K-9 Mail

Free or paid:

• Free

Accessibility and User Comments:

I find the app generally OK to use with TalkBack, but there continue to be accessibility navigation issues, which are reported on their issue tracker on GitHub. One nice feature is that it can aggregate multiple accounts into a single unified inbox, though you can switch to each individually from the sidebar, accessed via the top left hamburger menu (labeled "navigate up" like a "back button" for some reason).

Be careful when opening the sidebar using the hamburger menu at the top left. The first option presented will speak out the currently active account, but it's actually a toggle between the list of accounts and the email folders for the selected account. The settings button is only visible if you're in the "folders for the selected account" state. If you can’t find the "Settings" button, this is likely the reason. Selecting an account from the list of floating buttons should switch it into the "folders" view. This is quite confusing, and the issue was raised on GitHub but has not been fixed.

A nice feature is that messages are grouped in a submenu, so if you open a conversation, it will show a list of messages in that conversation. However, it's not entirely clear that this happens. From within a conversation, you can double-finger swipe left or right to navigate to more recent or older messages in that conversation. Use the back button to return to the list of messages. To activate "Threaded view," go to the side panel (top left), then at the bottom, Settings > General > Display, and find "Threaded view." In the message reading pane, Container navigation is enabled, allowing you to jump between the top bar, mail headers, mail body, and attachments. However, attachments are at the very bottom, with no other indication they are available.

One reported issue is the number of gestures required to navigate the message list. It takes three swipes to go to the next message in the list, where it reads all of it. This can be adjusted by going into the settings (upper left button, settings button at the bottom > general settings) and disabling "Show Contact Pictures" and "Show Stars." You can also disable preview lines, making it possible to navigate the list of messages with a single right/left swipe.

To perform additional actions on a message (delete, archive, mark as read, etc.), you need to double tap and hold to select the message, which places new actions in the top-most bar. There are currently no accessibility actions defined. You get the same actions in the top bar once you open a message. The app supports "Container" navigation throughout, so you can navigate to the reading mode to access the top bar, though it’s probably easier to explore by touch.

To add accounts, go to the side menu (top left button), then settings at the bottom of this panel. Under accounts, there is an "Add account" button. Initially, you’ll be prompted only for an email address, with "Next" and "Back" buttons, as K-9 Mail recognizes some common domains. For example, if you have @gmail.com, it will say "Configuration found, configure automatically." If you cycle through controls, you'll find a "Sign in with Google" button, which opens a web view where you authenticate and authorize this app with Google. If you connect to a mail server, it will say "Configuration not found, configure manually." Hit "Next." You’ll then be presented with a form where you specify protocol, server, port, authentication type, etc. The combo boxes are a bit broken. For example, in the first combo box, "Protocol," you must double tap and hold to pop up the list of available options, namely IMAP and POP3, which you can then select normally. If you just double tap, it will select the text, which is problematic as these fields don't support free-form input.

The inbox has filters to sort by date (default), unread first, emails with attachments first, etc.

The app includes additional features that could be useful in specific niche cases. For example, it's possible to configure an account to send emails as "plain text" and to configure "reply after quoted text." Some mailing lists, particularly open-source ones that have been around for decades, insist on these settings. Once you have a profile set up, go to the side panel with the top left menu, go to the settings button at the very end, select an account, double tap, swipe to "Sending mail," double tap, and then you can configure these options: "message format," "quote message when replying," "reply after quoted text," and so on. Unfortunately, these settings can only be changed here, so it's not easy to switch between HTML email and plain text email (but this is true whether you use a screen reader or not).

Overall, I find it a lot nicer compared to Google's Gmail, but that's just my opinion.

Last Tested App version and Android version:

6.804, Android 14