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User Rating3.59/5K-9 Mail Android App is an open source email client for Android with multi-folder sync, email signatures, Bcc-to-self, return-address configuration, keyboard shortcuts, Exchange Support, message flagging, IMAP deletes, saving attachments, configurable notifications and more.
Price: Free
K9 Mail Android App is one of the best email clients for Android. It’s loaded with every email feature you could think of except ActiveSync (Push email, however IMAP integration syncs almost as fast as ActiveSync). By far a better replacement over the default email client created by Google (if you’ve read my gripe about the default email client deleting my inboxes article, you’ll know why). I personally like the iMAP folder synchronization, signatures and the ability to multi-manage several emails inboxes from a mobile device. Here is the complete list of features:
K9 Mail Android App is extremely useful, especially for those who are dependant on email.
Once you have your IMAP, POP3, and/or WebDAV (Exchange) accounts; everything else is typical of a mobile email client. Be sure to set your email preferences such as notifications and sync options. One usability perk K9 Mail offers over Gmail is the Previous/Next buttons, which makes browsing through emails convenient versus viewing a message then going back to the entire list every time.
If you use K9 Mail Android App as your default email client, then it is used probably daily.
The user interface recently has the added option of light background or classic dark. Gripe Alert: when viewing an email list in landscape mode (keyboard open), the email items are very small, could be difficult to read the small fonts.
( out of 5)
Should you Download K9 Mail? Yes! An Essential App for Email on Android aside of Gmail!
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Posted 
It is the solution for LG eve GW620 / GW620R
Everything seems fine now after using K-9 (remove given POP3 mail)
Hello,
I too own LG Eve. And after 3 months of use, am pretty exasperated with its poor handling of my POP3 sympatico email. If it was not my primary email account for years, I would have switched to google mail. Can you please tell me how to remove its native email app and download K-10 (what version)? I am a technical newbie, so would appreciate simple instructions. PS. I tried clicking on K-9 from the google market, but the program would not open. I am using a new DEll laptop with Windows 7 on it. Thanks in advance.
I really like this client for routine daily use. 2 gripes / hopes for future devt:
1. Text on screen is way too small. Yes, you can zoom *if* using physical keyboard, but I avoid that, want to zoom, ideally pinch zoom but even tap zoom or some other method, using virtual keyboard. Bottm line: I need more control over font size.
2. Trash doesn’t work as expected / hoped.
a. Deleting trash on POP3. There’s an empty trash button, but after deleting, my trash is still full. Sometimes if I refresh, it’s fine, often I refresh and trash is still full. Huh? I can’t tell if it’s doing anything.
b. What I really want re trash is the option, on message by message basis — not only a global setting basis — to “send to trash AND del fr server at same time”, i.e. when I don’t need to view on my laptop later, and then also separate option to “send to trash but NOT del fr server”, i.e. when I don’t need to keep copy on my Droid, but do need to keep for my laptop later. Point is, I need to view but not store mail on Droid. I want to be able to del fr Droid, but sometimes keep mail for later viewing and sometimes del fr server.
Otherwise, K-9 is great.
I usability note, maybe obvious to others, but took me a while to find it: to select multiple messages at once, swipe the message. I kept trying to touch the left side green bar, and that opens rather than selecting the msg. Press to open one msg, swipe to select multiple for batch operations.
YAY! Thank You! I don’t have the swipe down yet for selecting multiple, but at least it doesn’t open the message when I try to select it!! I’ll practice on the “multiple selection” swipe!!
I love this email app except for one thing that is becoming extremely annoying. How do you EASILY add multiple contacts in cc or bcc????? It should give you the option to select from your contact list in lieu of having to remember the email of a gazillion contacts.
The one feature that is SORELY missed is the ability to MOVE emails from one directory to another.
http://code.google.com/p/k9mail/
and add any wishes
How do you build a folder in K9 Mail.
Seems like a great app for hero sprint. But difficult to control how often it updates my accounts. Has Not deleted anything off the server since I downloaded this app months ago. Dont Know what thats all about. Still have double work with deleting emails! Maybe just on the Hero for sprint. Other than that. Seems great!
