[jrm4]

Interesting. I just find it pretty easy to just never delete and use "new." If something's super spammy I'll filter for it, of course, but even dividing "papertrail" and "humans" seems like an extra step I don't need.*

*note, this requires a speedy client where you can see a good number of subject lines and main body at the same time and just kind of arrow down quickly; I switch variously between mutt and thunderbird. I don't know how people deal with stupid bloated behemoths like today's Outlook.

[denton-scratch]

I've been using Thunderbird since early 2000's. I used to run my own mailserver; stuff happened, and I decided to switch over to my ISPs mail offering (which is the same as what I ran: Postfix, Dovecot, Spamassassin, and Squirrelmail/Roundcube if I need it).

They also provide a Sieve server. This is important.

If you use built-in Thunderbird filtering, then it only runs when mail is delivered to Thunderbird; and unless all your clients have the same filtering rules, then things could get messy. With Sieve, the filtering occurs on the delivery server; so it happens before you start your client.

If you use a webmail service with filtering, that also occurs on delivery, and server-side. But Sieve is great if you want to run a proper mail client.

The Sieve rules notation is a pain; but you can use Roundcube as a Sieve rules editor - it provides a nice interactive form-based rules editor, so you don't have to remember the rules syntax.

[jrm4]

Funny, you're describing things that I've tried to do in the past "in theory," but after it all, I've found my own brain-filtering (on a big monitor screen) to be sufficient. Namely, even if it's like 40-50 emails a day, with maybe 2-3 from humans, it's not bad when in Thunderbird I'm not preloading html/javascript and I can see all the subject lines. I can just arrow down the "news" pretty fast.

[Nextgrid]

> Namely, even if it's like 40-50 emails a day, with maybe 2-3 from humans, it's not bad when in Thunderbird I'm not preloading html/javascript and I can see all the subject lines. I can just arrow down the "news" pretty fast.

But it's still a time & attention tax you have to pay every day. Implementing rules based on sender & subject would be a one-off task and should cut that down dramatically and have a lasting impact.

In my case I probably have a hundred rules or so for any automated crap, and now I only get on average one email per day that makes it into my inbox and in the vast majority of cases it's an email I actually want to receive (and if not, it gets flagged and left there until I have time to set up a rule, unsubscribe from the list or send a GDPR complaint).

[jrm4]

The trash/spam part of it literally takes less than 5 min a day? I'm not reading each email. Something something premature optimization? :)