Am Di., 12. Dez. 2023 um 10:58 Uhr schrieb Andrew Todd <at@auspicacious.org
>:

> Hello,
>
> I'm trying to set up notmuch, and I think that the behavior I want
> should be possible (and is desirable), but I can't seem to make it work.
> I also can't find any reference online suggesting that it *shouldn't*
> work, and I would have thought that it's a very common use case for
> people using multiple mail clients with one IMAP server.
>
> Running Arch Linux, so on latest (currently 0.38.1). Working with the
> CLI and Emacs frontend.
>
> I'm synchronizing mail from a remote IMAP server to local maildir using
> isync/mbsync.
>
> What I want is for messages that do not have maildir files ending in
> ':2,S' to be tagged as 'unread' in notmuch.
>
> In other words, I want notmuch to respect the read/unread state of
> messages from the IMAP server and not make any other changes.
>
> My understanding is that this is the purpose of the
> maildir.synchronize_flags option. I have explicitly set this to true in
> my config:
>
> [maildir]
> synchronize_flags=true
>
> Moreover, I have also turned off all default tags when running notmuch new:
>
> [new]
> tags=
>
> The default is `unread;inbox`. I understand you don't want the inbox tag,
but have you tried with `unread` here?

The manual is not overly clear about the interaction between this config
and flag sync, but AFAIU, `notmuch new` sets `unread` and then possibly
unsets it during the flag sync (maybe in one atomic db write, i.e. you
don't see this). By removing `unread` from `new.tags` you keep `notmuch
new` from doing that first step.

And just in case this feels like a "duh moment" to you - we all have them ;)

Cheers,
Michael