17 ms·

Mutt email client 25 years old

335 points by job 6y ago

middleclick 6y ago
I can't imagine doing email without mutt, without all the keyboard shortcuts I have, and without vim as the editor. Thank you mutt. Just what an email client should be. I wish there was better search support but that's about it.
- apetresc 6y ago
  I imagine you already know this, but you should consider notmuch for searching within mutt (well, neomutt). It's pretty great.
- codebook 6y ago
  i recently switched to Thunderbird from Neomutt + Notmuch + afew + gmailieer combination. I was satisfied mutt's responsiveness, simplicity. But more and more emails are only for html based and its conversion to text is horrendous, I had to view Html at its own format. Then Thunderbird becomes a good candidate.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
    I’ve had decent success using lynx to dump HTML to text.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    Similarly to sibling comment, I just set in mailcap: text/html; elinks -dump %s; nametemplate=%s.html; copiousoutput
    - codetrotter 6y ago
      The really annoying thing is that some mail is multipart where the text/plain is just “sorry, your email client does not support html”. Yeah thanks a lot but it does, it’s just I have it set to prefer text/plain, because I don’t want to look at the html dump version unless I have to. If those people had simply sent only text/html and not a useless text/plain that only says that kind of stuff then everything would have worked fine. Stuff like that makes me want to quit using mutt, and no fault of mutt mind you. But laziness has kept me to using mutt for reading my self hosted mail for many years now.
      - IgorPartola 6y ago
        I commend you for using “laziness” and “self hosted email” in the same sentence. I ran Mail-in-a-box a few years ago on a cheap VPS. Then I realized just how much I don’t want to do that. It was fun being my own email provider, even if it was only for a secondary account, but the risks definitely outweigh the benefits.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        I mean, yes it is annoying, but you hit v, select the HTML, and hit enter; it's not hard to work around, even if you shouldn't have to.
      - jjav 6y ago
        That's mildly annoying indeed, but I just press v and select the html version in those cases. As you say, not mutt's fault.
        dm319 6y ago
        Yes, and this is still usually quicker than firing up a full-fat email client (as I often have a web browser open anyway).
    - codebook 6y ago
      I also had that But the experience is way worse than reading email in html format. And these days, almost all emails are in html format with pretty basic text/plain in the form of multiformat. That plain text doesn't have the intention of the composer, for instance, the inline image doesn't show inline and the email context says the figure above. It is not that business form, but some ppl use colorful format to emphasize some text, which basically gives same text in the email, which makes the reader (in plain text) easily miss that part while skimming.
      - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
        I'll happily agree that it depends on the mail, and that for emails actually using graphics or fancy formatting, you really do probably need a real graphical interface. Personally, probably 90%+ of my mail can be reasonably rendered in plain text, so this works for most of it and then I use another client for the rest. But for the things it works for, mutt is amazing, so I use it when I can.
      - jjav 6y ago
        > It is not that business form, but some ppl use colorful format to emphasize some text, which basically gives same text in the email, which makes the reader (in plain text) easily miss that part while skimming. I consider that a feature... On some email lists I'm on, there are endless complaints of how some people don't like some elses font/color/size etc. Using mutt I don't see any of that distraction, I just see the text. That's a win in my book.
- leephillips 6y ago
  grepmail is good for when you need something more than mutt search can do. But I find I almost never need it.
dang 6y ago
If curious see also 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14567074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14567074 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182582
samcheng 6y ago
I remember the mind-blowing switch from pine to mutt. Then, a few years later, gmail, which has to be about 20 years old or so. I haven't used much mutt since.
- jjav 6y ago
  gmail is such a huge regression from mutt (or even pine or elm). I rank the email experience of gmail on par with /bin/mail. It's that useless. I use mutt as an IMAP client for gmail when I can, that works mostly ok. At current $DAYJOB they only allow gmail web client which is a complete disaster of unusability. So I mostly just zoom or slack people since gmail is so useless. gmail is email written by those who have never used a proper email client and don't really care about email anyway. (gmail came out in 2004 - got the tshirt from the launch.)
  - dm319 6y ago
    As the search experts, I'm always surprised how poor and unreliable search in gmail is. I also use mutt with my gmail account via mbsync. At least you get to use gmail webmail. I have to use Outlook at work.
    - rawoke083600 6y ago
      Lol side-story... I once worked for Big-Multi-National i.t/startup company they even have a stake in Tencent. Their official mail policy was after 3 months we delete all your email.(You had to save/archive) it yourself if you wanted to have access to it. Some MSExchange setup. The 'reason' back then was 'Some semi-high-level-executive lost his tablet somewhere with important mail. I couldn't believe a company this big and enough money to buy common sense and intelligence came up with this 3-month rule as a solution to 'lost executive tablet'. They closed allot of their local I.T/Startups in the last decade in South Africa.
