A new version of Claws Mail, the lightweight GTK+ email client, is now available for download.
Claws Mail 3.14.0 debuts a new ‘master passphrase’ feature.
It also makes some big changes to the way it stores passwords, as the official release notes explain:
“All passwords are now stored in a separate file, (~/.claws-mail/passwordstorerc), and use a stronger encryption than previously.
Existing passwords are moved to the new file automatically, in the old format. The new format will be used whenever old passwords are changed or when a Master Passphrase is used. All new passwords are saved using the new format, irrespective of whether a Master Passphrase is used or not.”
Elsewhere there are small tweaks to the compose window layout, the behaviour of mail forwarding, and the shortcut to view, show or hide the menubar has been changed to Ctrl + F12.
The SSL certificates list gains an automatic scrollbar, while double-clicking datasources in the address book now opens the edit dialogue.
The ‘HTML to plain text converter’ now uses a hyphen to denote list items, and indents text within block quotes.
Preferences also get an uptick with new options to set automatic mail checking in hours, minutes and seconds, while the notification plugin adds a ‘Get mail from account…’ option to its system tray menu.
For IMAP users the SASL ‘PLAIN’ and ‘LOGIN’ authentication methods have been added, and the ‘Move deleted mails to trash and expunge immediately’ option removed.
A number of bugs have also been fixed.
Download Claws Mail 3.14
Claws Mail is free, open-source software. The latest version is available to download as source from the project website.
The official Claws Mail PPA hasn’t been updated since 2014, but Sébastien Noel maintains newer builds for Ubuntu in his Personal Package Archive.