FAQ

• Does InboxRuler support POP3?
  No, as the POP3 protocol will read your mail and removes it from the mail server. There is simply no way to apply rules on your mails without reading them and hence your mail would be changed or deleted when using POP3.
  IMAP is the best protocol for reading mail on multiple devices or programs such as InboxRuler in this case.
• How does InboxRuler run in the background?
  Since iOS 7 there is the possibility of a so-called ‘background-fetch’  which gives an application the possibility to get some time in the background at an interval which you more or less can specify. However, you can only specify the minimum  interval, there is no guarantee that your application will get time at the specified interval. The only guarantee you get is that the time between intervals is at least the time specified. Furthermore, iOS 7 tries to be clever and wants to schedule your background process just before you execute your application in the foreground. As InboxRuler is meant to be running in the background and you only occasionally check the logs or create a new rule, there is a risk that InboxRuler will not be scheduled that oftern. From our testing however it appears that an application will run at least every hour in the background, which is ok for checking for new mails and applying rules.
• Is my mail safe with InboxRuler?
  Absolutely! InboxRuler only reads your the mail header for the subject, the date, size and mail addresses. Only when a rule will be applied the specific mail will be read. In essence, InboxRuler behaves exactly like an email client, with the advantage of having rules.
• I can run rules on my outlook client or exchange server, why should I use InboxRuler?
  Well, you are right that you can rules on all kind of clients or servers, but most people nowadays only read mails on their mobile phone. When reading the mails on your phone you don’t use outlook (or any other email client) on the PC and hence rules you specify in your client app do not get executed.
  The advantage of InboxRuler is that you can specify a specific rule on the fly, try it, and when the rule is ok you either run it immediately or let it run automatically in the background.
  As for Exchange Server rules, they are usually tied to a business email account, which you normally would control from your (work) email client on your PC.
• When the action is ‘forward with signature’ the signature is ‘(null)’? [Fixed in version 1.10]
  There is an issue in version 1.02 where the signature is not saved to core date initially, when changing or just pressing ‘save’  in the signature screen, the signature is correctly applied. This has been fixed in version 1.10 which has just been submitted to the app store.
• Not all of my messages are processed in the background!
  When the InboxRuler is running in the background, there is a time limit of 30 seconds to process all messages selected by the rules. When there is not enough time due to a large number of messages to be processed, InboxRuler gets suspended. The next time InboxRuler is scheduled, the remaining messages will be processed.
• I’ve upgraded to the latest version (1.40) and now my connections to my accounts don’t work anymore!
  Just save the accounts again and the settings should be correct. If the connection still fails, please check the connection and authentication type if they are correct for your server.
• I searched for text NOT in the mail (subject or body), but I still get the same results as when searching for the text!
  Depending on the mail server, sometimes the ‘NOT’ selection is not supported. Currently we know that the yahoo mail server does not support the ‘NOT’ functionality.
• What are the technologies behind InboxRuler?
  InboxRuler uses the excellent mailcore2 library (http://libmailcore.com/) for the communication with the mailserver(s) specified. Thanks to all who contributed to this mail library and especially Hoà V. Dinh, Matt Ronge and Robert Widmann!
  Furthermore, MagicalRecord is used to ease programming with Core Data (https://github.com/magicalpanda/MagicalRecord) from Saul Mora which is really handy as well!
• Why do I need to give my username and password for outgoing (SMTP) connections?
  Actually you don’t need to as these settings are taken from the IMAP connection settings so these are optional. However, InboxRuler needs to have valid credentials for SMTP in order to forward messages.
• Help! I can’t save my rules anymore!
  Unfortunately since version 1.44 there is an annoying bug which prevents saving, please update InboxRuler to version 1.50 (submitted to the app store on April 3, 2015)