Trying to setup folders, I have display all but i have a folder on my shaw pop and on hotmail, called filed, to store emails, i can not get k-9 to show me this folder on either account?
I was having so much trouble with the email program that came with the droid. I read about k-9 and since I started using it, I have no problems at all. Its a wonderful program. Love it. Thanks for K-9
Hi, I just got my Droid, and I was told to try K-9 for my email. I’ve downloaded it but I’m still having problems with it. Do you have a faq page for it. I’m trying to gain access to my godaddy email account and having difficulties. Thnxs Paul
Hi Paul, try to use this Godaddy guide with your credentials, let us know if that works for you:
http://help.godaddy.com/topic/167/article/4744
Thanks guys that link and instructions worked out fine for me !
I would like to know how to delete the trash in the trash menu. I can delete my messages, but when I look at the main menu , it still tells me that it has trash. It continues to build up and i haven’t figured how to delete that box.
Long hold on trash, empty trash.
Thanks Tom that worked ! wouldn’t it be a good idea to have faq sheet for questions like mine. Thnxs once again for helping me.
I tried K9 even posted some questions on forums which went unanswered, I liked that I could delete email and trash but I could not figure out how to see multiple folders? I followed the instructions looks like they called it priority levels but I could never see other folders, just the Inbox and Trash, as I file email away both in hotmail and my isp mail I ave multiple folders to file so I know when I need to keep something I file it and makes my inbox clean and small. If womeone could tell me how to get it to work, I would try again. I am currently using Seven in beta, it does a great job all my folders are there, but it does not have a multiple delete feature and I can not get it to work with my shaw isp.
Has anyone been able to get folders other than inbox outbox sent etc., to show up I have it set to view all folders but a folder I have created on my mail server will not sync or show???
I hace not been able to display most of my hotmail folders either. Help.
Try this: When you’re viewing folders in an account, choose ‘Menu’, then ‘Folders’, then ‘Refresh Folders’.
Also try ‘Menu’ , ‘Folders’, ‘Display all folders’.
I got this to work, but I can’t remember exactly how.
Does k9 have email filtering?
I have several domains and receive far to much spam which is caught by Mailfoundry ( a spam filter prog ) but I do NOT want the mail indentied as spam to be downloaded..
Using Thuderbird on my desktop I can create rules so that this mail is deleted right away, but using the std android email client on my Hero these emails STILL get through – so I have to delete FAR too many emails already identified as spam..
Msmoby: I don’t use K-9 (yet) but I do use hosted MailFoundry. It sounds like you have MailFoundry’s AntiSpam set to “Add ‘X-MailFoundry: Spam’ Header” but it still delivers the mail. What about configuring MailFoundry to either “Quarantine Message” (delivers a daily digest) or “Delete Message”?
>>but I do NOT want the mail indentied as spam to be downloaded..<<
or IDENTIFIED , even ..
I like this app, but what I don’t like is that when I go on my desktop computer and delete the emails in my account, the older ones pop up in K-9 at the bottom of the list as new, even though they’ve already been read through K-9. It’s kind of confusing to explain! In other words, what happens is that every time I delete email using my desktop, my phone goes off with K-9 telling me that I have “new” mail. Is there a setting I can change or a way to keep this from happening? Thanks! (BTW, I’m using a Motorola Droid)
how do i sign out of an account on this though? so anyone who picks up my phone can’t access the e-mails?
This is no sign out feature in this app or even Google’s Gmail for that matter. However you can use apps like Protector or App Protector to password protect email apps or any app or setting on your phone.
I recently got a Druid and the email system that came with it never updated. So I moved to K9 and I have that it updates every 10 min. Sometimes this works and sometimes it does not work. Then I have to manually tell it to check my email accounts. I have a POP3 account for my business and it just does not seem to be working. I used to have a Blackberry and of course that always worked. Is there a way to get this fixed?
