Ubuntu 24.04 LTS users experiencing issues setting up Fastmail and mailbox.org providers in GNOME Online Accounts to access cloud files, calendars, and/or contacts will be pleased to hear a fix is inbound.
Both aforementioned services support WebDAV, CalDAV, and CardDAV, making it easy for users to access files, calendar, and contact through desktop and mobile apps, including many Linux ones.
GNOME 46 features a generic WebDAV provider in GNOME Online Accounts (GOA), allowing users of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS to sign into any WebDAV-supported service through GOA, and let apps fetch/read and sync/write data to/from them.
Or at least in theory.
See, while WebDAV, CalDAV, and CardDAV in GNOME 46 works well for most providers, it isn’t working as well for Fastmail or mailbox.org, two popular online email services.
I use Fastmail, and once I set up WebDAV access via GOA in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS correctly — which wasn’t obvious from the GOA dialog since Fastmail’s documentation say to do things differently, but this worked — the GOA dialog suggests apps I choose can access my calendar, contacts, etc.
Only, they can’t:
No data is fetched or ferried via my Fastmail account, despite successfully adding it in GOA, the relevant access toggles being on, and using apps that integrate with GOA. GNOME’s own Calendar and Contacts apps are empty, and while Nautilus sees a WebDAV share, it can’t connect.
But once GNOME devs were aware of issues with WebDAV features for Fastmail and Mailbox.org, they got to work to bring both services up-to-standard, and an update to GOA was issued.
Ubuntu have now packaged the gnome-online-accounts 3.50.4 update for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, and uploaded it to the ‘proposed’ updates channel for noble to allow for proper testing.
Assuming no major issues are found or introduced by it, and once some text changes in the UI are translated, the GOA update will arrive as a standard software update to all users.
This update also bring a number of other fixes, including buffs to improve ‘the usability of new Microsoft 365 provider’ – aka the one to sign-in to to access OneDrive files in Nautilus as a virtual filesystem.
A welcome bug fix update. If you’ve been left wondering why WebDAV features for some services weren’t working properly, keep an eye out for this.