Email and calendar accounts
Brick fills its Inbox from your own Google account, so connecting one is the first thing to do.
Connect your Google account#
Open Settings from the bottom of the sidebar, then Email and calendar accounts, and click Connect Google Account.
Google then asks you to allow three things: to read your Gmail, to read your Calendar, and to send mail as you. Allow all three. If you leave one unticked, the connection is refused. Brick needs the read permissions to fill your Inbox and the send permission so you can write email from inside Brick.
You can connect more than one Google account. Microsoft accounts are not supported yet; the Microsoft button on that page only tells us you would like it.
What Brick syncs#
Brick reads your Gmail and your Calendar, and keeps reading every few minutes.
Emails and meetings are matched to your contacts by email address, so they show up in the Inbox and on each contact's Emails and Meetings tabs.
Mail you send from Brick goes out through your real Gmail and lands in your Gmail Sent folder, so nothing looks different to the person receiving it.
Two things worth knowing. Deleting a message in Gmail does not delete it from Brick. And closing a conversation in Brick changes nothing in Gmail. Open and Closed are Brick's own idea, not an archive.
While the first import runs#
The first time you connect, Brick reads your whole mailbox history. This can take up to an hour.
While it runs, the sidebar's Inbox row shows a spinner instead of its usual number. It goes back to the number on its own when the import finishes. You can keep working in the meantime.
When it is done, Brick emails you "Your inbox is ready" at the address you sign in with.
Auto-created contacts#
Brick can create contacts for the people in your mail so you do not have to type them in. The setting sits on the same page, with three choices:
- All contacts: everyone you exchange mail with.
- Selective contact creation (the default): only people you have written back to, or who share a calendar event with you. Newsletters and one-way senders are skipped.
- None: Brick creates nobody.
Changing the setting does not go back over old mail; it only changes what happens from now on.
Names come from the mail itself, so some auto-created contacts start with no name at all. Brick fills the name in the first time it sees one for that address, even days later. It never overwrites a name you typed or deliberately cleared.
The blocklist#
Also on that page is the blocklist, a list of email addresses and domains to ignore. Add several at once, separated by commas or spaces.
Blocked senders are hidden everywhere Brick shows their mail, the Inbox included, and no contacts are created from them. Contacts that already exist are left alone. Remove the entry and their mail comes straight back.
Mail sitting in your Gmail Spam folder never reaches Brick at all. If you blocked someone in Gmail and their older mail is still in Brick, add them to the blocklist here, or mark that mail as spam in Gmail.
Reconnect or remove a mailbox#
Each connected account has a row showing the address, whether Email and Calendar are connected, and its current state: a syncing spinner, In sync, or Reconnect needed.
Reconnect needed means Google has stopped letting Brick in and your mail is no longer syncing. Click Reconnect and sign in again.
Remove mailbox asks you to confirm, then deletes the emails and meetings that mailbox brought in and cuts Brick's access to it. Contacts created from that mailbox stay.
Once the mail is flowing, see Inbox.