Hello @cornfarmer.
In the mail app, you can assign a special color to each mail account you have configured.
You can change it in the “General settings” of each separate mail account.
Not sure you can disable it.
But may be there’s a color to pickup that will be more discrete if it is really a problem.
Hope this Helps.
1 Like
Looks like there is no option to disable it, and no color choice to make it less obnoxious (my opinion), or distracting like dark grey, black etc.
Do I need to go to Gitlab to request a simple toggle to turn off the little color indicator for people who only use a single account?
Well, you can always ask … but not sure this very minor issue (my humble opinion) will find one day its way, as the /e/ team is quite busy with much much more blocking issues and important developments (!).
If I was allowed to choose a different app as the default email app I would not complain anymore.
Can the stock email be disabled via adb or not? I’d then switch to K-9 which I know is basically the same, but at least it allows more control over this.
You can switch off it’s background synchronization and then just delete it from screen. It will not disturb anymore. (This is indeed a good idea even when you normally use another mail client because in case of any problem with it you have an immediately working replacement for testing or whatever.)
P.S.: Normally (this means: in other mail clients) these color bars are on the left side and they are wanted there to distinguish the mail accounts, I have three of them. Having the colors on the right looks strange.
Thanks @AnotherElk I had used that method in the past to disable other buggy/problematic /e/ stock apps. It turns out that @irrlicht had the better option here by just turning off sync on the stock app. (keeping it around for testing, edge cases, etc.)
The question I am left asking…why doesn’t the /e/ stock app offer all the options of K-9 ? Just for the sake of differentiating it? K-9 has a couple of UI/display options omitted from the /e/ app that would solve this issue. Why were they not included or removed in the first place? Would @Manoj care to shed any light?
Because the /e/ stock app is a fork. And a fork is often (not always) behind the original. Handling a fork (this means: a program you didn’t write your own and you possibly don’t even understand in every aspect) is also effort. A typical result is that the fork will be updated from time to time but not in the same manner as the original.
If you want a recent K-9 then install K-9 and update it consequently. If you want Fairemail take Fairemail. Probably a lot of people can live with the stock app. It’s also an individual thing depending a lot on the importance of e-mail in your communication.
1 Like
You could turn off ‘All Inboxes’ and just view the mail in each individual mailbox.
2 Likes
Assuming that mail accounts are fully configured in the stock Mail app the user needs nothing else than deactivating the so called background synchronization in the Network settings in the app. This is one single option. When this is done the app will
- stop cyclic polling of all configured POP3 servers and also
- stop sending keep alive messages to all configured IMAP servers (this avoids then receiving push notifications from the servers).
The app remains completely working, you can still request the servers manually, you can also still send mail messages over the configured SMTP servers, but the app does nothing by itself anymore, it behaves like dead.
Is the colour marker gone then (because not needed to distinguish the accounts then)?
(I’m not on 1.17 yet.)
Yes, this is how I have mine set. And I’m still on 1.16.
There were some UI changes, but not sure any features were removed. If you could list them out I can have the team check and get back if they were indeed removed and why.
1 Like
Here are 2 that I noticed -
General settings → Display → Colorize contacts: this is greyed out, cannot be set
Account settings → General settings → Account color: there are missing color options compared with K-9
For those who are still interested, confirmed that @Baggypants solution makes these disappear. Un-checking ‘show unified/all inboxes’ will hide the color indicator. This works best if you only use/need one email account like me, obviously.
2 Likes
.Indeed, because I have 1000 things going on I didn’t realize @Baggypants had already posted about this. 
1 Like
Vindication! 
2 Likes
Can not confirm, it works for me with 1.17-s stable on FP4.
This topic was automatically closed after 90 days. New replies are no longer allowed.