Backing up IMAP accounts in macOS #

Suhas Sharma's Horcrux: Closed source. GUI. 8MB DMG. Very convenient (handles Google authentication natively, includes backup browser and built-in scheduler, etc.) when it works (like some others, I have yet to see it complete without crashing or returning "verification errors" while running, though I nurse high hopes for this app becoming the Carbon Copy Cloner of email backups one day). Also supports direct server-to-server migration, similar to Gilles Lamiral's much-loved imapsync (which sadly "can't backup nor restore email messages to or from a local directory").
Rui Carmo's imapbackup: Open source Python. CLI. 22KB ZIP. While macOS 12.3 and higher no longer include Python, it can be installed by running /usr/bin/python3, which will automatically prompt to install the command line developer tools if they are missing. Previously mentioned in 2019.
Joe Yates' imap-backup: Open source Ruby. CLI. 158KB ZIP. Easy installation^* and setup:
1. gem install imap-backup^†
2. imap-backup setup
3. imap-backup
4. imap-backup utils export-to-thunderbird EMAIL-ADDRESS^‡
Previously mentioned earlier this year along with a link to this HN discussion on it and related IMAP backup tools.

Footnotes

^* For now at least; Apple vows to remove Ruby and Perl too (what's next Apple, ed?!), though both remain as of macOS 12.6

^† If you receive

ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::FilePermissionError) You don't have write permissions for the /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.6.0 directory.

avoid the impulse to use sudo, instead specifying GEM_HOME and updating your $PATH in ~/.zshrc (.bash_profile for Bash users):
export GEM_HOME=/Users/username/.gem export PATH="$GEM_HOME/bin:$PATH"

then reloading .zshrc:
% source ~/.zshrc

^‡ Otherwise, messages imported into Mail will show "No Sender" in the From field. This command will put the exported messages into ~/"Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/UID.default-release/Mail/Local Folders/imap-backup.sbd/".

/mac | Oct 08, 2022