Gmail Node: Chinese Characters in Subject Line Display as Garbled Text

[orderdan.marketing]

Problem Description

I’m experiencing an issue with the Gmail Node in n8n where Chinese characters in email subjects are not displaying correctly. Regardless of the input format I use for Chinese text, the received emails always show garbled characters in the subject line.

Environment Information

• n8n Version: [Please fill in your version]

• Gmail Node Version: [Please fill in version]

• Deployment: [Docker/Self-hosted/Cloud]

• Operating System: [Please fill in]

Issue Details

Test Cases

Input 1 (Plain Chinese Text):

Subject: "新產品促銷活動"

Input 2 (RFC2047 Encoded):

Subject: "=?UTF-8?B?5paw55Si5ZOB5L+D6Yq35rS75YuV?="

Actual Output (Both cases):

Subject: "新çÂ"¢åÂ" ä¿ƒéŠ·æ´»å‹•"

Expected Output:

Subject: "新產品促銷活動"

Analysis

The garbled output 新çÂ"¢åÂ" ä¿ƒéŠ·æ´»å‹• appears to be UTF-8 bytes being interpreted as Latin-1 characters. This suggests that the Gmail Node might be:

1. Converting Chinese text to UTF-8 bytes

2. Incorrectly treating those bytes as Latin-1 characters during email transmission

Workflow Configuration

json

What I’ve Tried

1. Direct Chinese input: Results in garbled text

2. RFC2047 encoding: Same garbled output

3. Different encoding methods: Various UTF-8 encoding approaches

4. HTML entities: Converting to numeric character references

Questions

1. Is this a known issue with the Gmail Node when handling non-ASCII characters?

2. What is the correct input format for Chinese characters in Gmail Node subjects?

3. Are there any workarounds or configuration changes that can resolve this?

4. Should I switch to HTTP Request node with Gmail API instead?

Additional Context

• English subjects work perfectly fine

• The email body content displays Chinese characters correctly

• Only the subject line has this encoding issue

• This happens consistently across different email clients (Gmail web, Outlook, etc.)

Expected Behavior

The Gmail Node should properly handle UTF-8 encoded Chinese characters in subject lines without manual encoding/decoding, similar to how it handles the email body content.

Any help or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

[darrell_tw]

Working normal on my end

Can you share the whole workflow to let us test?