Version history

Version 2.0:

Now works with 163.com mail domain.
Fixed two factor authorisation issues with gmail, defaults now to OAuth2
New method for background processing
Automatically select proper inbox, trash and drafts folders where possible if imap server supports these flags
New internal structure to save rules and accounts with help of realm database. Unfortunately previous rules will be deleted and need to be set-up again.

Version 1.6

Possibility to use two factor authentication for gmail. When creating a gmail account in InboxRuler you now can select OAuth2 as authentication method. After pressing Save you will be redirected to the google login page to allow InboxRuler to process your emails. No need to specify imap server, smtp server or your username and password anymore as the authentication will be done by google.
When creating a new email account InboxRuler could crash when the configuration data for the email provider was incorrect.
The deleted messages folder can now only be selected when the mail account is valid.
In the Selection Wizard the displayed email messages have a correct look and feel even when the default system font has been changed.

General

Welcome to InboxRuler v2.0, the application which helps you to manage your inboxes!

With help of rules, you can specify what needs to be done with incoming mails in one or more of your mail inboxes.
In iOS 8 and later, InboxRuler runs in the background and sorts your mails for you in the background according to your rules.

How to set-up rules for your mail accounts is explained in Rules. Before you can create a rule however, you should first set-up your mail accounts. After all, if InboxRuler has no access to your mail there is not much to rule..
In the Settings tab you can set-up the mail accounts you want to use.

Home Screen

On the home screen you can run or test all rules you have created; the output of every rule will be given while the rule is executed.

Normally the rules will run in the background and you check the output of the rules in the Log tab when bringing InboxRuler into the foreground.
Only new messages since the last run will be processed, the same as running in the background. When you save a rule, all messages in the inboxes associated with the rule will processed.

Settings

Accounts

For every mail account where you want to apply rules on, you need to enter the mail address, the name of the imap server and the username and password.
However, InboxRuler tries to get the imap and smtp settings automatically from the entered email address by checking if there is configuration information available. If not, you need to add the configuration manually.
If you want to forward or copy messages from an email account, you also need to enter the address of the outgoing smtp server.
If the username and password for the smtp server are not the same as for the incoming mail you need to enter these as well, otherwise the name and password which are given for the imap server will be used.
Furthermore, you can set the 'deleted folder' in the accounts screen. For existing accounts of previous versions, InboxRuler will try to set a sensible deleted folder, but as always please check in the accounts screen.

General Settings

Use only with WiFi:
If this setting is enabled, InboxRuler will only retrieve mails when there is a wifi connection.
Timer Interval:
How often will InboxRuler check for new mail in the background. Note that this is the minimum time between checks as the time interval is dependent on the scheduling of iOS 7 as well.
Number of log messages:
During the execution of Rules, inboxRuler will keep track of the rule output.
This is stored in the log, which can be checked afterwards in the log tab. However, to prevent unlimited resource usage, there is a limit on the number of messages inboxRuler stores (default 500 messages).
Signature
You can add your own signature when a message will be forwarded by selecting the 'Forward with Signature' action.
Send diagnostics
To help out when a rule is not working as expected (or you suspect that InboxRuler is not working properly) you can send the log output and the rules you have defined by email to support@inboxruler.com. Note that you can of course send the log mail to your own account as well and edit it when you think there is sensitive information included.

Rules

Rules overview

In the rules overview screen you can add, delete and reorder the rules. Rules are executed in the order of the rules overview list, which can be changed by editing the list and move the rule to the proper position.
To add a new rule, simply press 'Add rule'. To delete a rule, simply swipe or press the Edit button and delete the ones you don't need anymore.

Add rule

Basically, a rule consists of 3 parts:

The selection criteria
The accounts where to execute the rule for
The action to take with the messages selected.

Selection criteria

A selection for messages can be done on a combination of:

Subject
The criteria for the subject which can be chosen are:

contains: The subject contains the text
does not contain: The subject does not contain the text
equals: The subject matches the exact text
not equal: The subject does not match
starts with: The subject starts with the given text
ends with: The subject ends with the given text.

Note that all comparisons are case insensitive.

Body
InboxRuler can check whether the body contains the text specified or not. For certain servers (especially yahoo.com), the 'NOT' functionality is not working properly due to limitations in the yahoo mail server. In this case, only the 'contains' criteria works. Please check by testing the rule.
Size
Messages can be selected based on the size of the message, whether it is larger then, smaller then or between 2 sizes.
Date
Messages can be selected based on the date of the message, whether it is older then, newer then or between 2 dates.
Starting from version 1.50 it is also possible to select messages older than a certain date period such as 1 week or 1 month or messages which are less than a certain date period. This can be helpful to automatically archive older mails to a specified folder.
Mail
You can select messages based on the sender, by selecting 'Mail from', where only messages from a certain email address are selected.
Alternatively, a message can be selected whether the specified address is on the 'to:' or 'cc:' line by selecting 'Mail to' or Mail cc' respectively. For every type of mail (from, to, cc, bcc) you can specify a selection criteria.
Furthermore, you can specify that mail is not from a certain account, or that an mail address is not not given on the to: or cc: list.
Furthermore, if a mail address starts with '@' then the whole domain will be used as selection criteria. For example, the rule which has a mail selection '@spam.com' can be used to move, delete, forward (you name it) all mails ending with '@spam.com'.

To fill in the selection criteria, you can use the 'Selection criteria' , where you can fill in all selections as described above. The selection criteria provides a drop-down or so-called picker view which closes again when a tap is done outside the selection view. Alternatively, you can use the 'Selection wizard' screen.