      - dm319 6y ago
        Jeez, what an awful solution. I work in an academic environment and also in a healthcare environment. There is a national 'secure' MSexchange service for patient data, and we also use a local exchange server for within-hospital communication. I have no idea how secure any/all of this is, but I tried to add my 'national' account onto my regular outlook, and it broke everything. IT support told me that I wasn't allowed to do this because it wouldn't be secure. Which confused me given I used Outlook for confidential communication within the healthcare provider. So I'm forced to use their webmail client which is even worse than Outlook. Not sure how email got into this mess. It should be simpler, and confidential communication should just use something different IMO.
ninjin 6y ago
Thank you Mutt (and also NeoMutt for pushing the envelope), you have been my e-mail client now for the last four years and as an academic that spends a significant amount of time reading and responding to e-mail it is (somehow?) the best option out there. Setup: * Mutt (I had slowdowns with NeoMutt) * Vim with four e-mail specific lines in the `vimrc` * fdm for retrieval and delivery rules * Syncthing for synchronisation between machines (it is just files! although ~1,000,000 of them…) * tmux to give me a single horizontal split so that I can browse and compose at the same time * Notmuch for search * Lynx to beat text/html into shape * a tiny snooze shell script of my own coupled with an equally tiny unsnooze shell script that runs every few minutes on a box that is on 24/7 That is it, although I have to admit that I should clean up my `muttrc` at this point as it is an outright mess. There are always more tweaks one could perform, my next one probably being figuring out tagging and then sending multiple mails to the snooze script. But one has to exercise a bit of self restraint or get less rather than more work done due to “over tweaking”. Gripes? Well, the configuration is very arcane at times and monolithic; you wish you had a more modern, scriptable, and modular interface. If so, you could probably cut down the time it takes to get something working by more than half. I also suffer occasional CPU spikes, perhaps due to some weird interaction with Syncthing when both monitor directories. Other than that, it is very smooth and pleasant sailing. HTML e-mails in particular hardly if ever pose a challenge after I got Lynx into the mix.
- ohlookabird 6y ago
  > tmux to give me a single horizontal split so that I can browse and compose at the same time Do you mind sharing how you do this? Browsing plus composing has been the one thing that keeps annoying me for not being streamlined and typically I just open multiple mutts/neomutts.
  - ninjin 6y ago
    I will not be much help I am afraid: `mutt` for the upper and `mutt -R` for the lower.
    - ohlookabird 6y ago
xvilka 6y ago
Would be nice to modernize it by porting to Rust, thus reusing some of the libraries for network protocols, cryptography, file formats. It will allow developers to focus on the important things.
- dsr_ 6y ago
  It's open source, so you are totally welcome to do that thing. Enjoy yourself. Please call the resulting program something related to but not identical to mutt, such as rustmutt, rustydog, mutt-ferric-oxide, or whatever else makes you happy.
steffan 6y ago
For console email, I still use Alpine. Can anyone elaborate on the benefits (if any) of switching to Mutt?
- dsr_ 6y ago
  mutt is the best MUA for dealing with large quantities of email. The key to this is the limit/tag workflow. (I wrote it up a few years ago here: https://blog.randomstring.org/2016/09/26/secrets-of-mutt/ https://blog.randomstring.org/2016/09/26/secrets-of-mutt/ ) In brief, you use the limit command to see only the email you are interested in, then use the tag command to do something to those specific messages. Both limit and tag use the same pattern language to specify From, Subject, date ranges, message numbers, or more esoteric searches. The only thing mutt is not great at is searching multiple mailboxes, and it's easy to integrate an external tool (notmuch, maildir-utils, mairix...) to do that search and link the results into a temporary maildir that mutt will then work on.
  - aidenn0 6y ago
    I find bower to be better than mutt at dealing with large quantities of email, but mutt is better at everything else. bower can also run locally with a mailbox on a remote, which allows things like easy seamless opening of attachments that don't work as well in a terminal (images, PDFs, &c.).
    - dsr_ 6y ago
      Mutt works with 250,000 message maildirs. Does bower? Conveniently?
      - aidenn0 6y ago
        My largest maildir only has 80k, but bower works with it quite conveniently.
  - DNied 6y ago
    > use the limit command to see only the email you are interested in, then use the tag command Just for clarity: you can just tag without limiting first > it's easy to integrate an external tool (notmuch, maildir-utils, mairix...) grep...
stephenhuey 6y ago
Noooooo WAY. I started at Rice in '98 and remember using Pine on the Sun Solaris desktops spread all over campus. Of course I imagined Pine must be ancient software, and when someone told me to switch to Mutt halfway through college, I assumed it was just yet another super ancient program, not realizing it had been released when I was in high school!
- pessimizer 6y ago
  This has definitely been added to my list of things that I thought were far older than they were.
IgorPartola 6y ago
