Account Settings

Many of the settings in K-9 Mail can be customized for each account, and are therefore located under Account Settings. To open them:

If you're in the account list view, long-tap the account you want to configure, then select Account settings.
If you're in a folder list or message list, open the menu, select Settings, then Account settings to get to the settings for the current account.

General Settings

Account name

Here you can specify the name of the account that is displayed in the account list screen.

Default account

Check this setting to make this the default account. It will be used whenever you send a message and don't specify an account, e.g. when taping the Compose icon in the account list screen or sending a message from another app.

Account color

Here you can select the color that is used to indicate that a particular message or folder is belonging to the selected account.

Reading mail

Always show images

This setting allows you to control when images are automatically downloaded and displayed in the message view and when you have to press the Show pictures button first.

Available options:

No (Always display the Show pictures button)
From contacts (when the sender is in your Contacts)
From anyone (Never display the Show pictures button)

Mark as read when opened

Uncheck this to not mark messages as read when you open them.

Independent of what you select here, you can always select Mark as read or Mark unread from the menu when viewing a message.

Fetching mail

These settings control how and when mail is fetched for this account.

Local folder size

Specify the number of messages that will be downloaded for a folder. When new messages are downloaded older messages will be deleted from the device (but not from the server).

This is no hard limit and you can download more messages by pressing Load up to XX more at the end of the message list.

Sync messages from

If you set this to anything other than any time (no limit) K-9 Mail will only download messages that are younger than a certain time span. During synchronization K-9 Mail will remove previously downloaded messages that fall outside that range from the device (but not the server).

Note: Currently, pressing Load up to XX more in the message list doesn't override this setting. That means you won't be able to manually fetch messages older than specified here.

Note: This setting is only available for IMAP accounts.

Fetch messages up to

Set a limit on how much of a message is downloaded during synchronization. When viewing messages larger than this value you will see a button saying Download complete message that allows you to download the rest of the message.

Folder poll frequency

Control the poll frequency from never up to 24 hours.

Poll folders

Control whether to poll all, 1st Class, 2nd Class or no folders at all.

To learn more about this, read the page Folders.

Push folders

Control whether to push all, 1st class, 2nd class or no folders.

To learn more about this, read the page Folders.

Note: This setting is only available for IMAP accounts, because it's the only account type that supports Push.

Sync server deletions

By default K-9 Mail removes downloaded messages from the device if the message has been deleted from the server. If you uncheck this setting K-9 Mail will keep the downloaded messages.

When I delete a message

You can control what happens when you delete a message using K-9 Mail.

The following options are available:

Do not delete on server (only from the device)
Delete from server
Mark as read on server (not available for POP3 accounts)

Erase deleted messages on server

Normally, messages on the server are simply marked for deletion. Here you can control when they are actually deleted (expunged).

Available options:

Immediately
When polling
Manually

Note: Some clients can display messages that are marked for deletion and allow you to remove that flag, undeleting them. K-9 Mail currently doesn't support that functionality.

Note: This setting is only available for IMAP accounts.

Incoming server

Please see Incoming Server Settings for the available settings.

Advanced

K-9 Mail supports some advanced settings for IMAP accounts. If you're not familiar with the details of the IMAP protocol you shouldn't change any of these settings.

Poll when connecting for push

When this is enabled K-9 Mail will do a full folder synchronization after establishing a Push connection. Otherwise it will only download new messages.

Max folders to check with push

K-9 Mail needs to establish one connection for each folder that is checked via Push. This can quickly add up and exceed the number of concurrent connections your mail server allows you to establish. This setting is intended as safety mechanism to limit the number of Push connections regardless of how many folders are configured to be checked via Push.

Refresh IDLE connection

Sending mail

These settings control everything related to sending mail.

Composition defaults

Here you can configure your main identity.

Your name

This is the name that will be used in outgoing messages.

Your email address

This is the email address that will be used as the sending address for outgoing messages.

Bcc all messages to

Here you enter an email address that will receive a copy of all messages you send.

Use signature

Enable this to add a signature to all your messages.

Signature

Enter the signature text here.

Note: You should start the signature with "-- " (dash, dash, space) on its own line. Most email clients will recognize this as start of the signature and e.g. allow stripping the signature when quoting messages in replies.

Signature position

Here you can specify where your signature should appear when replying to a message.

Available options are:

Before quoted text (your text, your signature, quoted text)
After quoted text (your text, quoted text, your signature)

Note: This setting will be ignored if you check the setting Reply after quoted text.

Manage identities

Here you can set up alternative identities consisting of name, email address, Reply-to address, and signature.

Add an identity

Select New identity from the menu to create a new identity.

Delete an identity

Long-press the name of an identity in the list of identities, then select Remove.

Set default identity

Long-press the name of an identity in the list of identities to open a menu that allows you to change the order of identities (Move up, Move down, Move to top / make default). The top-most identity is the default identity that will be used when composing a message from this account.

Message Format

Here you can configure the message format that is used for outgoing messages.

The following options are available:

Plain text (you will lose all formatting and inline images of the original message when forwarding/replying to a message; this will only send text/plain parts)
HTML (keeps images and formatting; will additionally include a text/plain part)
Automatic (same as Plain text when composing new messages; same as HTML when replying or forwarding messages)

Always show Cc/Bcc

Enabling this will always show the text fields to specify CC and BCC recipients in the message composition screen.

Read receipt

Checking this requests a read receipt for all outgoing messages.

Note: This is adding a special header asking the recipient's email client to confirm that the message was received. Some clients (like K-9 Mail) do not support sending answers to this request. Others ask the user for confirmation before sending an answer. So not receiving a read receipt is not a reliable indicator that a message hasn't been read.

Reply quoting style

Defines your preference for the format in which the quoted text of the message you are replying to will appear from the following options:

Prefix (like Gmail, Pine) - The quoted text appears below a one line header in the format Sender's Name <user@domain.TLD> wrote:.
With the prefix option selected 2 additional options will be available:
- Reply after quoted text - When checked, the original message will appear above the reply you type into the message text box.
- Quoted text prefix - Defines the character(s) that will precede each line of quoted text. The default is '>'.
Header (like Outlook, Yahoo!, and Hotmail) - The quoted text appears below a header that includes the Original Sender, Recipients, Time, and Subject from the original email's message header fields.

Quote message when replying

Uncheck this if by default you don't want to include the original message in your reply. You will still be able to include the original message by clicking the Quote message button in the message composition screen when replying to a message.

Strip signatures on reply

When this is checked K-9 Mail will try to detect the correspondents signature and remove it when quoting the original message.

Outgoing server

Please see Configuring the outgoing server for the available settings.

Folders

Auto-expand folder

The folder you specify here will be opened when you click on an account in the account list. Set to -NONE- when clicking an account should open the folder list.

Folders to display

Here you can specify what folder classes should be displayed in the folder list. This can also be changed from the Show folders... sub-menu in the folder list.

Available options are:

All
Only 1st Class folders
1st and 2nd Class folders
All except 2nd Class folders

To learn more about folder classes, read the page Folders.

Move/copy destination folders

This setting specifies which folders are displayed when you're asked to pick a destination folder for copy and move operations.

Available options are:

All
Only 1st Class folders
1st and 2nd Class folders
All except 2nd Class folders

To learn more about folder classes, read the page Folders.

Folders to search

Here you specify what folders are searched when you start a search from the folder list or the account list. Searches from a message list only search messages in that list.

Available options are:

All
Displayable (only folders matching Folders to display)
None

Archive folder

Here you can designate an archive folder. Messages will be moved there when the Archive action is used. Selecting -NONE- disables the archive functionality for this account.