Love the app; but it really needs an option to either choose a default font size for incomming mail. WAY too difficult to read the tiny print! Other than that; fantastic app that works exactly as described.
Please increase the font size!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ok so i installed it, got it working, was great to receive my unread mail BUT for some reason it kept coming up with some err in a folder saying something to do with allowed every 15 minutesm uninstalled cause it wouldn’t stop
thats the only reason.
Also somebody mentioned passwording my apps whats the best FREE application password application
Hi Guys,
I am having some troubles while installing yahoo email account
when i pur the POP3 server settings and push “next” i get a message that says “Setup could not finish”
“Cannot connect to server.”
(Unable to open connection to POP server.)
Same thing happen when i try to install the account as IMAP account
thanks in advance for the help
this should help
http://techblissonline.com/yahoo-pop3-and-smtp-settings/
I’m using this app for my university email address, and I’m still trying to figure it out. I’ve noticed that some of the emails w/ attachments I get are shaded, what does this mean? I have a problem when opening these emails. When I click on the email, it says downloading, but it never loads. Can someone help me please?! Thanks!
The shaded means the app has not downloaded the attachment yet. I have noticed it will not become un-shaded until you open it to start the attachment download process… which takes quite longer than you would expect. I usually open for download then revisit 10 or more minutes later to see the attachment.
Thanks! It worked!
Love the app! Struggled with default mail on the Incredible for 3 or 4 days, then installed K9 Mail. Easy setup; clean display and straightforward navigating.
Thanks K9 community!
Now: can anyone tell me how to rid my phone of the htc mail “widget”?
What is the difference between k9-2704-release and K9-signed-zipaligned-2401 that can be found on the Market site
I’m new to K9. I use a regular pop3 account(work), and get my messages just fine. The problem is that when I go back to my desk and open up the messages on my Outlook, they are immediately(literally) removed from the K9 app on my phone. I’m sure its just a setting I’m not getting right? Has anyone else experienced this? What do I do?
Also, is it possible to set it to receive emails instantly, rather than checking every 1, or 2, or 3… minutes??
Yes with IMAP, there is a check box that asks if you would like Sync-like speed of email delivery. This is not possible with POP3.
Thank you. I’ve realized what I was doing wrong: There’s a box in the mail config settings that lets you leave a copy of the email on the server after your email client (in my case, outlook), retrieves it. Simple fix. In either case, I will be switching my company email to IMAP soon, and hope to take advantage of the instant-sync email delivery that I soo miss…
Thanks so much!
Hi! Did you solve this?
I have the same issue.
please help if you can!
Louis Csak
post or e-mail me if you can! Thanks
Okay, I love this program!! I still have the same issue though that I probably realize is not related to this but still is causing me grief. I have a pop email address that as soon as I read it on K9 or Outlook for that matter is gone, but for whatever reason still stays on Gmail???? Makes no sense to this newbie. Should I just delete Gmail??
i had a similar issue. with imap, a copy of all emails remain on the server, thats why that issue never happens with imap, only with people using pop3.
if you’re using pop3, when you go into your email settings in outlook, theres a box that you can check off that allows you to keep a copy of messages on the server. make sure its checked on. simple as that.
in any case, consider switching to imap. i never even knew about it, but its great. from the end user side, they wouldn’t know the difference, but if you’re managing the email, its so much better
Does anyone know of a way to open a google earth file directly? I have GE on my droid yet I have to save it then I can not find a way in GE to do a file open (even though thatwould be very clucnky and tough with all the folders). I would love a way to be able to choose the program similar to the way you can in windows…
any help is appreciated,
Thanks
Does anyone know why even when a POP3 account’s inbox is empty, the numeral to the right of the folder name continues to show unread messages? This number seems to creep up a bit at a time. This phenomenon may also be occurring in the iMap account folders but since so many unread messages are in these folders it’s hard to say for sure. My POP3 account is Bellsouth.net and my phone is a MotoDroid.