One of the major reasons I use Gmail in the browser is because it’s in the browser: it’s always on the same tab and I can switch to it when I want to check it. I used Mutt (unsuccessfully) a few years ago since my other window that’s always open is a terminal emulator. I wonder: should I fire up a Linux emulation in my browser and run Mutt inside that? I’m sure things have gotten fast enough that this would actually work.
- u801e 6y ago
  I don't know about Gmail in the browser because I access it via IMAP and SMTP, but I have noticed that the browser process that's associated with tab that has the Google voice page open will occasionally start consuming a lot of CPU and memory resources to the point that I have to terminate the process. This never happens with Thunderbird and is even less likely to happen with a TUI client like Mutt.
- awesome_dude 6y ago
  I use mutt for Gmail in my terminal, the setup is fairly easy and documented across blog posts example muttrc ========================================================= set imap_user = '<username>@gmail.com' set imap_authenticators="oauthbearer" set imap_oauth_refresh_command="~/.mutt/oauth2.py --quiet --user=<username>@gmail.com --client_id=<id from google>.apps.googleusercontent.com --client_secret=<secret from google> --refresh_token=<token from, you guessed it, google>" set smtp_authenticators="oauthbearer" set smtp_oauth_refresh_command="~/.mutt/oauth2.py --quiet --user=<username>@gmail.com --client_id=<id from google>.apps.googleusercontent.com --client_secret=<secret from google> --refresh_token=<token from google>" set ssl_starttls=yes set ssl_force_tls=yes set imap_pass = 'my really hard to guess gmail password' set from='<username>@gmail.com' set realname='Fancy pants name' set folder = imaps://imap.gmail.com/ set spoolfile = +INBOX set record = "+[Gmail]/Sent Mail" set postponed = "+[Gmail]/Drafts" set trash = "+[Gmail]/Trash" set postponed="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/Drafts" set header_cache = "~/.mutt/cache/headers" set message_cachedir = "~/.mutt/cache/bodies" set certificate_file = "~/.mutt/certificates" set smtp_url = 'smtp://<username>@gmail.com:<my really hard to guess password>@smtp.gmail.com:587/' set smtp_pass = 'my really hard to guess password' set move = no set imap_keepalive = 900 #refresh every 10 seconds set timeout=10 set mail_check=20 # allow mutt to open new imap connection automatically unset imap_passive # vim! set editor=vim # email sorting set sort=threads set sort_browser=reverse-date set sort_aux=last-date-received # handy macros macro index gd "<change-folder>$postponed<enter>" "go to drafts" macro index gs "<change-folder>$record<enter>" "go to sent" macro index gi "<change-folder>$spoolfile<Enter>" "go to inbox" macro index gt "<change-folder>$trash<enter>" "go to trash""" macro index tb s+[Gmail]/Trash set noconfirmappend set quit=ask-yes =========================================================
combatentropy 6y ago
I sometimes daydream that everyone at work uses Linux in general and a text-based email program in particular. It isn't too farfetched. When email took off, I was in college, and we all used Pine. Anyway, if you email me, it will arrive on my virtual private server, and I will read it with Mutt.
- debaserab2 6y ago
  I’ve never been more inclined than now to do the same thing. How do you deal with spam? How do you ensure your emails don’t get junk mailed?
  - acidburnNSA 6y ago
    Not parent, but I'm in the same boat with the self-hosted email VPS. I usually use Thunderbird as a client though, but sometimes mutt. - SpamAssassin does a wonderful job after training it about once every 3 years. I get almost no spam. - I was able to send to most people from my VPS, but not Charter. Charter blanket-blocked my ip block. So I ended up setting up SMTP forwarding via sendgrid free tier (100 emails per day). Now I always get through.
    - watchdogtimer 6y ago
      I operate my own server and SMTP forward using Mailjet and have had zero problems as well.
  - Carioca 6y ago
    I'm not doing it right now, but the simple answers: > How do you deal with spam? You configure filters on your server so that they are flagged > How do you ensure your emails don’t get junk mailed? 1. Ensure your server is running in a non-blacklisted IP block. 2. Just configure DKIM and SPF, other email servers should accept your emails without problem
    - Cyph0n 6y ago
      For Gmail, DKIM is a must for deliverability. I initially only had SPF configured for my Postfix server, and Gmail just kept rejecting the SMTP connection.
ggm 6y ago
I solved a problem with nmh last week. That felt good (finding ten emails by string search from a .mbox format archive and making another mbox archive from them) I am pretty sure mutt would have done it too, I used mh because I had the muscle memory
schoen 6y ago
My stepmother's cousin, Jean-Pierre Radley, was a Unix enthusiast and consultant in New York City (mainly an early SCO adopter, who dabbled in Linux later on). He taught me to use mutt in 1997 or so -- apparently not long after it came out! I'm still using mutt, although Jean-Pierre passed away three years ago. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=jean-pierre-radley&pid=187551978 https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=je... I believe that at the time he started using mutt, he was still getting some of his e-mail over the declining UUCP network (as he was a tremendous UUCP enthusiast and even provided commercial UUCP connectivity and support at one point).
spicymaki 6y ago
Amazing, I feel like I am getting old. I remember using Pine in college and changing over to Mutt.
em-bee 6y ago
the best times with mutt were the days where we were hanging out with michael elkins (me) at the linux user group meetings in L.A. during which i came up with this joke: "i didn't write mutt, it was me" i used mutt until a few years ago when i switched to sup.
mattbillenstein 6y ago
