Message Labels
Colored labels that organize your mail across folders — and sync to Thunderbird as native tags.
Overview
Labels are colored tags you attach to messages. Unlike folders, a message can only live in one folder, but it can carry several labels at once — a message can be both Work and Urgent, and it keeps its labels when you move it between folders. Labels color your message list, appear as colored chips when you read a message, and can be searched across your entire account with one click.
Because CodaMail stores labels using the open IMAP standard (the same mechanism Thunderbird uses for its tags), your labels travel with your mail: apply a label in webmail and it shows up as a tag in Thunderbird, and vice versa. No other major provider’s labels do this — Gmail, Fastmail, and Proton all present their labels to mail programs as extra folders with duplicate copies of your messages.
🌐 Available in All Languages: The labels feature is fully localized in over 70 languages.
🏷️ Creating and Managing Labels
Settings path: Settings → Preferences → Labels Options
The Your labels manager lets you:
- Add labels — click Add label, type a name, pick a color. The counter shows how many labels your plan allows.
- Rename or recolor — edit the name or click the color swatch on any row.
- Reorder — the ▲/▼ arrows set the order used everywhere: menu order, keyboard shortcut numbers, and which color wins when a message carries several labels.
- Delete — removes the label from your list. Messages that carried it are untouched; the tag simply stops being displayed (and still shows in other mail programs that know it).
Remember to click Save — a reminder appears whenever you have unsaved changes.
Your first five labels match Thunderbird’s built-in tags (Important, Work, Personal, To Do, Later) so everything works with a stock Thunderbird install out of the box.
✏️ Applying Labels
- Toolbar menu: select one or more messages and use the Labels button. A checkmark shows which labels the message already has; clicking toggles them. Entry 0 clears all labels.
- Right-click / long-press: the context menu has the same label list — handy on phones and tablets.
- Keyboard: with messages selected, press 1–9 to toggle your first nine labels, 0 to clear (can be disabled in Labels Options).
- Drag and drop: drag messages onto a label in the sidebar panel to apply it.
- Automatically: see filters below.
When several messages are selected, the first message decides: if it already has the label, the label is removed from all selected messages that have it; otherwise it is added to all — exactly how Thunderbird behaves.
🔍 Finding Labeled Mail
- Labels sidebar: a collapsible Labels panel sits above your folder list. Click any label to see every message carrying it, across all folders, with a folder column so you know where each message lives.
- List filter: the filter dropdown in the search bar (All / Unread / Flagged…) includes a Label entry for each of your labels, filtering the current folder. It combines with search terms.
- From the menu: the small magnifier next to each label in the toolbar Labels menu jumps straight to that label’s all-folders view.
⚙️ Labeling Automatically with Filters
Mail filters can apply labels the moment a message arrives. In Settings → Mail Delivery Filters, add a rule and choose the Label message action, then pick the label from the list. A matching message arrives already colored in webmail and already tagged in Thunderbird. The Remove label action does the opposite.
For example: “If From contains billing@ → Label message: Finance”. The generated filter uses the standard Sieve language, so rules remain portable and readable. See Understanding Sieve Filters for the bigger picture.
🦊 Thunderbird and Other Mail Programs
Labels are stored as standard IMAP keywords, which Thunderbird reads and writes natively as tags:
- Your first five labels correspond to Thunderbird’s five built-in tags — they sync in both directions with matching colors immediately.
- When Thunderbird first sees mail carrying a label you created in CodaMail, it adds the tag to its own list automatically. Tags you create in Thunderbird likewise appear in webmail once you define a label for them.
- Names and colors are per-program. The mail itself only carries the tag identity; each program keeps its own display name and color. To make Thunderbird’s colors match, set them in Thunderbird → Settings → General → Tags.
- Any other IMAP client that supports keywords/tags will see your labels too.
In webmail’s Labels Options you can also choose the display style: Thunderbird (rows take the label’s color, with dots when a message has several labels) or Bullets (rows keep their normal color and labels show only as colored dots).
📈 Limits
The number of labels you can define depends on your plan. The counter in the label manager always shows your current usage and cap. Downgrading never deletes labels you already have; it only limits creating new ones.
📞 Need Help?
If you have questions about labels or run into anything unexpected, contact our support team at helpdesk@codamail.com.