JAjamespo·Jul 3, 2025
I use imapfilter: https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter
In Gmailtail – Command-line tool to monitor Gmail messages and output them as JSONlefcha
imapfilter
C2015–2025
lefcha / imapfilter
imapfilter
IMAP mail filtering utility
14Distinct people
16Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
938GitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
IMAP mail filtering utility
GitHub
Where it is used
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 1:49:46 PM UTC.
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Mentions over time
HN mentions by year16 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2015-08-18 02:24:02 UTC to 2025-07-03 12:39:35 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2018 | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 3 | 0 | 3 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
16 sourcesSince I started using imapfilter [1] on my server and „aggressive unsubscribe“, email is good again. I added a shortcut to my aerc configuration [2] which adds the sender of a selected mail to a file which imapfilter reads to move it in a folder. It’s so convenient now it can handle hundreds of mails over several mail accounts fully automated.
1: https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter
2: https://github.com/rafo/aerc-vim
In I deleted all of my email filters> My aim was to configure my home's heating to switch off when my family is away and turn back on when we return. This is achieved with home assistant, a popular open-source home automation platform, with location/presence notifications from mobile devices. To do this, the home assistant server needs to be accessible from the internet, as mobile devices must communicate with it remotely.
Does it really need to be accessible from the internet? I've never used Home Assistant so maybe what follows would not work, but how about:
• Your mobile device could upload the location/presence notifications to a server outside of your LAN, such as virtual machine at an inexpensive hosting service like Hetzner or Amazon Lightsail.
Something on your LAN could poll that and talk to the Home Assistant server.
• Your mobile device could email the notificati
Read the rest
ons to you. Something on your LAN could monitor your email and process the notifications. A good tool for that is imapfilter [1].
[1] https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter
You don't need an e-mail program for this if you are ready to work with Imapfilter: https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter
In German state ditches Microsoft for Linux and LibreOfficeShouldn't be _too_ hard to convert your scripts.
I ran into the same problem and one workspace disallows App passwords. You can simply get the OAuth token with a little python script and then use it as the password: https://github.com/google/gmail-oauth2-tools/blob/master/pyt...
(see for example https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter/issues/186)
In Winding down Google Sync and Less Secure Apps supportMy first real exposure to Lua was as the configuration language of imapfilter. Absolutely loved both.
https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter
In Lua: The Little Language That CouldYou can also do more complicated things on the receiving side of the email, with something like imapfilter (or just a thunderbird incoming mail rule on a desktop PC at your house), to auto sort alerts or notices of nominal condition into certain folders/subfolders.
https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter
In DIY Boat Monitoring SystemIf you just need email processing locally, I have found imapfilter to be quite nice. You can script it in Lua.
Personally I went a bit overboard with it and implemented a simple TCP server in node which queries GitLab APIs based on the email metadata and moves Mails into Folders based on assignees, Labels etc. So letting do imapfilter the heavy IMAP stuff, calling node via tcp and using the response to sort based on it.
[0]: https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter
In IMAP API – self hosted daemon to access IMAP and SMTP accounts via HTTP APIYup - https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter
"IMAPFilter is a mail filtering utility. It connects to remote mail
servers using the Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), sends
searching queries to the server and processes mailboxes based on the
results. It can be used to delete, copy, move, flag, etc. messages
residing in mailboxes at the same or different mail servers. The 4rev1
and 4 versions of the IMAP protocol are supported."
In Pimutils: The coreutils of personal information managementI can recommend https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter.
I have it running in a private serving, filtering the emails for me..
In Mutt email client 25 years oldThis is interesting; what benefit/advantage does it have over IMAP-level email management tools like imapfilter[1]?
I don't ask that to be confrontational; I've successfully managed several email inboxes on several different providers for years with plain old IMAP rules, so I'd like to know if there's anything I'm missing.
[1]: https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter
In Gmailctl – Declarative Configuration for Gmail FiltersIf you're looking to consolidate your email the best way is imapfilter https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter I use this LUA script (this is the Jinja2 template so obviously you'll need to substitute the portions in {{ }} with your real values. It runs on an hourly cronjob on my server and sucks down all the mail from Gmail and another account and then puts it in my main inbox via IMAP (not forwarding) so you don't have to worry about opportunistic transport encryption. It also does not mess with the headers which forwarding emails invariably does.
