[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? :)