Problem Statement

I’m in the process of de-googling, and I’m about 60% there, but I still need gmail for the things that I cannot or have not yet migrated.

I’ve also recently experimented w/ the Thunderbird app for both Linux and Android, and it’s okay. One thing that really irritates me is the fact that when I import my emails from gmail, all my labels are handled as folders in Thunderbird. This is an issue b/c I have rules to help organize incoming email by assigning one or more labels. I believe Thunderbird has the concept of tags, but by default Thunderbird routes gmail labels to folders instead of tags.

Question

Is there a mail client on Linux (and Android) that handles labels from gmail as tags instead of folders? Alternatively, is there a setting in Thunderbird that will use tags instead of labels that I’m just not aware of?

I’ve tried searching DDG, but came up with nothing useful beyond other posts on other social media websites asking similar questions.

  • curious_dolphin@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
    2·
    9 hours ago

    Labels/Tags are a product feature, not part of email standards. Meaning: it’s not a thing when looking at the raw mail server data.

    Thanks for the info. This helps me understand why things are the way that they are. It has me rethinking the use of tags altogether and leaning more toward reviewing my labels in gmail so I can tweak the ones that are still useful and remove any that are obsolete.

    • just_another_person@lemmy.world
      1·
      7 hours ago

      That’s a solid plan.

      If you want a deeper dive, just make some stuff in Thunderbird, then export and view it. It’ll give you a bit of a look into how email standards servers organize data.