messages kept on server, and thus synced accross devices (per chat), default value 250? (The client with the smallest setting usually determines the amount of messages kept on the server.)
Default true: delete exceeding messages from server
Disabling this suboption
i) in conjuction with reducing max. messages kept on server/synced to 0, configures a device (with enough storage) to keep all incoming messages , while other devices may still sync more and even delete a part of them before they expire on the server.
ii) in conjunction with a smaller number kept on server and synced, and possibly a small archive limit, configures a device to sync less messages than kept on server, i.e. for low-storage devices or huge-storage servers.
Local (archiving of) messages. Keep messages that expired on server on local device? Default enabled/disabled? (enabled is safe if auto-delete-device is implemented)
Suboptions:
Default disabled: Limit number of (synced + archived) messages (per chat), to limit the number of messages kept on the device after they expire from the synced messages.
Alternative option that will also remove low-traffic chats: Default disabled: Limit age of (synced + archived) messages (per chat)
Required background mechanisms:
auto-delete-server
always guaranteeing enough free (quota) space on the server for continuous operation (and only deleting the last (synced-new) messages of every chat if no other option remains.)
limits the max. number of messages kept on the server
auto-delete-device
guarantees free space on the device (maybe auto-deleting from the synced rather than archived? (and first reducing the the local email inbox list?), or offering to delete/backup archived chats if necessary)
optionally limits the local history if configured
A full current design:
(It has some more details like considering the latest messages of each chat (state synced-new) more important, to prevent the auto-archive and -delete from completely deleting low-traffic chats etc.)
In current 0.200.0 there is the housekeeping function at backup export which deletes unused files.
this works well (imho)
beside of that there should be an automatic or manual function to do this job separately from backup.
One detail of the above background mechanisms would actually make deltachat work without requiring manual adaption of the default number of max. messages kept on the server/device (out of the box) also with small mailboxes/storage:
when the free space falls below say 6% or 110MB, notify the user that DC will soon (below 5% or 100MB) have to start automatically deleting the oldest chat messages on the server/device
for sure, there are usecases for external memory, but it seems still be a comparable low impact for lots of work and maintainance, so resources are spent better elsewhere. esp. as one can increase the memory on system-level with SD cards on many OS (probably on more OS than 5 years ago): Get started with an SD card - Android Help (see “internal storage”)
i have redmi 9 nad tried the workaround to enable sd card as internal but after a week i guess there is no garbage collector and even when i deleted all apps tht where only internal i couldnt install any app and i got constantly a warning that my internal space is always full, had to reset to factory and just accept that i have only 32gb internal…
