K-9 Mail

Last updated
K-9 Mail
Original author(s) Jesse Vincent
Developer(s) MZLA Technologies Corporation, Christian Ketterer
Stable release
6.603 / 12 October 2023;3 months ago (12 October 2023)
Repository
Written in Java, Kotlin
Operating system Android
Type Email application
License Apache License 2.0
Website k9mail.app

K-9 Mail is free and open source email client for Android. It is designed as an alternative to the stock email clients included with the platform; it supports both POP3 and IMAP protocols and supports IMAP IDLE for real-time notifications. The project is named after the Doctor Who character K9.[ citation needed ] [1]

Contents

Previous logo K9mail.svg
Previous logo

History

The source code was first published to its git repository on October 27, 2008 [2] by Jesse Vincent and the first binaries were released to the public on the Google Code site the same month. [3]

In 2015 the project received $86,000 of funding from the Open Technology Fund. [4]

On 13 June 2022, it was announced that K-9 Mail had been taken over by MZLA Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation with current maintainer Christian Ketterer joining the team, and plans for K-9 Mail to be rebranded as Thunderbird for Android following the completion of a feature roadmap, including sync with Thunderbird on PC, integrating Thunderbird's automated account setup system, message filtering, and improvements to folders. [5]

Reception

This application has been downloaded from the Google Play Store between 5 million and 10 million times since its release and has been rated by over 90,000 people with almost as many 1 star reviews as 5 star reviews many due to the fundamental restructuring of the program in August 2021, which was not widely accepted by the user base and more recently because of the battery usage when using push to fetch mail.

In the early 2010s it was widely reviewed, and was particularly praised in the media between 2011 and 2013 as a replacement for the default mail application. [6] [7] At the time, it was a leading alternative Android app, often recommended [8] when a user did not want to use the default app. It was awarded the "Best App for Sending Email" in the 2010 "Best Android Apps" book. [9]

Features

See also

Related Research Articles

In computing, the Post Office Protocol (POP) is an application-layer Internet standard protocol used by e-mail clients to retrieve e-mail from a mail server. Today, POP version 3 (POP3) is the most commonly used version. Together with IMAP, it is one of the most common protocols for email retrieval.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GNOME Evolution</span> Personal information manager software and workgroup information management tool for GNOME

GNOME Evolution is the official personal information manager for GNOME. It has been an official part of GNOME since Evolution 2.0 was included with the GNOME 2.8 release in September 2004. It combines e-mail, address book, calendar, task list and note-taking features. Its user interface and functionality is similar to Microsoft Outlook. Evolution is free software licensed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Microsoft Outlook</span> Email and calendaring software

Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily being popular as an email client for businesses, Outlook also includes functions such as calendaring, task managing, contact managing, note-taking, journal logging, web browsing, and RSS news aggregation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mozilla Thunderbird</span> Free and open-source email client by Mozilla

Mozilla Thunderbird is free and open-source email client software which also functions as a full personal information manager with a calendar and contactbook, as well as an RSS feed reader, chat client (IRC/XMPP/Matrix), and news client. Available cross-platform, it is operated by the Mozilla Foundation's subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. Thunderbird is an independent, community-driven project that is managed and overseen by the Thunderbird Council, which is elected by the Thunderbird Community. The project strategy was originally modeled after that of Mozilla's Firefox web browser and is an interface built on top of that web browser.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Apple Mail</span> Email client by Apple Inc.

Mail is an email client included by Apple Inc. with its operating systems macOS, iOS, iPadOS and watchOS. Mail grew out of NeXTMail, which was originally developed by NeXT as part of its NeXTSTEP operating system, after Apple's acquisition of NeXT in 1997.

The following tables compare general and technical features of notable email client programs.

Kolab is a free and open source groupware suite. It consists of the Kolab server and a wide variety of Kolab clients, including KDE PIM-Suite Kontact, Roundcube web frontend, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Lightning with SyncKolab extension and Microsoft Outlook with proprietary Kolab-Connector PlugIns.

Push email is an email system that provides an always-on capability, in which when new email arrives at the mail delivery agent (MDA), it is immediately, actively transferred (pushed) by the MDA to the mail user agent (MUA), also called the email client, so that the end-user can see incoming email immediately. This is in contrast with systems that check for new incoming mail every so often, on a schedule. Email clients include smartphones and, less strictly, IMAP personal computer mail applications.

The following tables compare general and technical information for a number of notable webmail providers who offer a web interface in English.

