Duplicate/related issues:
When new emails are added to some labels bypassing the inbox folder, it would be nice to highlight them.
This is useful when you use labels as folders for mailing lists or such, in order to track new emails there that aren’t shown in the inbox folder.
(Originally posted by 3v1n0 on GitHub.)
Are there any plans to implement this? I was going to switch to Mailspring but the fact that new emails in folders don’t show notifications or appear in “Unread” is a deal breaker for me. I have many server-side filters that sort my emails into several folders, so I’m missing notifications on a large number of them.
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There’s a lot of things we have planned! Due to the nature of our development schedule, we can’t give definitive timelines on any one feature or bug fix, although you can look for the #accepted tag on any issue to know whether it’s in our plans.
Votes on any issue will increase the likelihood that we implement something sooner (although it still doesn’t guarantee anything).
You can get a broader picture of what we’re working on in the #roadmap category. As with issues, votes there will increase the priority of a bundle.
In terms of development difficulty, do you know how hard this would be to do? Is it simply a change in the notification code to remove a filter that checks that the email is in the inbox, or is some deeper architectural change required? I’m a developer myself so I could give it a go if it’s not too difficult.
Honestly, I’m not sure! I’ve mainly been the bloke curating the issues over the past month or so. You could probably just dig in and see if you could implement this.
@Phylu has been contributing a lot lately, so he may have come across this code. Any insight, Janosch?
Yeah, I just had a look, and there’s a filter that removes messages that aren’t in the inbox:
I guess this filtering could be made optional, for example either by adding:
- A new “Only show notifications for messages in the inbox” option; or
- A “show notifications for this folder” option per folder (some mobile email clients take this approach)
- A “show notifications for this folder” option per folder (some mobile email clients take this approach)
Based on some prior conversations, this would be the better approach. The trick is figuring out how to offer the option.
On that note, we have some other related problems that will need solving soon, so however this option is presented would need to be extensible to fit the other situations:
The ideal solution in my view would be to add a context menu to items on the folder/account view on the left pane, so you could check/uncheck “Notify” on accounts and folders. We could later add a “Mute for…” submenu, and perhaps an overall notification control button.
I was thinking that, but I’d also like to be able to bulk enable it for all my folders. One common issue I have with email clients is that folders can usually only be edited individually, so I need to manually edit them one by one to enable notifications for that folder. Maybe something in a context menu in addition to a list of folders in a dialog somewhere, that’s easily bulk editable?
If it was offered at the account-level too, could you do it that way?
- Notify
- Inbox Only
- All Folders
- By Folder
- None
That’s a good idea! I like it.
I also wonder if it would be worth indicating with a small icon or symbol when a folder is/isn’t on notify. That would also serve as the visual indicator when it’s on mute, once that feature is implemented later. We could even make clicking that be what brings up the menu, instead of just right-clicking, so it’s more usable on macOS.
Thoughts there?
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I think a notification configuration based on Inbox / All Mails / Account Specific may be quite easy to implement as we can use existing configuration / ui elements on the settings page.
My suggestion would be to start with that instead of trying to create a 100% solution (configuration options per folder) directly.
Trouble is, Settings is already starting to feel crowded, which Ben wanted to avoid. Adding per-folder notification controls to Settings somehow, especially Settings > General, would really detract from usability I believe. Thus my proposal: we move it out of Settings, and into the space where you’re most likely to want to control it.
What about in the account settings? I’m not sure that folder-specific settings could go there (as it would get quite crowded, as mentioned earlier), but the other options would be fine as as dropdown IMO:
The “Folders” settings tab is pretty empty too - Maybe per-folder notification settings could go in there? Otherwise, maybe an option in the context menu would probably suffice?
That’s annoying when you have dozens of folders though.
Perhaps, although Account Settings is going to need a complete overhaul soon, as it has a number of things missing.
I’m also looking forward to the request to be able to temporarily mute folders:
The controls for notifications and for mute could go in the same place. That’s why I’m thinking either a context menu or some sort of clickable icon next to the folder.
Looking at Mailspring again, it may even be a good idea for the folder icon itself to be clickable and have an indicator badge, if that’s possible.
Putting the configuration on the account settings page would also be my shot. I think this would be feasible write fast, easy and still good looking. 
I submitted a pull request to implement this:
However I can’t fully test it as I’m hitting an issue where folders are not properly showing new emails until much later, even if I press “Sync New Mail Now”. Already reported it here:
Unfortunatel there was some logic in the Mailsync Engine missing which is necessary for Mailspring to get mails in the background for folders in a way that properly allows notification. So I don’t see this coming soon – unfortunately.