Reduce network bandwidth usage when on a metered connection
Some of the respondents to the GNOME metered data survey explicitly listed Geary as causing them problems when on metered connections. I just grepped the source code (I don’t use Geary myself, sorry), and it doesn’t appear to check Gio.NetworkMonitor.get_network_metered()
at all.
It would be good if Geary would disable automatic checks for new mail/etc. when the user’s on a metered connection, and allow them to check manually instead. There could be a GSetting (not exposed in the UI) to control this, perhaps. Other bandwidth saving measures could involve not automatically downloading images when previewing a received e-mail, until the user clicks a button to download them, for example; and caching things more aggressively. These are just suggestions to use as the basis of a discussion.
If anyone would like to contribute MRs for the following points, they are each small, independent units of work:
-
Disable background folder check and sync -
When prefetching new mail, only download parts needed for listing in the conversation list -
Don't download remote images/videos by default if enabled for a sender/email, -
Increase the polling interval when IMAP IDLE is not enabled