Re: Change default junk folder

Hello @Scoopa

First James complies with IMAP Special user folders cf https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc6154 

I'd expect that any decent and modern IMAP client be able to cope with that and understand the \Junk role.

Also we have an abstraction governing the folder name -> role mapping namely https://github.com/apache/james-project/blob/master/mailbox/api/src/main/java/org/apache/james/mailbox/SystemMailboxesProvider.java I believe that overriding it might allow you to do what you want.

Alternatively you could consider extending https://github.com/apache/james-project/blob/9972dfe3c67d119ec9d80beb5a8c2749cf207d88/protocols/imap/src/main/java/org/apache/james/imap/api/process/MailboxTyper.java on that IMAP layer to also mark Junk folder as \Junk.
-- 

Best regards,

Benoit TELLIER

General manager of Linagora VIETNAM.
Product owner for Twake-Mail product.
Chairman of the Apache James project.

Mail: [email protected]
Tel: (0033) 6 77 26 04 58 (WhatsApp, Signal)


Le août 10, 2026 10:58 AM, de Quan Tran Hong <[email protected]>Hi,

I guess you migrated from a very old version of James. As I know, James has
used Spam as the default mailbox name for several years.

There is no supported configuration setting to rename the default
mailboxes, as far as I know. The default mailbox names are hardcoded in
DefaultMailboxes.

I recommend using the built-in Spam mailbox for new accounts. Although its
visible name is Spam, James exposes the appropriate special-use semantics:
IMAP \Junk and JMAP role junk. Clients should therefore rely on the
special-use metadata or role rather than the literal mailbox name. Existing
Junk mailboxes can be kept as legacy folders. For migration, you could move
the existing messages from *Junk* to *Spam*.

If you really insist on not creating the Spam mailbox for new accounts,
provisionDefaultMailboxes=false can disable automatic provisioning, but it
does not provide a way to rename Spam to Junk.

I hope it helps.

Regards,

Quan

On Mon, Aug 10, 2026 at 9:28 AM Scoopta via server-user <
[email protected]> wrote:

> I noticed in more recent versions of james the default junk folder is
> now spam, this isn't ideal since I have a lot of existing accounts that
> use the junk folder name, I don't want new accounts to use a different
> folder name, how can I adjust the default folder creation settings?
>
>
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