[xp84]

Have you used a mail client that supported these IMAP labels, though? Genuine question. I learned of their existence from your comment!

I found this: It looks like besides the folder kludge, Gmail does expose them via their own documented but nonstandard IMAP extension: https://developers.google.com/workspace/gmail/imap/imap-exte...

I wish (more) standard clients aggressively supported these to give an experience as good as the Gmail UI in that way.

But there are a lot of IMAP protocol features that most clients (especially consumer ones) don't even bother with. Server-side search being the #1 worst offender.

I did used to keep my whole email archive on my PC and back then it wasn't too bad to use Apple Mail to search (or Outlook for Windows way back before that!), but my fullest email history is basically only in Gmail now. This is my fault, but as a result, search essentially does not work anywhere for me but in Gmail's Web UI, unless it happens to be in a very recent message that happens to still be cached locally.