--- name: "lei-mail-sync-overview" section: "7" platform: "linux" package: "lei" version: "2.1.0-2" release: "Arch Linux 2026-11-01" platforms: ["linux"] url: "https://new.carta.tech/lei-mail-sync-overview" --- # lei-mail-sync-overview(7) an overview of lei mail synchronization ## NAME lei - an overview of lei mail synchronization ## DESCRIPTION [**lei**(1)](/lei/1.md) provides several plumbing-level commands to synchronize mail and keywords (flags) between lei/store and existing IMAP and Maildir stores. Nothing documented in this manpage is required for day-to-day use against externals. Mail and keyword synchronization is currently a clunky process. Future work will be done to improve it and add IMAP IDLE support. ## TYPICAL WORKFLOW ``` # import mail from a user's IMAP inbox and give it the "inbox" label: lei import +L:inbox imaps://user@example.com/INBOX # dump "inbox" labeled files from the past week to a Maildir lei q L:inbox rt:last.week.. -o /tmp/results # Open /tmp/results in your favorite mail agent. If inotify or kevent # works, keyword changes (e.g. marking messages as `seen') are # synchronized automatically. # If the inotify queue overflows, or if lei-daemon crashes, # "lei index" will tell lei about keyword changes: lei index /tmp/results # Optional: cleanup stale entries from mail_sync.sqlite3 lei refresh-mail-sync /tmp/results # to export keyword changes back to IMAP lei export-kw imaps://user@example.com/INBOX ``` ## CONTACT Feedback welcome via plain-text mail to \ The mail archives are hosted at \ and \ ## COPYRIGHT Copyright all contributors \ License: AGPL-3.0+ \ ## SEE ALSO [**lei-import**(1)](/lei-import/1.md), [**lei-q**(1)](/lei-q/1.md), [**lei-index**(1)](/lei-index/1.md), [**lei-refresh-mail-sync**(1)](/lei-refresh-mail-sync/1.md), [**lei-export-kw**(1)](/lei-export-kw/1.md)