I still use mutt (with https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/) -- and I like how it works, but the annoying thing is html-only emails - finding that unsubscribe link is so hard sometimes.
- wander_homer 6y ago
  In such cases I just open the html file in my browser from mutt. Always worked so far.
  - codebook 6y ago
    It worked to me. But honestly annoying. I had to keep opening the browser for half of the emails.
zadwang 6y ago
I use mutt, mbsync, maildrop, and mblaze, mairix, msmtp, oauth2 with gmail. I have local speed, two way sync, customized email filtering, fast searching, vim editing, and multiple machine freedom. I am happy.
- zadwang 6y ago
  As promised, I have created a document sharing my setup. Please check the following link: https://adorablefilthyorder--five-nine.repl.co/ https://adorablefilthyorder--five-nine.repl.co/
- lytedev 6y ago
  would love to know more about this setup! do you have all your mail stored on disk? attachments?
  - pw6hv 6y ago
    Not parent but I have a similar setup. Yes, absolutely. I think storing our owns emails/attachments locally is part of best practices. That is our data and having a safe backup of it is a must.
    - uaas 6y ago
      Care to elaborate on the safety of backup? You mean it’s safe at your hard drive from availability or from privacy perspective?
      - pw6hv 6y ago
        Safe as in: "{random_provider} locked me out from my email account and I lost all my emails and attachments."
- wyclif 6y ago
  I'd love to read a write up of your current setup outlined above, it sounds intriguing.
- 6y ago
mbreese 6y ago
It's probably time for my annual attempt to convert over to using a mutt-based email workflow. I've always been happy with the mutt setup, but I think the majority of my problem is dealing with importing my existing Gmail and (work) Office 365 accounts. Sometimes I've synced the data to my laptop (last time I even had it all running in a container). But I still need to access enough of my email from my phone that I've found the mutt setup too cumbersome, even when using IMAP. Does anyone have a good setup with multiple accounts or using both mutt with a mobile email client (iOS)?
- RamenDevourer 6y ago
  mutt-wizard makes it very easy to setup mutt/neomutt to make it work with gmail and other services. It sets up encrypted offline versions of your mail and sets up most of the mutt environment for you: https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/mutt-wizard https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/mutt-wizard
toadi 6y ago
I actually stopped using email for private communication. Most emails are just invoices, confirmations or license keys. Gave up on email few years ago. Professional I use email for mostly the same and for official trace communication....
MayaFey 6y ago
I so happened to have spent yesterday afternoon figuring out mu4e on Emacs, which I'm new to. Figured out IMAP but not sending yet. Worked with gmail with a very simple config file. I've tried doing my own mail but it's very hard.
MintDice 6y ago
I'm glad to see this! Too many people are using the big boys with bigly bad tactics! Personally, I've been recommending people to check out Privacy Tools where they list a bunch of fair e-mail providers.
jjav 6y ago
Thanks mutt! I've been using it for most of those 25 years. Thank you.
kashyapc 6y ago
Another extremely happy user of the following combination waves hi: • Mutt • OfflineIMAP (to be replaced with `mbsync`; OfflineIMAP is not being ported to Python 3, unfortunately) • Notmuch — for fast indexing, searching, and tagging e-mails • Postfix — Mail Transfer Agent; offline queuing. Overall, it's one of the most robust pieces of software; Postfix never failed even once on me in nearly six years.
- dm319 6y ago
  Same here, though I moved to mbsync a few years ago and I need to check out postfix. It is such a great email client that I feel lost and walking through treacle using anything else. I don't work in the tech field, but I have a lot of emails to deal with. People come to me now to ask me if I can find specific important emails from a while ago that they are after. Outlook is hilariously bad at searching. I wish I could use mutt instead of outlook for my work. EDIT: It looks like I'm using msmtp instead of postfix - any advantages to switching over to postfix?
  - kashyapc 6y ago
    If 'msmtp' is working for your use case, just don't fix it. :-) (Although, someone here might be able give a comparative rundown.) I just deal with a lot of email volume - large portion of it public mailing lists; Postfix has been a trusted comrade.
- pelasaco 6y ago
  I can recommend https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter. I have it running in a private serving, filtering the emails for me..
  - kashyapc 6y ago
    Thank you; will check it out.
- minusf 6y ago
  mbsync is far superior in resource usage and speed compared to OfflineIMAP, python3 would not help with that. combined with fdm filtering/sorting/archiving the speed has been incredible.
upofadown 6y ago
Mutt is the best PGP client bar none. Just make sure you use the GPGME version.
gorgoiler 6y ago
Shout out to davmail, an IMAP proxy that sits between mutt (or any other IMAP client) and Outlook365. Davmail handles Outlook’s Modern Authentication, and launches a browser when a 2FA challenge/response is required. The latest version of davmail can cache authentication keys meaning you only have to go through 2FA once. It’s been a real joy to return to mutt, in my latest job where Outlook is deployed, after years of using Gmail. http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ http://davmail.sourceforge.net/
- nullwarp 6y ago
  Thank you for this - i know what I'm setting up Monday.
fouc 6y ago
I believe Paul Graham was a mutt user at the time of his spam article[0], and possibly still is. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html

