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I use notmuch as well (with astroid as frontend), but I definitely think there are 2 big issues: 1. All clients except for the Emacs one are quite unfinished a

I use notmuch as well (with astroid as frontend), but I definitely think there are 2 big issues: 1. All clients except for the Emacs one are quite unfinished and development slowed down for quite a few of them. 2. Using it with multiple computers is not working well. I use two computers and am travelling often (so need offline access to my mail so can't just ssh into one machine). I have been using muchsync with an additional server (as the other computers are not always connected). The server syncs to the work exchange server using mbsync. That sort of works, but is brittle and sometimes things get out of sync (I had to search the the muchsync sqlite database recently to delete an entry) or break. I tried other solutions (e.g. sync the notmuch db using syncthing) but broke even more often. It gets even worse if you also use your phone for email like I do (you essentially have no search on the phone). I think it is quite obvious that notmuch was designed by developers who use a single computer and don't travel much and don't see much value in mail on multiple devices. I really wish jmap would have better adoption because a jmap server with some local cache for offline work (similar to how e.g. mutt handles IMAP) would be the best solution IMO.

em-bee 4y ago
when i travel i access mail from a laptop tethered through the phone. one big advantage of a terminal client is that this works even through a slow connection. especially in combination with mosh
- cycomanic 4y ago
  But that means you have to have access to a server that runs constantly (I currently i do that as well for my work mail with muchsync) and you're just one step away from running a Mailserver. I'd like to move away from that solution because it feels hackish and overkill (sync from email server to "server", ssh into server for reading email) Also I frequently need to search my when e.g. on a plane so the ssh solution doesnt work.
  - em-bee 4y ago
    yes, true, i have that server, but i also have a small laptop that i can carry around everywhere. if i needed offline access to mails frequently, i would move email handling to that laptop. and even if i work on another device, i am able to run the laptop on the side and access it through ssh/mosh. in fact i do that for everything else. would that work for you?
    - cycomanic 4y ago
      Somewhat, but hackish. When I'm at home I use my desktop and if I follow your suggestion I would then have to turn on my laptop first to access my email. I appreciate the suggestions, but I think multi-device offline access is really not a well supported usecase with notmuch unfortunately. I'm sort of hacking around this with different sync options, but it sort of rubs me the wrong way that there is a mail server already, but I essentially have to set up another server (always on machine) to access the email. In the good old days ssh'ing into the mailserver and reading emails directly on the servers maildir made sense (although this still excludes offline work) and changes would also propagate to the server for access via imap. Unfortunately, having ssh access to the emailserver is incredibly rare these days.
      - em-bee 4y ago
        you are right, it is a hack. it works for me because i have other things that i always want to be available, so yes, i always have that small laptop running on the side. it's a GPD pocket btw. when that dies i'll probably replace it with a pine-phone, smaller and cheaper, but has a solid keyboard accessory. i have been thinking about a portable mini-server without keyboard and screen, but i haven't found one that comes with a rechargeable battery instead of requiring external power at all times. i have considered my active phone, but i don't trust that enough.
        cycomanic 4y ago
        > it's a GPD pocket btw. when that dies i'll probably replace it with a pine-phone, smaller and cheaper, but has a solid keyboard accessory. I had never heard of it and just looked at the GPD pocket 2, quite a neat little machine. > i have been thinking about a portable mini-server without keyboard and screen, but i haven't found one that comes with a rechargeable battery instead of requiring external power at all times. I wonder if one could hack one of the mobile hotspots that one can get from several providers nowadays to run some server software. I suspect they run some sort of locked down linux or bsd.
BeetleB 4y ago
> All clients except for the Emacs one are quite unfinished and development slowed down for quite a few of them. Curious what you find lacking in astroid or alot that is in Emacs. Frankly, the Emacs one is quite barebones. I'm sure alot has a number of features not in the default Emacs client.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  I still find astroid to be the best of the notmuch clients, however I've encountered a number of bugs (e.g. it messes up umlaut letters when replying) and it's not developed anymore. Also if you have a thread with several long unread emails scrolling up and down takes a while, this becomes especially annoying when you want to just open the an attachment. There were also issues about actions for attachments if I recall correctly (I haven't looked into that in a while). I've tried alot and neomutt at some point, but for both you can not view multiple emails at the same time, which is quite annoying.
kqr 4y ago
Yeah, the combination of offline access on multiple computers sounds tricky. Offline access on a single computer is basically a core usecase notmuch was designed for. Online access from multiple computers is trivial by writing a shell script that pretends to be notmuch but instead runs the real notmuch command on a remote machine through SSH. (Same trick applies to sending email too.) Works surprisingly well. Have you found anything that does offline access across multiple computers well?
- cycomanic 4y ago
  As I wrote in my post I use mbsync on a always on machine and muchsync to synchronize, and it works well for quite a while, but every couple of months I encounter an issue and end up spending several hours troubleshooting. I really wish there was something better, because I really like the speed and the keyboard centric navigation of notmuch clients.