Selection Wizard

In the selection wizard screen you select a message from one of your inboxes. When the message has been selected, all parameters for the selection such as subject, date, size and email address are retrieved from the email message selected. Before you can select a message, you need to specifiy from which account you want to select an email message. However, the resulting selection can be used for multiple accounts.

Accounts

A rule can be executed for one or more email accounts, here you can specifiy for which accounts the rule needs to be executed.

Actions

Actions for a rule are:

Delete
Delete messages which are selected based on the selection criteria. Messages which are selected for deletion will be moved to the deleted messages folder. The deleted folder can be selected in the accounts screen.
Forward
Forward all mails which are selected to the specified email address.
Forward with signature
Forward the mail, but with the signature, which is created in the settings screen, added at the end of the message.
Delete after Forward
When the message has been forwarded, it will be deleted from the inbox when this setting is active. Be careful, the message will really be deleted!
Move to/ Copy to
Move or copy a message to the selected folder. The folder can be actually in a different mailbox than the one where the message is coming for. There is a performance penalty with this however as the message needs to be copied by downloading to your phone and then appended to the mailfolder. When selecting a folder, you can also delete, add, or rename a folder by doing a long press (larger than 3 seconds) on a specific folder. A menu will appear to specify an action for the folder.:

Test Rule/Run Rule

You can test or run a rule individually on the 'Edit Rule' screen. When executing the rule, all messages in the inboxes associated with the rule will be processed.

Log

The log tab gives an overview of all messages, including the output of the rules which have been executed in the background.
You can search for messages using the search bar. If you click on one of the lines, a detailed window will open with all text given by the logged message. The output of rules which have been processed in the background are given in italics.

Help

The help tab you are reading now.

Examples

Example 1

You want to move mails with the subject line contains the word netbeans and is from the mail address webmaster@netbeans.org to the folder SubFolder/Netbeans News, but only when the mail already has been read.
In order to do this, select 2 conditions in the Edit Rule screen, in the Subject selection , the condition 'Contains' and in the Mail Selection the condition 'Mail from'.
The Action to take is the 'Move to folder' with the email account where you want to move the message to.
Note that:

All subject comparisons (Contains, Starts with, Ends with) are case insensitive.
Moving a message to a different mailbox than the selected message will generate more network traffic as the whole message has to be copied to the other email account. For messages within the same mail account the move will be done on the mail server.

Example 2

You want to archive mails to an archive folder when the mail size exceeds 100000 bytes, but only when the message has been read. In order to do this, select the size with as selection criteria 'greater then' and fill in the Min box the desired size. Again, you can specifiy to either move or copy the mail, in this case it would make sense to move the email to the specified folder.

Example 3

When you are on the cc: list, you'd like to move the mail to an archive folder, such as 'for information only'.
Use the mail selection entry and select 'On cc: list' selection. The action to take is using the 'Move to folder' again with the appropiate account and folder.

Example 4

Suppose your children have separate mailboxes and receive mails from their sports or other club. They get mail about upcoming events, but they do not always read their mails regularly. You don't want to scan their emails everytime and read it while you only want to know about changes in their schedule of their sport club. Just apply a rule with the subject or date from and forward those kind of mails to your own account. You don't need to have your children's mailboxes active on your iPhone or iPad as the interesting mails are automatically forwarded to you.

Miscellaneous

There is a dedicated website for the InboxRuler app which contains screenshots, tips and tricks and feedback of other users. You can get in touch with the developers of InboxRuler via the website or by directly sending an email to info@inboxruler.com
Currently only imap/smtp servers are supported.
If you upgrade from a previous version, you need to save your accounts again
Operations between different email accounts use more network bandwidth; if an email needs to be moved or copied to another email account the email content needs to be copied entirely. This implies that the email will be transferred twice of the network, downloading to your iPhone/iPad and uploading again to the other mail server. If you have a limited bandwidth plan and not on WiFi, check your rules for this situation.
You can set InboxRuler to only execute the rules when on WiFi, hence no data usage for your data plan.
Normally, a rule which runs in the background will only run on new incoming messages since the last run of the specific rule. If you run or test a specific rule from the 'Edit Rule' screen all messages in the inbox will be processed.
When testing a message from the 'Edit Rule' screen, all messages will be processed but the corresponding action will not be performed.
A delete action moves the message from the inbox folder to the trash folder, including when you set the 'delete after forward' checkbox when forwarding a message.
When running or testing the rules from the main screen, all messages in the inboxes from the specified accounts will be processed and all rules are applied in order of priority. When running in the background only the messages since the last run will be processed.
Since version 1.60 InboxRuler support two factor authentication for gmail accounts. This implies when you select 'OAuth2' in the authentication type and press 'Save', you will be automatically forwarded to the login page for your google account and be asked if InboxRuler is allowed to access your email details. Note that you can only select OAuth2 for gmail accounts.

Issues

Yahoo does not support the negation of a search expression and hence the search expressions such as 'does not contain' will not work as expexted. It looks like the 'not' functionality is not implemented by Yahoo.
Starting with version 1.4, accounts are automatically migrated to include the connection and authentication type, based on the previous SSL setting. Furthermore, the 'deleted folder' will be automatically selected which you always can change in the Accounts screen.
Only one gmail account is supported with 2 factor authentication.
As the background execution is dependent on the scheduling algorithm of the iOS operating system it does not always schedule on the specified interval. In an upcoming release the mechanism will be changed drastically in order to have a reliable background process.