Nico's blog

IDLE support with OfflineIMAP

As I mentioned in my article about Mutt, I am using OfflineIMAP to synchronise my emails to my FreeBSD laptop.

I recently found out that it does support IMAP IDLE, allowing to have your emails delivered in real-time / through notifications.

It's just one line to add in your ~/.offlineimaprc, with the name(s) of the folder(s) you want:

[Repository Remote]
type = IMAP
remotehost = <redacted>
remoteuser = <redacted>
remotepass = <redacted>
idlefolders = ['INBOX']

You will then see something like this in your offlineimap logs whenever an email hits this IMAP INBOX mailbox:

Thread-4:
 Syncing INBOX: IMAP -> Maildir
 Copy message UID 162102 (1/1) Remote:INBOX -> Local:INBOX

Tags: IT