Feature Request: IMAP Enhanced Trigger Node with Custom Flag/Keyword Support

[Cornelius]

It would help if there was a node for:

An enhanced Email Trigger (IMAP) node that supports filtering by IMAP keywords (custom flags) — not just UNSEEN.

Currently the Email Trigger node (emailReadImap) can only filter by read/unread status. There is no UI option to filter by custom IMAP keywords like $Label1, $Processed, or n8n_done. This makes it impossible to build robust deduplication into email processing workflows without relying solely on read status or folder moves.

Proposed additions:

• Has Keyword filter: Only trigger on emails that have a specific IMAP keyword

• Does Not Have Keyword filter: Only trigger on emails that do NOT have a keyword (maps to IMAP UNKEYWORD)

• Standard flag filters in the UI: Seen, Flagged, Answered, Deleted, Draft (currently only available via hidden customEmailConfig JSON)

My use case:

I run an automated email classification workflow on a Zimbra mail server:

Email Trigger (INBOX/n8n) → AI Classification → Set Custom Flag → Move to Folder

After processing, I set a custom IMAP keyword (e.g. n8n_done) on each email to mark it as handled. I need the trigger to skip emails that already have this keyword so they don’t get re-processed.

Currently there’s a workaround via “Custom Email Config” option:

[["UNSEEN"], ["!KEYWORD", "n8n_done"]]

But this requires knowledge of raw IMAP search syntax and the node-imap library’s array format — it’s not discoverable through the UI and most users wouldn’t know it exists.

A proper UI for keyword filtering would make email automation workflows significantly more reliable and accessible.

Any resources to support this?

• RFC 3501 Section 2.3.2 — IMAP keywords are defined as user-settable flags (atoms without \ prefix)

• RFC 3501 Section 6.4.4 — SEARCH command supports KEYWORD and UNKEYWORD criteria

• n8n-nodes-imap community node (50k+ installs) — has partial custom flag support in its action node (v2.15.0, PR #104) but no trigger node

• IMAP keywords are supported by all major mail servers: Dovecot, Cyrus, Gmail, Exchange, Zimbra (with limitations)

Are you willing to work on this?

I’m not a TypeScript developer myself, but I can provide detailed testing with Zimbra IMAP servers and help validate any implementation. I’ve already analyzed the current EmailReadImapV2.node.ts source and the underlying node-imap library — the SEARCH criteria support is already there, it just needs UI exposure.

[Cornelius]

Some more background — explained simply

(Kept simple on purpose, so technically only ~95% accurate)

What are mail tags?

Most email servers allow you to categorize emails in some way:

• In Outlook, these are called “Categories”
  

  

• In other clients/servers, they’re referred to as “Tags” or "Flags"

  

• Google calls them “Labels”
  

  

Different names, same concept: metadata you can attach to an email to classify it.

Back to email workflows

In n8n, the IMAP Trigger is the standard way to automatically kick off a workflow whenever a new email arrives in a mailbox — it monitors the server for unread messages in real time.

Currently, the main criteria you can filter on are:

• New emails

• Unread emails

The consequence: in most cases, all emails in the inbox end up being processed by the workflow — whether they’re relevant or not.

What this feature request enables

With custom flag/keyword support directly in the IMAP trigger, you gain precise control over which emails enter your workflow and which ones get skipped.

Examples:

• After an email has been checked and should stay in the inbox, set the tag n8n_done. On the next trigger run, all emails tagged n8n_done are simply ignored.

• When a workflow starts processing an email, set the tag n8n_inprogress — so that any concurrent or subsequent execution of this (or another) workflow skips emails with that tag. Remove the tag once the workflow finishes.

I could go on with examples endlessly.

Why this matters

• Emails can be processed much more selectively — irrelevant emails never even enter the workflow

• Enables significantly more complex workflows with proper state management directly at the trigger level

• Prevents duplicate processing across multiple workflows watching the same mailbox

[Markus73]

That would be a really great feature that could also be very useful. I would also be very happy to see it implemented.

Best regards, Markus

[Cornelius]

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