335 points by job 6y ago

I can't imagine doing email without mutt, without all the keyboard shortcuts I have, and without vim as the editor. Thank you mutt. Just what an email client should be. I wish there was better search support but that's about it.

apetresc 6y ago
I imagine you already know this, but you should consider notmuch for searching within mutt (well, neomutt). It's pretty great.
codebook 6y ago
i recently switched to Thunderbird from Neomutt + Notmuch + afew + gmailieer combination. I was satisfied mutt's responsiveness, simplicity. But more and more emails are only for html based and its conversion to text is horrendous, I had to view Html at its own format. Then Thunderbird becomes a good candidate.
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  I’ve had decent success using lynx to dump HTML to text.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  Similarly to sibling comment, I just set in mailcap: text/html; elinks -dump %s; nametemplate=%s.html; copiousoutput
  - codetrotter 6y ago
    The really annoying thing is that some mail is multipart where the text/plain is just “sorry, your email client does not support html”. Yeah thanks a lot but it does, it’s just I have it set to prefer text/plain, because I don’t want to look at the html dump version unless I have to. If those people had simply sent only text/html and not a useless text/plain that only says that kind of stuff then everything would have worked fine. Stuff like that makes me want to quit using mutt, and no fault of mutt mind you. But laziness has kept me to using mutt for reading my self hosted mail for many years now.
    - IgorPartola 6y ago
      I commend you for using “laziness” and “self hosted email” in the same sentence. I ran Mail-in-a-box a few years ago on a cheap VPS. Then I realized just how much I don’t want to do that. It was fun being my own email provider, even if it was only for a secondary account, but the risks definitely outweigh the benefits.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      I mean, yes it is annoying, but you hit v, select the HTML, and hit enter; it's not hard to work around, even if you shouldn't have to.
    - jjav 6y ago
      That's mildly annoying indeed, but I just press v and select the html version in those cases. As you say, not mutt's fault.
      - dm319 6y ago
        Yes, and this is still usually quicker than firing up a full-fat email client (as I often have a web browser open anyway).
  - codebook 6y ago
    I also had that But the experience is way worse than reading email in html format. And these days, almost all emails are in html format with pretty basic text/plain in the form of multiformat. That plain text doesn't have the intention of the composer, for instance, the inline image doesn't show inline and the email context says the figure above. It is not that business form, but some ppl use colorful format to emphasize some text, which basically gives same text in the email, which makes the reader (in plain text) easily miss that part while skimming.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      I'll happily agree that it depends on the mail, and that for emails actually using graphics or fancy formatting, you really do probably need a real graphical interface. Personally, probably 90%+ of my mail can be reasonably rendered in plain text, so this works for most of it and then I use another client for the rest. But for the things it works for, mutt is amazing, so I use it when I can.
    - jjav 6y ago
      > It is not that business form, but some ppl use colorful format to emphasize some text, which basically gives same text in the email, which makes the reader (in plain text) easily miss that part while skimming. I consider that a feature... On some email lists I'm on, there are endless complaints of how some people don't like some elses font/color/size etc. Using mutt I don't see any of that distraction, I just see the text. That's a win in my book.
leephillips 6y ago
grepmail is good for when you need something more than mutt search can do. But I find I almost never need it.

dang 6y ago

If curious see also 2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14567074 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14567074 2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182582 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10182582

samcheng 6y ago

I remember the mind-blowing switch from pine to mutt. Then, a few years later, gmail, which has to be about 20 years old or so. I haven't used much mutt since.

jjav 6y ago
gmail is such a huge regression from mutt (or even pine or elm). I rank the email experience of gmail on par with /bin/mail. It's that useless. I use mutt as an IMAP client for gmail when I can, that works mostly ok. At current $DAYJOB they only allow gmail web client which is a complete disaster of unusability. So I mostly just zoom or slack people since gmail is so useless. gmail is email written by those who have never used a proper email client and don't really care about email anyway. (gmail came out in 2004 - got the tshirt from the launch.)
- dm319 6y ago
  As the search experts, I'm always surprised how poor and unreliable search in gmail is. I also use mutt with my gmail account via mbsync. At least you get to use gmail webmail. I have to use Outlook at work.
  - rawoke083600 6y ago
    Lol side-story... I once worked for Big-Multi-National i.t/startup company they even have a stake in Tencent. Their official mail policy was after 3 months we delete all your email.(You had to save/archive) it yourself if you wanted to have access to it. Some MSExchange setup. The 'reason' back then was 'Some semi-high-level-executive lost his tablet somewhere with important mail. I couldn't believe a company this big and enough money to buy common sense and intelligence came up with this 3-month rule as a solution to 'lost executive tablet'. They closed allot of their local I.T/Startups in the last decade in South Africa.
    - dm319 6y ago
      Jeez, what an awful solution. I work in an academic environment and also in a healthcare environment. There is a national 'secure' MSexchange service for patient data, and we also use a local exchange server for within-hospital communication. I have no idea how secure any/all of this is, but I tried to add my 'national' account onto my regular outlook, and it broke everything. IT support told me that I wasn't allowed to do this because it wouldn't be secure. Which confused me given I used Outlook for confidential communication within the healthcare provider. So I'm forced to use their webmail client which is even worse than Outlook. Not sure how email got into this mess. It should be simpler, and confidential communication should just use something different IMO.