Try checking your folder list to see if any of the folders besides Inbox have new messages. Sometimes, this new message is in the ‘k9mail-errors’ folder, where K9 drops its error messages.
I just discovered that a comment can be posted to this forum via my iMac but won’t post from my MotoDroid. In the settings menu JavaScript and Plug-ins are enabled, Cookies are accepted and Pop-up Windows are allowed. I mention these settings because the error message suggests that JavaScript and Cookies are not enabled.
We’re sorry about that Clay. Sometimes our automated comment filter picks on a few people… we are still looking into why this is happening but appreciate your comments.
What browser app are you using for browsing the site?
Wow — fast reply! I’m just using the standard Browser (version 7).
I love K9. It works great. Only one thing I can’t figure out. Is there a setting that will auto insert email addresses from my contacts after I type a few letters? For some reason, its not doing that or maybe it can’t. I’m using the Motorola Droid.
thank you
M
Strange… After I type 2 or 3 characters it starts auto populating names from Contacts or recently emailed folks from the app.
Do you have something in the settings set? Maybe I need to set that up?
Somehow it’s not consistent. It will show me some Contacts but certainly not all. There are people I correspond with daily by email whose email address it can’t find when composing… most annoying!
I have the HTC Incredible, Android 2.1 update1. K9 as the native app does not show embedded pictures in my email. With K9 I see them as attachments which I can view by clicking and using another application. Any chance of being able to see embedded pictures as is so commonly done when using the PC email clients? Thanks!
I had been using K9 since I got my Motorola Droid in early April. All was well until last week (can’t recall exact date; somewhere in week of May 17) I started getting error messages: “application k-9 mail process com.fsck.k9 has stopped unexpectedly please try again.” I uninstalled and reinstalled (turning the phone off and on each time), but still the same error message about every hour or so. At this same time the battery started to die really quickly throughout the day and I would only get about 8 hours of life with it (versus never having an issue for an entire day with battery life). As soon as I uninstalled K9 for good the battery issue was no more.
Anyone know of a decent FAQ/user guide for this app? The dev website is not geared toward a “casual” user, seems like you have to be a developer to understand it all. I’ve managed to setup my email boxes but from there I’m really stumbling around to understand the rest of this program. Its really frustrating, I’m finding that not many developers provide you with a decent FAQ/user guide on software. Am I just not seeing it?
Thanks!
Much better than the mail app that comes with the phone… but how do I set the mail to check for messages more frequently? Right now I think it only checks if you hit the send/receive button. Any way to set it to check for messages every 5 or 10 minutes?
I’ve been using k-9 for about a month, however, I can’t seem to send an email. I’m using outlook, pop3, and verified my settings which seem to be same as my desktop settings. What am I doing wrong?
Please help.
Hi.. I have a problem (or misunderstanding)
In my Inbox… why do the email get deleted when I press “Load up to 50 more”?
This is deleting unread and read messages and it doesnt seem to matter what I set my “when i delete a message” server setting as.
Help would be appreciated.
Hi,
Finally after long searching on the net I found this K9 mail!
It gets my hotmail perfectly checking automatically every 15 minutes, wish this could be something like 1 minute without a event login error.
But I can’t be happier, and it’s free, unbelievable, great work guys keep it up.
With kind regards.
Would you please tell me what are your current Hotmail outgoing server settings? I receive mail, but am not able to connect to the outgoing server for some reason. It’s rather annoying.
G1 w/ 1.6
folder help… i installed k-9 mail on my htc evo.. after seeing all the great praises about it. i have a bizmail account thru yahoo that is a paid pop account. i am receiving my emails in k-9 but i don’t have any folders showing up . can someone tell me how to bring my folders in… is there anyway to sync k-9 with folders of sent and filed mail. i use outlook 2007 but i do not have an exchange server. thanks!
Syncing folders is an IMAP function, POP3 won’t do that. If Yahoo let’s remotely get mail from them via IMAP, then set your K9 account that way and you’ll get what you want, even to the ability of deleting a message on your phone or moving it to a folder and having the same thing happen on the server.
