Score:0

Automatically discoverable mail server settings

vi flag

I have a Postfix/Dovecot email-server set up, and it all works really well, but when I try to add the email to well-known email clients (e.g. Outlook) it will say the email settings could not be discovered or something of that nature, I then have to fill in the email settings myself (by these settings I mean servers, ports other stuff like that) and then it will work. This made me wonder whether there is a way to make these settings "automatically discoverable" by all email clients, if this is even possible, and not just email clients saving settings from domains that show up often enough or something like that. Thanks in advance.

anx avatar
fr flag
anx
Does this answer your question? [Is there a standard DNS record to indicate the IMAP server for a domain?](https://serverfault.com/questions/814715/is-there-a-standard-dns-record-to-indicate-the-imap-server-for-a-domain)
HiddeV22 avatar
vi flag
@anx Thank you for your comment. That seems to be a step in the right direction, however I'm not certain whether the provided solution (hosting a config file on your webserver) works for email clients other than Thunderbird, but I guess I could just give it a try
Score:0
ru flag

Unfortunately, there's no standard for auto discovering email settings.

For Thunderbird it's here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Autoconfiguration

Outlook is a lot more complicated: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/outlook-2016-implementation-of-autodiscover-0d7b2709-958a-7249-1c87-434d257b9087

HiddeV22 avatar
vi flag
That's indeed unfortunate... By any chance, do you know whether the Thunderbird config file method would work with other email clients as well? Because the Outlook one sure looks complicated, and I would ultimately want all (well-known) email clients to work without it being a hassle
Zac67 avatar
ru flag
I'm afraid you'd have to pick your supported email apps and work out how to auto configure each of them...
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