IMAP IDLE in Apple Mail.app
by Volker Weber
I am currently investigating the IMAP IDLE mode for an article on mobile email. While doing that I came across this interesting plugin for mail client in Mac OS X 10.4:
IMAP-IDLE is a plugin for Apple's Mail.app 2.x. (Tiger version). It opens a second connection for each of your IMAP accounts, requests IDLE mode, and listens for messages from the server. When it receives a message that indicates new mail has arrived, it asks Mail.app to check for new mail. In this way, you get "instant" notification of new mail, rather than needing to wait for the polling interval (e.g., 5 minutes or whatever you have it set to). I have Mail set to "manual check" and let IMAP-IDLE tell it to check for new mail.
Slightly related: IBM invents IMAP IDLE and Domino does not implement it.
Comments
Maybe the "not-invented-in-this-cubicle-factor"...
Karsten W. Rohrbach, 2007-05-23
