Configuring e-mail with mu4e in Emacs

Here I use gnome-keyring and secret-tool. I don’t use any specific configuration for these programs. Only thing that I have configured is automatic start and unlocking of the keyring.

In /etc/pam.d/ly I added following:

auth       optional     pam_gnome_keyring.so
session    optional     pam_gnome_keyring.so auto_start

This allows for passing login password to gnome keyring.

And in my sway configuration I have:

exec --no-startup-id /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon --start --components=secrets,ssh,gpg,pkcs11

To store password for non-oauth account we can then do:

$ secret-tool store --label='foo-bar' foo bar

For oama to properly works we need to first get client id and secret for oauth. To get this we need to create google project and oauth client which should provide us with necessary credentials. I’m sorry, but I’m not going to provide you with exact steps to set this up in google cloud because they tend to change how it works, and I refuse to update this guide to keep it up-to-date.

When we get our id and secret we can configure oama.

~/.config/oama/config.yaml

encryption:
    tag: KEYRING
services:
  google:
    client_id: CLIENT-ID
    client_secret: CLIENT-SECRET

Setting encryption - tag to keyring means it tries to use gnome keyring, alternatively GNU PG, KDE Wallet or KeePassXC can be used.

Now we need to run the following for the first time to authorize our device:

$ oama authorize google user@gmail.com

google rant

First, fuck oauth. It’s just weaponized security.

Google refuses to provide standard way of moving mail to maildirs (including deletion). Instead, it uses labels. So by default when we move mail to different maildir, it only adds new label when synced with IMAP. This is why I have Expunge Both in mbsync config, which seems to solve this issue.

Gmail also has weirdly specific way of handling mail trashing and deletion. The trash maildir name may vary based on your account localization (e.g. British English = Bin, American English = Trash). Great job, google!

In other mail services deleting mail through IMAP means completely removing, if we want to just trash it, we move it to trash maildir. Pretty simple.

In google they didn’t like it. Deleting mail removes all labels and leaves it ’archived’ in ’All mail’ by default. Fortunately we can change gmail settings to fix this, but I’m guessing most people are unaware of this. Before using mu4e I was thunderbird user and I didn’t know that my mail wasn’t deleted at all.

It seems the only reason that google does this, is to clutter user’s email box, if they don’t use google app, so that they’re incentivized to buy more space. They just want to do everything in their power to force users to use their apps so they could be tracked.

The only reason google provides their APIs and IMAP, SMTP is to have deniability if accused of monopolization.

“Oh noo, they don’t have to use gmail web app, they can use other mail clients for suuuurreee…” – Probably some google lawyer.

To make gmail behave as we want to, we need to change one important setting in the gmail web client. In gmail go to Settings -> ’See all settings’ -> ’Forwarding and POP/IMAP’, set ’Auto-Expunge off’ and then ’Move the message to the Bin’. This should ensure that mails are correctly moved to trash maildir on removal.

Now we should be able to sync our IMAP maildirs and index them with mu:

$ mbsync -a
$ mu init --maildir=~/.mail --my-address=user@gmail.com --my-address=soukev@soukev.xyz
$ mu index