[patch] Implement IMAP NOTIFY

[shamefulCake1]

Dear imapclient developers, the patch below implements a (rudimentary) support for IMAP NOTIFY (being able to IDLE events in many mailboxes and selecting interesting events)

From 8df794a20dfd4193208f7db1e864561bc79a8610 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Lockywolf <>
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 2025 16:27:25 +0800
Subject: [PATCH] Add support for IMAP NOTIFY extension

---
 imapclient/imapclient.py | 25 +++++++++++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 25 insertions(+)

diff --git a/imapclient/imapclient.py b/imapclient/imapclient.py
index e86cefc..dd1a48c 100644
--- a/imapclient/imapclient.py
+++ b/imapclient/imapclient.py
@@ -76,6 +76,10 @@ if "ENABLE" not in imaplib.Commands:
 if "MOVE" not in imaplib.Commands:
     imaplib.Commands["MOVE"] = ("AUTH", "SELECTED")
 
+# ...and NOTIFY
+if "NOTIFY" not in imaplib.Commands:
+    imaplib.Commands["NOTIFY"] = ("AUTH", "SELECTED")
+
 # System flags
 DELETED = rb"\Deleted"
 SEEN = rb"\Seen"
@@ -884,6 +888,27 @@ class IMAPClient:
         tag = self._imap._command("NOOP")
         return self._consume_until_tagged_response(tag, "NOOP")
 
+    @require_capability("NOTIFY")
+    def notify(self, *args):
+        """Set up kinds of messages available through IDLE.
+        @args is passed without processing to the server,
+        is is usualy something like
+        "set (selected-delayed (MessageNew MessageExpunge FlagChange))\
+        (personal (MessageNew MessageExpunge FlagChange\
+        MailboxName SubscriptionChange))".
+        """
+        self._idle_tag = self._imap._command("NOTIFY", *args)
+        resp = self._imap._get_response()
+        if resp is None:
+            raise exceptions.IMAPClientError("Unexpected NOTIFY response: %s" % resp)
+        resp = resp.decode("ascii") # maybe this.decode_utf7()?
+        resp = resp.split(" ")
+        tag = resp[0]
+        okp = resp[1]
+        comment = resp[2]
+        if okp != "OK":
+            raise exceptions.IMAPClientError("NOTIFY response not OK: %s" % resp)
+
     @require_capability("IDLE")
     def idle(self):
         """Put the server into IDLE mode.
-- 
2.46.4

Please consider accepting it into master.