ninjin 6y ago

Thank you Mutt (and also NeoMutt for pushing the envelope), you have been my e-mail client now for the last four years and as an academic that spends a significant amount of time reading and responding to e-mail it is (somehow?) the best option out there. Setup: * Mutt (I had slowdowns with NeoMutt) * Vim with four e-mail specific lines in the `vimrc` * fdm for retrieval and delivery rules * Syncthing for synchronisation between machines (it is just files! although ~1,000,000 of them…) * tmux to give me a single horizontal split so that I can browse and compose at the same time * Notmuch for search * Lynx to beat text/html into shape * a tiny snooze shell script of my own coupled with an equally tiny unsnooze shell script that runs every few minutes on a box that is on 24/7 That is it, although I have to admit that I should clean up my `muttrc` at this point as it is an outright mess. There are always more tweaks one could perform, my next one probably being figuring out tagging and then sending multiple mails to the snooze script. But one has to exercise a bit of self restraint or get less rather than more work done due to “over tweaking”. Gripes? Well, the configuration is very arcane at times and monolithic; you wish you had a more modern, scriptable, and modular interface. If so, you could probably cut down the time it takes to get something working by more than half. I also suffer occasional CPU spikes, perhaps due to some weird interaction with Syncthing when both monitor directories. Other than that, it is very smooth and pleasant sailing. HTML e-mails in particular hardly if ever pose a challenge after I got Lynx into the mix.

ohlookabird 6y ago
> tmux to give me a single horizontal split so that I can browse and compose at the same time Do you mind sharing how you do this? Browsing plus composing has been the one thing that keeps annoying me for not being streamlined and typically I just open multiple mutts/neomutts.
- ninjin 6y ago
  I will not be much help I am afraid: `mutt` for the upper and `mutt -R` for the lower.
  - ohlookabird 6y ago

xvilka 6y ago

Would be nice to modernize it by porting to Rust, thus reusing some of the libraries for network protocols, cryptography, file formats. It will allow developers to focus on the important things.

dsr_ 6y ago
It's open source, so you are totally welcome to do that thing. Enjoy yourself. Please call the resulting program something related to but not identical to mutt, such as rustmutt, rustydog, mutt-ferric-oxide, or whatever else makes you happy.

steffan 6y ago

For console email, I still use Alpine. Can anyone elaborate on the benefits (if any) of switching to Mutt?

dsr_ 6y ago
mutt is the best MUA for dealing with large quantities of email. The key to this is the limit/tag workflow. (I wrote it up a few years ago here: https://blog.randomstring.org/2016/09/26/secrets-of-mutt/ https://blog.randomstring.org/2016/09/26/secrets-of-mutt/ ) In brief, you use the limit command to see only the email you are interested in, then use the tag command to do something to those specific messages. Both limit and tag use the same pattern language to specify From, Subject, date ranges, message numbers, or more esoteric searches. The only thing mutt is not great at is searching multiple mailboxes, and it's easy to integrate an external tool (notmuch, maildir-utils, mairix...) to do that search and link the results into a temporary maildir that mutt will then work on.
- aidenn0 6y ago
  I find bower to be better than mutt at dealing with large quantities of email, but mutt is better at everything else. bower can also run locally with a mailbox on a remote, which allows things like easy seamless opening of attachments that don't work as well in a terminal (images, PDFs, &c.).
  - dsr_ 6y ago
    Mutt works with 250,000 message maildirs. Does bower? Conveniently?
    - aidenn0 6y ago
      My largest maildir only has 80k, but bower works with it quite conveniently.
- DNied 6y ago
  > use the limit command to see only the email you are interested in, then use the tag command Just for clarity: you can just tag without limiting first > it's easy to integrate an external tool (notmuch, maildir-utils, mairix...) grep...

stephenhuey 6y ago

Noooooo WAY. I started at Rice in '98 and remember using Pine on the Sun Solaris desktops spread all over campus. Of course I imagined Pine must be ancient software, and when someone told me to switch to Mutt halfway through college, I assumed it was just yet another super ancient program, not realizing it had been released when I was in high school!

pessimizer 6y ago
This has definitely been added to my list of things that I thought were far older than they were.

