Add your first account

Enter your address, let FOLD find the servers, confirm unfamiliar hosts and sign in; FOLD contacts your mail server only when you create the account.

Start the setup

On the Mac, click Add account in the empty sidebar. Later you add further accounts with Add Account… in the command palette (⌘K). On iPhone and iPad, tap Add account.

On the Mac, enter Your name (shown as sender) and your address, then click Continue. On iPhone and iPad, enter the Email address and tap Continue; the Display name (optional) follows on the next step.

How FOLD finds your servers

FOLD looks up the server settings from four sources:

1. Cache. Results of earlier successful lookups on this device, kept for 30 days. A hit is used immediately, without any network access.
2. Built-in profiles for eleven providers, listed in Built-in providers.
3. DNS SRV records of your domain (RFC 6186): _imaps._tcp, _imap._tcp, _submissions._tcp and _submission._tcp.
4. Your domain’s own autoconfig file, at https://autoconfig.<domain>/mail/config-v1.1.xml or https://<domain>/.well-known/autoconfig/mail/config-v1.1.xml.

If the cache has no entry, FOLD asks sources 2 to 4 at the same time, with a limit of five seconds each. The most trusted answer wins: a built-in profile before SRV, SRV before autoconfig. FOLD does not ask Mozilla’s central autoconfig database, so your domain is not sent to a third-party directory.

If no source answers, FOLD switches to manual setup and prefills imap.<domain> and smtp.<domain>.

Servers in another domain

An answer from SRV or autoconfig can point to a server outside your email domain. In that case FOLD shows Server in a different domain with the host names and does not create the account until you tick Trust this server. Built-in profiles and cached results never ask.

On iPhone and iPad the setup also lists the Detected servers with host and port. On the Mac, host names appear only in this confirmation.

Sign in

For providers with a password, enter your password or app password and click Create account (Mac) or tap Add account (iPhone, iPad). For Google, FOLD shows Sign in with provider (OAuth) instead; see Sign in with Google.

Only now does FOLD connect to your mail server. It signs in to IMAP and then to SMTP with the settings found. The account is saved only if both succeed; the password is stored in the keychain of this device. Typical messages are Sign-in failed; username or password is incorrect. and IMAP server unreachable; check server, port and encryption.

The Mac confirms with Account ready and “Your inbox is syncing in the background.” Click Done.

If you add an address that already exists, FOLD does not create a second account. It updates the existing one when the server settings or the username differ.