Google Apps account losing IDLE

Thanks for the kind words.

The first thing to check is that MailMate is not to blame. When this happens then make sure that the INBOX of the account is written with a bold font. This is how MailMate shows that it's in an IDLE state. If that is true then open the Activity Viewer (⌥⌘0) and select the IDLE connection for this mailbox. Keep the window open and see if there is any activity within the next 10 minutes. Let me know what you find.

Benny,

Thanks a lot for the kind and quick answer!

It is clear to me that it is a (strange) server issue, and I apologize for not making it clear... What I hope is to use MailMate as a more adequate tool to determine where the problem lies. I did not know for example of the bold font indicating an IDLE connection.

Seeing the Activity Viewer I noticed that it was actively fetching mails from many folders I have on BADV account and no IDLE connection was active. After the fetching ended (it took a long time, maybe because I had removed many labels from gmail server side), the IDLE connection was established. After that, I kept looking at the activity viewer and got the impression that while many FETCH operations are undergoing the IDLE connection is not available, is that right? Since I have many folders and nested folders, could that be affecting in some way the time needed for fetching operations, since I notice on the Activity Viewer that it checks all my folders? Maybe reducing the folders or at least subfolders could help?

I apologize for my little knowledge of IMAP here, if I am asking something obvious I would be glad to be directed to any good sources of information instead of wasting your time with a problema which probably does not have anything to do with the excellent software you provided us :-)

Yes, a large number of folders could trigger this behavior. How many do you have?

So, the difference between the two accounts is the number of mailboxes.

You can change how often mailboxes are checked by changing the “Synchronization Schedule” of the mailbox. If you do it on the account itself then this is inherited as a default for all other mailboxes (except the INBOX).

Benny, the "problematic" account had indeed much more folders than the other. More than a hundred for sure, and some of them were incorrectly "nested" on the gmail interface (showing as folder/subfolder/folder instead of the tabbed view google now adopts) - do not know if that last issue was making it harder to deal with the folder.

I reduced the folder number drastically by taking some backup folders and flattening their hierarchy since I can use good search with the web interface and (finally! :-) with Mailmate as client.

The ability to set all folders synchronization Schedule per account and then choose specific mailboxes to sync on a different schedule is almost magical! Very well-thought. Already set many of them to only sync per hour and it seems IDLE is being maintained flawlessly.

Thanks a lot for your insight in this. The only thing I regret concerning this software is that I took so long to first use it ;-)

Cheers,

Marcelo