IgorPartola 6y ago

One of the major reasons I use Gmail in the browser is because it’s in the browser: it’s always on the same tab and I can switch to it when I want to check it. I used Mutt (unsuccessfully) a few years ago since my other window that’s always open is a terminal emulator. I wonder: should I fire up a Linux emulation in my browser and run Mutt inside that? I’m sure things have gotten fast enough that this would actually work.

u801e 6y ago
I don't know about Gmail in the browser because I access it via IMAP and SMTP, but I have noticed that the browser process that's associated with tab that has the Google voice page open will occasionally start consuming a lot of CPU and memory resources to the point that I have to terminate the process. This never happens with Thunderbird and is even less likely to happen with a TUI client like Mutt.
awesome_dude 6y ago
I use mutt for Gmail in my terminal, the setup is fairly easy and documented across blog posts example muttrc ========================================================= set imap_user = '<username>@gmail.com' set imap_authenticators="oauthbearer" set imap_oauth_refresh_command="~/.mutt/oauth2.py --quiet --user=<username>@gmail.com --client_id=<id from google>.apps.googleusercontent.com --client_secret=<secret from google> --refresh_token=<token from, you guessed it, google>" set smtp_authenticators="oauthbearer" set smtp_oauth_refresh_command="~/.mutt/oauth2.py --quiet --user=<username>@gmail.com --client_id=<id from google>.apps.googleusercontent.com --client_secret=<secret from google> --refresh_token=<token from google>" set ssl_starttls=yes set ssl_force_tls=yes set imap_pass = 'my really hard to guess gmail password' set from='<username>@gmail.com' set realname='Fancy pants name' set folder = imaps://imap.gmail.com/ set spoolfile = +INBOX set record = "+[Gmail]/Sent Mail" set postponed = "+[Gmail]/Drafts" set trash = "+[Gmail]/Trash" set postponed="imaps://imap.gmail.com/[Gmail]/Drafts" set header_cache = "~/.mutt/cache/headers" set message_cachedir = "~/.mutt/cache/bodies" set certificate_file = "~/.mutt/certificates" set smtp_url = 'smtp://<username>@gmail.com:<my really hard to guess password>@smtp.gmail.com:587/' set smtp_pass = 'my really hard to guess password' set move = no set imap_keepalive = 900 #refresh every 10 seconds set timeout=10 set mail_check=20 # allow mutt to open new imap connection automatically unset imap_passive # vim! set editor=vim # email sorting set sort=threads set sort_browser=reverse-date set sort_aux=last-date-received # handy macros macro index gd "<change-folder>$postponed<enter>" "go to drafts" macro index gs "<change-folder>$record<enter>" "go to sent" macro index gi "<change-folder>$spoolfile<Enter>" "go to inbox" macro index gt "<change-folder>$trash<enter>" "go to trash""" macro index tb s+[Gmail]/Trash set noconfirmappend set quit=ask-yes =========================================================

combatentropy 6y ago

I sometimes daydream that everyone at work uses Linux in general and a text-based email program in particular. It isn't too farfetched. When email took off, I was in college, and we all used Pine. Anyway, if you email me, it will arrive on my virtual private server, and I will read it with Mutt.

debaserab2 6y ago
I’ve never been more inclined than now to do the same thing. How do you deal with spam? How do you ensure your emails don’t get junk mailed?
- acidburnNSA 6y ago
  Not parent, but I'm in the same boat with the self-hosted email VPS. I usually use Thunderbird as a client though, but sometimes mutt. - SpamAssassin does a wonderful job after training it about once every 3 years. I get almost no spam. - I was able to send to most people from my VPS, but not Charter. Charter blanket-blocked my ip block. So I ended up setting up SMTP forwarding via sendgrid free tier (100 emails per day). Now I always get through.
  - watchdogtimer 6y ago
    I operate my own server and SMTP forward using Mailjet and have had zero problems as well.
- Carioca 6y ago
  I'm not doing it right now, but the simple answers: > How do you deal with spam? You configure filters on your server so that they are flagged > How do you ensure your emails don’t get junk mailed? 1. Ensure your server is running in a non-blacklisted IP block. 2. Just configure DKIM and SPF, other email servers should accept your emails without problem
  - Cyph0n 6y ago
    For Gmail, DKIM is a must for deliverability. I initially only had SPF configured for my Postfix server, and Gmail just kept rejecting the SMTP connection.

ggm 6y ago

I solved a problem with nmh last week. That felt good (finding ten emails by string search from a .mbox format archive and making another mbox archive from them) I am pretty sure mutt would have done it too, I used mh because I had the muscle memory

schoen 6y ago

My stepmother's cousin, Jean-Pierre Radley, was a Unix enthusiast and consultant in New York City (mainly an early SCO adopter, who dabbled in Linux later on). He taught me to use mutt in 1997 or so -- apparently not long after it came out! I'm still using mutt, although Jean-Pierre passed away three years ago. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=jean-pierre-radley&pid=187551978 https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/nytimes/obituary.aspx?n=je... I believe that at the time he started using mutt, he was still getting some of his e-mail over the declining UUCP network (as he was a tremendous UUCP enthusiast and even provided commercial UUCP connectivity and support at one point).

spicymaki 6y ago

Amazing, I feel like I am getting old. I remember using Pine in college and changing over to Mutt.

em-bee 6y ago

the best times with mutt were the days where we were hanging out with michael elkins (me) at the linux user group meetings in L.A. during which i came up with this joke: "i didn't write mutt, it was me" i used mutt until a few years ago when i switched to sup.

mattbillenstein 6y ago

I still use mutt (with https://mailinabox.email/ https://mailinabox.email/) -- and I like how it works, but the annoying thing is html-only emails - finding that unsubscribe link is so hard sometimes.

