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Install and Configure K-9 Email Client on Android Devices

June 28, 2022

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In earlier days, people used letters and telegrams for communication. Luckily, in the 1970s, electronic communication was introduced and completely changed the way people were communicating. This method of communication was named email. The term Email stands for electronic mail whose main aim was to replace physical letters or paper. Hence, we can now use an email address through the internet to communicate instead of a postal service.

For electronic communication to be effective, we need an Email Client. An email client is a computer program or application used to send, receive and manage emails(electronic messages). Additionally, an email client relies on a set of protocols that are enabled by a mail server. In the mail client, a dedicated port is assigned to the server to help in the transferring of messages or email data. In this guide, I will take you through the installation, configuration, and usage of the K-9 mail client on Android.

K-9 mail client

K-9 is a well-advanced and open source email client.K-9 main focus is to assist in processing large chunks of email data. One of the outstanding benefits of K-9 mail is the user-friendly design which is good for either novice or power users.

Features of K-9 mail client

IMAP Support(Internet Message Access Protocol)
Allows multiple accounts
Unified Inbox
Dark theme
Notifications per account
Keyboard Shortcuts
Supports GPG and PGP//MIME: Make email communication more secure
Bcc to Self feature
Message flagging

How To Install K-9 on Android

To install the K-9 mail client on your android, start by downloading it from an application store.

Downloading K-9 on Android

Access your app store from your phone. In this case, I will use the Google play store to download the K-9 mail client. On the search bar, type K-9 mail and click on the first option that appears. A page will appear with the K-9 mail client application. Click on install and then open after K-9 has downloaded.

Launch K-9 on Android

After you have opened the installed K-9 application from App Store, it will launch on your mobile device desktop. Click on the K-9 mail client and it will display a Welcome screen as illustrated below.

Setting Up K-9 Mail Client

Step 1: Create a New Account

After the Welcome to K-9 mail window on your Android device, click on the Next button. From the screen that appears, enter your full existing email account name followed by the correct password.

Step 2: Select Account Type

In this part, choose the email account type. For instance, I will choose IMAP for the Outlook account.

Step 3: Incoming Server

In the K-9 mail client on Android, you should provide the incoming server details for the connections to be successful. In my example, the server is IMAP, the security is SSL/TLS on port 993 which you can change to correspond to your email account.

Click on next for the K-9 mail account to check the incoming server data. Then it will move to the next step automatically if the info you provided is correct.

Step 4: Outgoing Server Settings

We will choose the settings for our outgoing server depending on the email account we added to the K-9 mail client. Click on the drop-down list to choose the security options for the mail server. In that case, I will maintain SMTP Server, with STARTTLS as the security option.

The K-9 mail client will check on the data provided for the outgoing server and proceed to the next step.

Step 5: Account Settings

After the data for the outgoing server is confirmed to be correct by K-9, you can now choose your mail account options which include email folder frequency and the number of messages to be displayed.

Step 6: Create an Account name

In this part, feel free to give your account a nickname and the name that will appear on the outgoing messages. This is the last step in setting up a K-9N mail client on Android. We can now continue using it.

Using K-9 Mail Client on Android

Interface

Immediately after the above step, K-9 will open and provide its interface. You can now see the messages/emails you have received. Also, you can decide whether you want K-9 to access your contacts from the pop-up script that will appear.

Send Mail

The K-9 client application on android allows you to send an email using the compose icon on the top(see the image above).

Note that, K-9 makes it possible to send an emoji mail to mail other accounts.

Find the message you have sent from the SENT folder.

Folders

Incoming messages are found on the Unified Inbox. You can see the rest of the folders from the illustration below.

Settings

On the K-9 mail account, you can manage the settings and also add more mail accounts.

For instance, from the general settings, go to display and change the theme.

Conclusion

As a wrap-up, the K-9 mail client on Android is an effective and outstanding tool. You can manage your mail accounts for different providers and organize/access your mail folders with ease. Note that, K-9 provides a lot of settings that you should explore to customize your email account. Get the K-9 mail client application from your mobile device app store and enjoy using it.

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