alt Hacker NewsIsn’t the only difference between pop and imap that pop removes the mail from the server? I only use imap, and all my email is available offline.
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fluoridation • today at 6:05 PM
No, the difference is that IMAP doesn't store anything other than headers on the client (at least, not until the user tries to read a message), while POP3 eagerly downloads messages whenever they're available. A POP3 client can be configured with various remote retention policies, or even to never delete downloaded messages.
I don't have an IMAP account available to check, but AFAIK, you should not have locally the content of any message you've never read before. The whole point of IMAP is that it doesn't download messages, but instead acts like a window into the server.
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POP is a simple mail transfer protocol (hehe...). It supports three things: get number of mails, download mail by number, delete mail by number. This is what you need to move mails in bulk from one point to another. POP3 mail clients are local maildir clients that use POP3 to get new mail from the server. It's like SMTP if it were based on polling.
IMAP is an interactive protocol that is closer to the interaction between Gmail frontend and backend. It does many things. The client implements a local view of a central source of truth.