dovecot - Mar 2021 - Only INBOX is searched when using gmail with dovecot FTS and solr

Hi,

I am using https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver to 
setup my mailserver and added solr for full-text search. Nearly 
everything is working as expected. But I have a problem with the 
full-text search, as I have a lot of folders in my mailbox and I just 
can't find any mail in any of these folders except INBOX when I search 
with the Gmail android app.

After analyzing the logs, I assume, that the bug is in the Gmail app, as 
it is only searching in the INBOX folder. I searched a bit and found 
some reports of other users confirming that. As this "design decision"
(or bug) is quite old, I assume that Google won't fix it. But as many 
people are using Gmail, I assume that there must be a way to search all 
folders with Gmail. Sadly, I haven't found any possibility yet.

As a workaround one may put a proxy in between and simply remove the 
"+box:123" filter from the path (e.g. with a small regex). With that, 
solr will return all found mails from that user, regardless of the 
folder. This may be a quite simple, but very dirty hack.

Hence, I hope that you guys know a better way, a good way to overcome 
this issue and enable all Gmail users to search for email in all folders.

Best regards,

Marcel

Any ideas on this? I am sure that I can't be the only one having issues 
with the search function while using Gmail.
> Hi,
>
> I am using https://github.com/docker-mailserver/docker-mailserver to 
> setup my mailserver and added solr for full-text search. Nearly 
> everything is working as expected. But I have a problem with the 
> full-text search, as I have a lot of folders in my mailbox and I just 
> can't find any mail in any of these folders except INBOX when I search 
> with the Gmail android app.
>
> After analyzing the logs, I assume, that the bug is in the Gmail app, 
> as it is only searching in the INBOX folder. I searched a bit and 
> found some reports of other users confirming that. As this "design 
> decision" (or bug) is quite old, I assume that Google won't fix
it.
> But as many people are using Gmail, I assume that there must be a way 
> to search all folders with Gmail. Sadly, I haven't found any 
> possibility yet.
>
> As a workaround one may put a proxy in between and simply remove the 
> "+box:123" filter from the path (e.g. with a small regex). With
that,
> solr will return all found mails from that user, regardless of the 
> folder. This may be a quite simple, but very dirty hack.
>
> Hence, I hope that you guys know a better way, a good way to overcome 
> this issue and enable all Gmail users to search for email in all folders.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Marcel
>