Sync and the daemon¶

antiphond is the only part of Antiphon that touches the network. It syncs mail, sends the outbox, runs delivery rules, raises notifications and owns the vault. It runs in the foreground, logs to stdout/stderr, and stops cleanly on SIGHUP, SIGINT or SIGTERM.

You do not have to install anything: the client starts a daemon for you (see below). A supervisor is only worth it if you want the daemon running before the first client launch, restarted on failure, and stopped at logout.

Tune sync¶

[sync]
interval_minutes = 2   # how often a full pass runs
idle = true            # push: new mail lands within seconds

With idle = true the daemon holds one IMAP IDLE connection per account, parked on the inbox, and syncs the moment the server announces new mail. On servers without IDLE it falls back to the interval. An interval_minutes of 0 disables the timer entirely.

Concurrency¶

A pass fans out rather than queueing: up to four accounts sync at once, and within each account up to three folders fetch in parallel, every worker on its own IMAP connection. A slow or large account (or folder) holds only its own worker; the rest keep draining. The bounds are fixed, chosen to stay inside the connection limits mail servers enforce.

Zero setup: let the client start it¶

When antiphon finds no daemon it starts one itself, logging to $XDG_STATE_HOME/antiphon/antiphond.log. The daemon outlives the terminal. The client also checks the running daemon's version on launch and restarts one left over from an older build, so an upgrade never leaves a stale daemon behind the new client. Turn autostart off to run your own supervisor:

[daemon]
autostart = false

macOS (launchd)¶

cp dist/launchd/org.antiphon.antiphond.plist ~/Library/LaunchAgents/
launchctl bootstrap gui/$(id -u) ~/Library/LaunchAgents/org.antiphon.antiphond.plist

Stop it:

launchctl bootout gui/$(id -u)/org.antiphon.antiphond

Edit the ProgramArguments path if antiphond is not at /usr/local/bin/antiphond (Homebrew on Apple silicon uses /opt/homebrew/bin, cargo uses ~/.cargo/bin).

systemd (GNOME, KDE and most distributions)¶

antiphon setup already installs the antiphond.service user unit on a systemd host (it stops short of enabling it, so the choice stays yours). If you ran setup, enabling it is all that is left:

systemctl --user enable --now antiphond

If you skipped setup, install the unit by hand first:

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
cp dist/systemd/antiphond.service ~/.config/systemd/user/
systemctl --user enable --now antiphond

Logs: journalctl --user -u antiphond. To keep it running after logout: loginctl enable-linger.

dinit (Artix, Chimera)¶

mkdir -p ~/.config/dinit.d
cp dist/dinit/antiphond ~/.config/dinit.d/
dinitctl --user enable antiphond

Requires a user dinit instance (Artix and Chimera start one at login; elsewhere run dinit from your session startup).

runit (Void)¶

mkdir -p ~/sv
cp -r dist/runit/antiphond ~/sv/

Point a user-level runsvdir at ~/sv, then control it with SVDIR=~/sv sv start antiphond and friends.

OpenRC, s6 and everything else¶

OpenRC user services (0.56+) and s6 both supervise a plain foreground command; point them at antiphond. Without a user supervisor, use a session hook below or the client's autostart.

Desktop autostart (KDE, XFCE, LXQt, GNOME)¶

mkdir -p ~/.config/autostart
cp dist/autostart/antiphond.desktop ~/.config/autostart/

Starts antiphond at login but does not restart it on failure; prefer systemd/dinit/runit where you have them.

Minimal sessions¶

X11 (startx/xinit): antiphond & in ~/.xinitrc before the window manager line.
sway: exec antiphond in ~/.config/sway/config.
Hyprland: exec-once = antiphond in hyprland.conf.
river: riverctl spawn antiphond in ~/.config/river/init.
labwc: antiphond & in ~/.config/labwc/autostart.

Ready-made service files ship in dist/.

Reloading config¶

You do not signal the daemon to reload. Add, edit or remove an account in the client, or change the sync interval or idle setting on the settings Essentials tab, and the running daemon picks it up at once; the view answers applied to the running daemon. SIGHUP stops the daemon, it does not reload it.

If an OAuth account's sign-in expires, the client flags it in the status line and on the settings Accounts tab. Press O there, or run:

antiphon oauth login <account>

Stopping and checking¶

Any of SIGHUP, SIGINT or SIGTERM stops antiphond gracefully: it finishes the current pass, seals the vault, and exits.

antiphon doctor   # is a daemon reachable? how much is queued?