[Not sure if this can be considered a feature proposal–it’s more a default proposal, so I’m posting it as Uncategorized]
When you set up a profile using your regular e-mail address, I think the option “Show classic e-mails” should be set by default to “No, chat only”.
I think regular users already have an email app and I don’t think they want to change to Delta Chat for that purpose.
If I install Delta Chat, it’s for… well, chat.
It’s undoubtedly interesting that one could manage both email and chat from within the app, but I don’t think this is a sensible default if we want a regular user to try it. As soon as the app gets loaded with regular emails, they would almost certainly uninstall it.
(I get it that the intended “default usage” would be that of creating a new account on a chatmail server, but IMHO the fact that one can simply use their email address is very convenient and should be considered more of a normal situation…)
there are two recommended ways of using Delta Chat:
- For secure/encrypted chatting
- For reading and replying email in a better way to navigate your inbox as chats instead of a list of emails
if you are using it for encrypted chatting only, it is often with chatmail accounts that can not receive unencrypted email at all
if you are using it with a classic email account chances are higher you want to receive all your email there, not only chats because likely most people that will write to you will not be using Delta Chat, so that is the better default, in fact we changed that default because people complained that they didn’t receive the messages in the app when the default was “chats only”
if you are making the terrible mistake of mixing your classic email client with Delta Chat using both at the same time to read the same INBOX, notice this is a highly discourage workflow known to have several problems, so better use only Delta Chat with that email account or only your email client and use Delta Chat with a dedicated chatting account, if you still want to do the shared INBOX despite the pitfalls then you just have to deal with them, and having to change that configuration will be the least of your problems 
Hi adbenitez and thank you for answering.
Ahem… well yes, I’m doing that terrible mistake… but, as of my experience so far, I haven’t encountered any problem whatsoever…
My encrypted messages go into a separate Delta Chat folder in my email, which doesn’t bother me at all (no notifications either in Thunderbird or the Murena webmail app), it just sits there and messages are deleted after 1 day, as I set it up like that in the settings, so my mail box never gets overloaded… it just seemed almost too good to be true–when I first saw this, I thought it was genius, it worked like a bliss! Now I’m wondering, what problems should I expect? Is there anything waiting around the corner that I haven’t already experienced? I’ve already had a quite long chat with a friend of mine btw, including a voice message, and it worked just fine…
As for the “better way” to navigate my inbox as chat messages, I don’t think I would appreciate it. When I use emails, I want my mail app to support folders, spam check and other features that are unique to regular mail clients. Also, is there really anyone who wants to have both emails and chats mixed into one single list without having at least the option to separate them using folders? I hardly believe that… but maybe I’m wrong.
I also have a dedicated account on a chatmail, so no problem about that, I’m still deciding which approach works best for me.
Thank you if you (or anyone) can give me some more details about this.
well, if one really knows what one is doing, things can be fine. but that is nothing we can expect from the avg user, therefore, the different defaults. therefore, “classic log in” and “e-mail” is tuned down.
here are some possible issues listed, FAQ entry on that/why usage together with normal MUA on the same account is not recommended · Issue #1104 · deltachat/deltachat-pages · GitHub , as said, from these things, changing the “show classic e-mail” option is the least complex one.
also again, we do not recommend mixed account usage in any way, and do not encourage users to do so to other users - even if it works for them, the others may be less experienced.
OK, I’ve read the thread on GitHub and looked at the other thread linked there, and I (almost) totally agree with what missytake just wrote.
The system is clearly working fine for me, I even set the “delete messages from server” option and the only messages that are being deleted are the ones in the Delta Chat folder, as expected, while all my other emails stay untouched (I have configured two such accounts, one @disroot.org and one @murena.io).
As for the last statement (“Sure, if they only want to chat, they should just get a chatmail address instead of a classic email account.”), since we’re talking about me, here’s a reason why I hoped that this system worked fine for everyone (I mean, before finding out that Gmail and many other providers had at least some issue with it).
Using a chatmail account is great, but there’s no way that my contacts can find out my address if I don’t invite them directly. On the other hand, since everyone already has my email address in his contact list, I can just tell them “I’m on Delta Chat and you can easily find me by my email address” (which is something very similar to the IM apps that use your phone number to find more contacts). It’s more intuitive and could spread the use of the app more. (And well, giving them my random-number-sequence@obscure.server.name address isn’t much appealing.) But of course, now I know that the main reason this couldn’t work is that many email providers are… bad providers.
So, thank you all for being patient with me, I think in the end there’s no point in what I asked.
As a matter of fact, the only friend I’ve used Delta Chat with so far has sent me an invitation using Whatsapp…