using MailMate, I have a problem that the shared folder mechanism, have the side effect that deletion/archiving/junk moves, goes to the designated folder (only one per account login) which causes a problem where deletion of any message, be it from a shared folder (aka group account) or the “main” login account, ends up in the same folder, and that way I now have mixed account messages in the same folder, and the other members can’t see it.
This begs the question if there isn’t a mechanism to login to a group account only, that way I can still use MailMates mass message actions, but it won’t cross account boundaries.
I understand that topics in this category are triaged by a bot first but a human reply will follow up. If I’d prefer a human-only reply, I’ll add the no-ai tag to my topic.
Direct login to a group mailbox isn’t possible in Stalwart. Group principals are explicitly designed so they cannot authenticate over IMAP, POP3, or JMAP at all; they only exist as a shared folder that member accounts see when they log in with their own credentials. There’s also no “master user”/impersonation trick that gets you around this for groups, since impersonation (the <target>%<impersonator> login format) is meant for logging in as another individual account, not a group, and it would still just present the same shared-folder view rather than a separate isolated session.
Because of this, the Trash/Junk/Archive-per-account limitation you’re hitting with MailMate (its single “special folder” per login) is a client-side consequence of how IMAP shared folders work, not something Stalwart’s server config can change: there is currently no server-side option to give a group its own standalone login session distinct from the members’ shared-folder access.
Group principals can’t log in, by design: a group has an inbox and can receive mail, but IMAP, POP3 and JMAP authentication as the group isn’t supported, and the only way members reach it is the shared folder you’re already using. So there’s no per-group session for MailMate to scope its Trash, Archive and Junk to.
The way to get what you want is to make that mailbox an individual account with its own password instead of a group, and add it to MailMate as a second account. Then its Trash and Junk are its own and nothing crosses over. If the other members still need it inline in their own accounts, share it to them with ACLs rather than making them group members: Sharing | Stalwart
There is an impersonation login (target%impersonator, using the impersonator’s password, with the impersonate permission granted) but the target has to be an account that can log in on its own, so it doesn’t help for a group. Worth knowing app passwords are rejected for impersonation logins too, in case you were planning to script around it.