getmail6 6.19.5

a mail retrieval, sorting, and delivering system

Description

getmail6 is a flexible, extensible mail retrieval system with support for POP3, IMAP4, SSL variants of both, maildirs, mboxrd files, external MDAs, arbitrary message filtering, single-user and domain-mailboxes, and many other useful features.

Licence

getmail is Copyright (C) 1998-2024 Charles Cazabon and others. getmail is licensed for use under the GNU General Public License version 2 (only). See docs/COPYING for specific terms and distribution information.

Bugs

getmail6 has adaptations to work with Python 3. These changes might still contain some bugs. Please report them at https://github.com/getmail6/getmail6. See docs/BUGS for instructions on reporting bugs.

Installation

To install:

pip install getmail6

To uninstall:

pip uninstall getmail6

You can install getmail6 in your home directory if you add --user.

If getmail6 is available via your Linux distribution, you better use that.

Usage

getmail6 is not a python API. getmail6 provides command line tools:

• getmail

• getmail_maildir

• getmail_mbox

• getmail_fetch

• getmail-gmail-xoauth-tokens

Configuration

Before using getmail you must configure it. See docs/configuration.txt and docs/getmailrc-examples. An example:

[retriever]
type = SimpleIMAPSSLRetriever
server = imap.gmail.com
port = 993
username = <your_email_here>
#password = ... or
password_command = ("pass", "<your_email_here>")

[destination]
type = Maildir
path = ~/Mail/<your_email_here>/INBOX/

[options]
read_all = true
delete = true

Gmail

For gmail, after having enabled 2-Step Authentication, let google generate an “app password” for you. Then, for the above example, use pass edit <your_email_here> and change to the generate one.

• Go to https://mail.google.com

• If you are signed in, on the left upper corner there is a cogwheel symbol for settings

• Choose “See all Settings”

• “Accounts and Imports” tab, then “Other Google Account Settings”/”Security” brings you to https://myaccount.google.com/u/0/security?hl=en

• Turn on “2-Step Verification” (also known as 2-factor-authentication or 2FA)

• In “App passwords”, generate a password for your device

• Update this in your password command.

See also: https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833

getmail is a native app. See https://developers.google.com/identity/protocols/oauth2/native-app Still, to download your email from gmail to your computer using OAuth2 you need to grant getmail OAuth2 access to the scope https://mail.google.com/, as you would to web apps. Unfortunately, the init step in example 12 in docs/getmailrc-examples has to be repeated regularly. This makes the app password method above a better alternative. Don’t forget to remove the use_xoauth2 line, if you switch from Oauth2 to app password.

Tests

There is now a test folder that uses docker-mailserver for black box testing.

Tests are work in progress.

Documentation

See the HTML documentation for details on setting up and using getmail.

docs/documentation.html
docs/configuration.html
docs/faq.html
docs/troubleshooting.html

It is included in the docs subdirectory, and will be installed in <PREFIX>/doc/getmail-<version>/ (by default).