wander_homer 6y ago
In such cases I just open the html file in my browser from mutt. Always worked so far.
- codebook 6y ago
  It worked to me. But honestly annoying. I had to keep opening the browser for half of the emails.

zadwang 6y ago

I use mutt, mbsync, maildrop, and mblaze, mairix, msmtp, oauth2 with gmail. I have local speed, two way sync, customized email filtering, fast searching, vim editing, and multiple machine freedom. I am happy.

zadwang 6y ago
As promised, I have created a document sharing my setup. Please check the following link: https://adorablefilthyorder--five-nine.repl.co/ https://adorablefilthyorder--five-nine.repl.co/
lytedev 6y ago
would love to know more about this setup! do you have all your mail stored on disk? attachments?
- pw6hv 6y ago
  Not parent but I have a similar setup. Yes, absolutely. I think storing our owns emails/attachments locally is part of best practices. That is our data and having a safe backup of it is a must.
  - uaas 6y ago
    Care to elaborate on the safety of backup? You mean it’s safe at your hard drive from availability or from privacy perspective?
    - pw6hv 6y ago
      Safe as in: "{random_provider} locked me out from my email account and I lost all my emails and attachments."
wyclif 6y ago
I'd love to read a write up of your current setup outlined above, it sounds intriguing.
6y ago

mbreese 6y ago

It's probably time for my annual attempt to convert over to using a mutt-based email workflow. I've always been happy with the mutt setup, but I think the majority of my problem is dealing with importing my existing Gmail and (work) Office 365 accounts. Sometimes I've synced the data to my laptop (last time I even had it all running in a container). But I still need to access enough of my email from my phone that I've found the mutt setup too cumbersome, even when using IMAP. Does anyone have a good setup with multiple accounts or using both mutt with a mobile email client (iOS)?

RamenDevourer 6y ago
mutt-wizard makes it very easy to setup mutt/neomutt to make it work with gmail and other services. It sets up encrypted offline versions of your mail and sets up most of the mutt environment for you: https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/mutt-wizard https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/mutt-wizard

toadi 6y ago

I actually stopped using email for private communication. Most emails are just invoices, confirmations or license keys. Gave up on email few years ago. Professional I use email for mostly the same and for official trace communication....

MayaFey 6y ago

I so happened to have spent yesterday afternoon figuring out mu4e on Emacs, which I'm new to. Figured out IMAP but not sending yet. Worked with gmail with a very simple config file. I've tried doing my own mail but it's very hard.

MintDice 6y ago

I'm glad to see this! Too many people are using the big boys with bigly bad tactics! Personally, I've been recommending people to check out Privacy Tools where they list a bunch of fair e-mail providers.

jjav 6y ago

Thanks mutt! I've been using it for most of those 25 years. Thank you.

kashyapc 6y ago

Another extremely happy user of the following combination waves hi: • Mutt • OfflineIMAP (to be replaced with `mbsync`; OfflineIMAP is not being ported to Python 3, unfortunately) • Notmuch — for fast indexing, searching, and tagging e-mails • Postfix — Mail Transfer Agent; offline queuing. Overall, it's one of the most robust pieces of software; Postfix never failed even once on me in nearly six years.

dm319 6y ago
Same here, though I moved to mbsync a few years ago and I need to check out postfix. It is such a great email client that I feel lost and walking through treacle using anything else. I don't work in the tech field, but I have a lot of emails to deal with. People come to me now to ask me if I can find specific important emails from a while ago that they are after. Outlook is hilariously bad at searching. I wish I could use mutt instead of outlook for my work. EDIT: It looks like I'm using msmtp instead of postfix - any advantages to switching over to postfix?
- kashyapc 6y ago
  If 'msmtp' is working for your use case, just don't fix it. :-) (Although, someone here might be able give a comparative rundown.) I just deal with a lot of email volume - large portion of it public mailing lists; Postfix has been a trusted comrade.
pelasaco 6y ago
I can recommend https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter https://github.com/lefcha/imapfilter. I have it running in a private serving, filtering the emails for me..
- kashyapc 6y ago
  Thank you; will check it out.
minusf 6y ago
mbsync is far superior in resource usage and speed compared to OfflineIMAP, python3 would not help with that. combined with fdm filtering/sorting/archiving the speed has been incredible.

upofadown 6y ago

Mutt is the best PGP client bar none. Just make sure you use the GPGME version.

gorgoiler 6y ago

Shout out to davmail, an IMAP proxy that sits between mutt (or any other IMAP client) and Outlook365. Davmail handles Outlook’s Modern Authentication, and launches a browser when a 2FA challenge/response is required. The latest version of davmail can cache authentication keys meaning you only have to go through 2FA once. It’s been a real joy to return to mutt, in my latest job where Outlook is deployed, after years of using Gmail. http://davmail.sourceforge.net/ http://davmail.sourceforge.net/

nullwarp 6y ago
Thank you for this - i know what I'm setting up Monday.

fouc 6y ago

I believe Paul Graham was a mutt user at the time of his spam article[0], and possibly still is. [0] http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html