DeltaSync was a proprietary Microsoft communications protocol for synchronizing web services with offline clients. It was switched off by Microsoft on 30 June 2016.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows Live Mail</span> Email client, electronic calendar and newsreader, developed by Microsoft

Windows Live Mail is a discontinued freeware email client from Microsoft. It was the successor to Windows Mail in Windows Vista, which was the successor to Outlook Express in Windows XP and Windows 98. Windows Live Mail is designed to run on Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, but is also compatible with Windows 8 and Windows 10, even though Microsoft bundles a new email client, named Windows Mail, with the latter. In addition to email, Windows Live Mail also features a calendar, an RSS feed reader, and a Usenet newsreader.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zarafa (software)</span> Discontinued free and open-source groupware

Zarafa was an open-source groupware application that originated in the city of Delft in the Netherlands. The company that developed Zarafa, previously known as Connectux, is also called Zarafa. The Zarafa groupware provided email storage on the server side and offered its own Ajax-based mail client called WebAccess and a HTML5-based, WebApp. Advanced features were available in commercially supported versions. Zarafa has been superseded by Kopano.

Exchange ActiveSync is a proprietary protocol designed for the synchronization of email, contacts, calendar, tasks, and notes from a messaging server to a smartphone or other mobile devices. The protocol also provides mobile device management and policy controls. The protocol is based on XML. The mobile device communicates over HTTP or HTTPS.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sparrow (email client)</span> Email client

Sparrow was an email client for OS X and iOS. After a 4-month beta period, Sparrow went on sale in the Mac App Store on February 9, 2011 and became the top paid and top grossing app in less than one day. On July 20, 2012, the company announced that it had been acquired by Google and was ceasing continued development of the application except for critical bug fixes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mailbird</span> Desktop email client software app

Mailbird is a desktop email client for Microsoft Windows, compatible with Windows 7 and all later versions. As well as sending and receiving emails, Mailbird includes managing calendar events and contacts from different email providers, social media, task management, file share, and video-conferencing integrations. Mailbird is offered via paid subscription, but also includes a free version.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MyMail</span> Mobile app for managing multiple email accounts

myMail is a mobile app for managing multiple email accounts created by My.com, a subsidiary of Mail.Ru Group. Using POP/IMAP, SMTP and Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync protocols, myMail provides real-time, customizable notifications, data compression for sending/receiving email traffic and search functionality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Proton Mail</span> End-to-end encrypted email service

Proton Mail is a Swiss end-to-end encrypted email service founded in 2013 headquartered in Plan-les-Ouates, Switzerland. It uses client-side encryption to protect email content and user data before they are sent to Proton Mail servers, unlike other common email providers such as Gmail and Outlook.com. The service can be accessed through a webmail client, the Tor network, or dedicated iOS and Android apps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mail (Windows)</span> Conflation of two applications developed by Microsoft

Mail is an email client developed by Microsoft and included in Windows Vista and later versions of Windows. It is available as the successor to Outlook Express, which was either included with, or released for Internet Explorer 3.0 and later versions of Internet Explorer. It is set to be replaced by Outlook for Windows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pretty Easy privacy</span>

pretty Easy privacy was a pluggable data encryption and verification system that provided automatic cryptographic key management through a set of libraries for written digital communications.

The JSON Meta Application Protocol (JMAP) is a set of related open Internet Standard protocols for handling email. JMAP is implemented using JSON APIs over HTTP and has been developed as an alternative to IMAP/SMTP and proprietary email APIs such as Gmail and Outlook. Additional protocols and data models being built on top of the core of JMAP for handling contacts and calendar synchronization are meant to be potential replacements for CardDAV and CalDAV, and other support is currently in the works.

References

  1. ↑ "About" . Retrieved 1 February 2024.
  2. ↑ "k9mail/k-9". Github. Retrieved 1 September 2013.
  3. ↑ "Downloads - k9mail - K-9 Mail is an advanced email client for Android - Google Project Hosting" . Retrieved 2013-08-15.
  4. ↑ Open Technology Fund. "Projects we support - K-9 Mail". Open Technology Fund Website. U.S. Agency for Global Media . Retrieved 2022-03-13.
  5. ↑ Axon, Samuel (2022-06-13). "Email client K-9 Mail will become Thunderbird for Android". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2022-06-14.
  6. ↑ Paul, Ryan (2011-01-24). "Excellent K-9 mail app for Android keeps your messages on a leash". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2013-08-15.
  7. ↑ "K-9 Mail Receives First Significant Update In 9 Months - Improved Interface, Altered Widget, Bug Fixes, And More". Androidpolice.com. 2013-06-28. Retrieved 2013-08-15.
  8. ↑ Begun, Daniel (2011). Amazing Android Apps for Dummies. Wiley. ISBN   9781118061428.
  9. ↑ Hendrickson, Mike (2010). Best Android Apps. O'Reilly Media. p. 80. ISBN   9781449382551.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.