em-bee 4y ago

when i travel i access mail from a laptop tethered through the phone. one big advantage of a terminal client is that this works even through a slow connection. especially in combination with mosh

cycomanic 4y ago
But that means you have to have access to a server that runs constantly (I currently i do that as well for my work mail with muchsync) and you're just one step away from running a Mailserver. I'd like to move away from that solution because it feels hackish and overkill (sync from email server to "server", ssh into server for reading email) Also I frequently need to search my when e.g. on a plane so the ssh solution doesnt work.
- em-bee 4y ago
  yes, true, i have that server, but i also have a small laptop that i can carry around everywhere. if i needed offline access to mails frequently, i would move email handling to that laptop. and even if i work on another device, i am able to run the laptop on the side and access it through ssh/mosh. in fact i do that for everything else. would that work for you?
  - cycomanic 4y ago
    Somewhat, but hackish. When I'm at home I use my desktop and if I follow your suggestion I would then have to turn on my laptop first to access my email. I appreciate the suggestions, but I think multi-device offline access is really not a well supported usecase with notmuch unfortunately. I'm sort of hacking around this with different sync options, but it sort of rubs me the wrong way that there is a mail server already, but I essentially have to set up another server (always on machine) to access the email. In the good old days ssh'ing into the mailserver and reading emails directly on the servers maildir made sense (although this still excludes offline work) and changes would also propagate to the server for access via imap. Unfortunately, having ssh access to the emailserver is incredibly rare these days.
    - em-bee 4y ago
      you are right, it is a hack. it works for me because i have other things that i always want to be available, so yes, i always have that small laptop running on the side. it's a GPD pocket btw. when that dies i'll probably replace it with a pine-phone, smaller and cheaper, but has a solid keyboard accessory. i have been thinking about a portable mini-server without keyboard and screen, but i haven't found one that comes with a rechargeable battery instead of requiring external power at all times. i have considered my active phone, but i don't trust that enough.
      - cycomanic 4y ago
        > it's a GPD pocket btw. when that dies i'll probably replace it with a pine-phone, smaller and cheaper, but has a solid keyboard accessory. I had never heard of it and just looked at the GPD pocket 2, quite a neat little machine. > i have been thinking about a portable mini-server without keyboard and screen, but i haven't found one that comes with a rechargeable battery instead of requiring external power at all times. I wonder if one could hack one of the mobile hotspots that one can get from several providers nowadays to run some server software. I suspect they run some sort of locked down linux or bsd.

BeetleB 4y ago

> All clients except for the Emacs one are quite unfinished and development slowed down for quite a few of them. Curious what you find lacking in astroid or alot that is in Emacs. Frankly, the Emacs one is quite barebones. I'm sure alot has a number of features not in the default Emacs client.

cycomanic 4y ago
I still find astroid to be the best of the notmuch clients, however I've encountered a number of bugs (e.g. it messes up umlaut letters when replying) and it's not developed anymore. Also if you have a thread with several long unread emails scrolling up and down takes a while, this becomes especially annoying when you want to just open the an attachment. There were also issues about actions for attachments if I recall correctly (I haven't looked into that in a while). I've tried alot and neomutt at some point, but for both you can not view multiple emails at the same time, which is quite annoying.

kqr 4y ago

Yeah, the combination of offline access on multiple computers sounds tricky. Offline access on a single computer is basically a core usecase notmuch was designed for. Online access from multiple computers is trivial by writing a shell script that pretends to be notmuch but instead runs the real notmuch command on a remote machine through SSH. (Same trick applies to sending email too.) Works surprisingly well. Have you found anything that does offline access across multiple computers well?

cycomanic 4y ago
As I wrote in my post I use mbsync on a always on machine and muchsync to synchronize, and it works well for quite a while, but every couple of months I encounter an issue and end up spending several hours troubleshooting. I really wish there was something better, because I really like the speed and the keyboard centric navigation of notmuch clients.