-- crontab -e
-- 0 * * * * /usr/local/bin/imapfilter
function main ()
-- See 'man imapfilter_config' for an explanation of
-- imapfilter options and functions.
-- Some config examples:
-- https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter/blob/master/samples/config.lua
--
Read the rest
https://gist.github.com/dylanwh/408810
-- http://www.npcglib.org/~stathis/blog/2012/07/09/linux-task-sorting-mail-with-imapf…
-- General Options
options.timeout = 120
options.subscribe = true
-- Accounts
{%- for v in ACCOUNTS | from_json %}
local {{ v.serverName }} = IMAP {
server = '{{ v.server }}',
username = '{{ v.username }}',
password = '{{ v.password }}',
ssl = '{{ v.ssl }}'
}
{%- endfor %}
-- GMAIL
-- Gmail behaves differently to normal imap. With a normal imap acccount
-- you can simply use move_messages(). Google stores both inbox
-- and sent email in the "[Gmail]/All Mail" folder. An email sent to yourself
-- from the same email address exists as a single email and is visible in
-- the Inbox and Sent box. If you delete the inbox mail then the sent mail
-- is also deleted. Thus it is only safe to delete mail once both the Inbox
-- and Sent box is copied.
-- Only go ahead and copy inbox/sent/spam from gmail if I have received
-- some Inbox email.
if (gmail['Inbox']:check_status() > 0) then
inbox_mail = gmail["Inbox"]:select_all()
inbox_copy_success = inbox_mail:copy_messages({{ PRIMARY }}['Gmail Inbox'])
sent_mail = gmail['[Gmail]/Sent Mail']:select_all()
sent_copy_success = sent_mail:copy_messages({{ PRIMARY }}['Gmail Sent'])
spam_mail = gmail["[Gmail]/Spam"]:select_all()
spam_mail:move_messages({{ PRIMARY }}['Gmail Spam'])
-- Only clear the All Mail folder if we were successful in moving
-- our Inbox and Sent mail. Note: move_messages is supposed to return
-- booleans for copying the messages and then marking them as deleted.
-- For some reason the mark for deletion return value is 'nil'.
-- This may need to be [Gmail]/Bin or [Gmail]/Trash check your account!
if (inbox_copy_success and sent_copy_success) then
print('Safe to delete both inbox and sent')
move_inbox = inbox_mail:move_messages(gmail['[Gmail]/Trash'])
move_sent = sent_mail:move_messages(gmail['[Gmail]/Trash'])
if (move_inbox and move_sent) then
print('Emptying bin');
bin_mail = gmail['[Gmail]/Trash']:select_all()
bin_mail:delete_messages()
end
end
end
{%- if SECONDARY != '' %}
-- {{ SECONDARY }}
-- Only go ahead and copy inbox/sent/spam from {{ SECONDARY }} if I have received
-- some Inbox email.
if ({{ SECONDARY }}['Inbox']:check_status() > 0) then
inbox_results = {{ SECONDARY }}['Inbox']:select_all()
inbox_results:move_messages({{ PRIMARY }}['{{ SECONDARY }} Inbox'])
sent_results = {{ SECONDARY }}['Sent']:select_all()
sent_results:move_messages({{ PRIMARY }}['{{ SECONDARY }} Sent'])
spam_results = {{ SECONDARY }}['Junk']:select_all()
spam_results:move_messages({{ PRIMARY }}['{{ SECONDARY }} Spam'])
end
{%- endif %}
end
main()
Wouldn't using something like https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter also be an option?
It would be awesome if some day there was a "jmapfilter". I think JMAP would be really efficient for this use case.
In JMAP: Like IMAP but Not ReallyImapfilter [1] would work.
It also uses regexes so it would be easy to convert mike-cardwell's rules.
[1]: https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter
In Facebook, You Needy SonofabitchI use imapfilter[0] to sort imap mails on the remote server and move older ones to a local dovecot instance for long term backup. That way I have current mail available on all my devices and access to the backup via mutt or via file in the MH format on the backup system.
That works, but you have to program a bit lua in order to setup imapfilter correctly.
[0] https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter
In OfflineIMAP: sync and backup tool for IMAPShowing the 15 most recent of 16 sources. Enable JavaScript to search and browse every indexed mention.