Somehow on a recent update my “archives” folder was un-set (that’s it’s own issue). I didn’t notice that, all I noticed was that the keyboard short cut to archive a message just stopped working.
I am not sure when the change happened but I didn’t really have time to troubleshoot it and my buttons already don’t work so it’s been a few weeks of kind of limping along. And then today I noticed that the archive folder should in the short list up top and isn’t. So I went into my settings and set it and now it works fine.
But it seems like a) the update shouldn’t have swallowed my settings and b) if you type a keyboard shortcut that Mailspring doesn’t know what to do with it should object so you know WHY nothing is happening.
You’ve diagnosed it exactly right, and for anyone landing here with the same symptom: if the archive button vanishes from the toolbar and the archive shortcut does nothing, it’s because the account has no folder mapped to the Archive role. Open Preferences > Folders, find the account, and pick a folder next to Archive — the button and shortcut come back immediately. (Gmail accounts don’t need this; archiving there just removes the Inbox label.)
On the two requests: the shortcut still fails silently today rather than telling you why, and I’ve noted that as something to fix. I haven’t been able to reproduce an update clearing the mapping; if you ever see that happen again, tell me which version you updated from and to and I’ll chase it.