Can someone tell me if there is there a widget for this app?
There is no widget for the app currently, but would be a good feature add.
I miss the feature to syncronise just within a defined period (e.g between 6:00 – 23:00) as I don’t like to be notified during night when I usually sleep.
guess i’m in a minority
using on samsung galaxy s
imap
deletes to trash doesn’t work
clear trash doesn’t work
honours delete requests on screen but does nothing
pop
get empty messages (no subject and body none)
deletes don’t work
trash clear doesn’t work
folder info wrong
nothing works – quite a feat
sending
crashes app most of the time – 8th attempt to send email to author finally worked
but on the brighter side uninstall works – suppose i have to be thankful for something
Hi, Just got a galaxy s and could set up the mail through po. Loaded k9 and have maned to sort ot the incoming but the smtp wont work. It just says cannont connect to sever, smtp response is 0 length.
Any ideas?
Let me first say that I love this app!! This is my 3rd attempt to find something that will work well on my HTC Hero.
The only think that I’m missing is the ability to have K-9 automatically delete old email after “x” number of days. Amy I just missing this setting? Thanks!!
I too have a problem with my gmail account on K-9 Mail. When I press the ‘load up…’, all the messages in my gmail inbox (read and unread) are deleted! This does not happen with my other accounts.
I am forced to use Google Mail to manage my gmail emails.
Any advice? Please help. I use an xperia X10.
Does K9 have the ability to move messages from the trash back to the inbox for situations in which email may have been accidentally deleted?
I tried this with the Gmail IMAP and it worked perfectly. You need to make sure that you set your “Folder Sync” setting for the account to include 2nd class folders. That should enable you to move messages from the trash back into the inbox.
K9 cannot directly open downloaded attachments in quickoffice. Gmail app does it well. Any sollution? HTC Desire, Android 2.1
A.
Greetings… I have been using K-9 since I got my Moto Droid about 4 months ago. I have multiple email accounts in K-9 but have decided that I don’t need a couple of them. I cannot find a method that deletes an account from K-9…Any Ideas?
Thx
Go to the screen that lists all your email accounts, Longpress (hold for 2-3 seconds) the account you want to delete, click “Advanced” then “Remove Account”.
To Antonio Wells:
WOW! In less than 4 minutes you answered my question. Awesome! Thank You…
Is there a way to force K9 to “Only download email headers” instead of the entire email (POP3)? As it is now, since it downloads the entire message, all of my messages are being “Marked as read” on my server. I would like to be able to only download headers so this doesn’t happen.
I use the K9 application with my Magnavox Droid phone. How do I change
the password, which I am required to do periodically by the e-mail
server?
“Magnavox Droid phone”???
Where did you get that?
Anyway, to change your password go to Setting menu of K9 Mail, then edit both Incoming and Outgoing mail settings.
Hi – I have been using K9 on my rooted Droid1 for a while now, and have customized the settings and put a custom signature, etc. But I have a new Droid2 (not rooted–yet) and need to switch the app to the new phone. What is the easiest way to switch the settings to the new phone without manually reconfiguring everything?
As far as I know there are no features to export/import settings so unfortunately you would have to re-enter
Thanks for the response, Antonio. It probably won’t take long to reconfigure. I did have one other question, if you have the time.
My ISP slaps a SPAM label on the subject line all suspect SPAM emails (and I have been getting a lot of them lately). In my desktop email client I just run a rule that puts all messages with SPAM in the subject line to a junk folder that I check a few times a day to make sure that there are no errors. Is such a system possible on K9 as well — i.e. to create a sub folder titled SPAM and a rule that directs emails with SPAM in the subject to be moved into that folder rather than cluttering the main Inbox?
Thanks in advance for your help.
K9 Mail currently cannot filter messages into folders as well. It has been brought to the developers attention some time ago, however no one is assigned to it: http://code.google.com/p/k9mail/issues/detail?id=301
Thanks, Antonio. Always something to add, I guess. I sure like the program overall.
I appreciate your willingness to help out.