jtdaugherty / mutt-tutorial

Setting up Mutt

Installation: (apt-get|yum|brew) install mutt

Mutt is a rich e-mail client with tons of features. Here are some highlights:

• Macros
• Message and folder hooks to control mutt's behavior when sending, reading, and moving mail, and when changing folders
• Good threading support
• POP/IMAP support
• Bulk operation on many messages using tagging
• S/MIME support/PGP/GPG support (see also the mutt guide page on this)
• Support for getting contacts from external sources (e.g. LDAP)

Noteworthy key bindings in this configuration (most are just defaults):

• ? Help (then q to leave help)
• j/k Movement keys in message lists
• TAB Select next unread message
• m Begin composing a new message
• / Search messages in the current folder using a search pattern
• RET View selected message, then
  • i Go back to message list
  • RET Scroll down one line
  • BKSPC Scroll up one line
  • PGUP / PGDOWN The usual
  • r Reply
• I Go to Inbox and refresh
• c Enter folder to view (=``TAB tab-completes server-side folders). If any folders have new mail, this will default to one of them.
• N Mark the selected message as unread
• d Mark the selected message for deletion
• r Reply to the selected message
• $ Save pending changes to mailbox (e.g. delete marked messages) and check for new mail in the current folder
• s Move (save) the selected message to another folder (e.g. s =foo RET saves to the foo folder)
• t Tag a message for a future batch operation (T tags messages matching an expression)
• ; Specify an operation to perform on tagged messages (e.g. ; s =foo RET will save all tagged messages to the foo folder)
• f Forward the selected message

In message review mode, after you've finished composing in your editor, some keybindings of interest are:

• e Edit the message again
• t Set the TO field
• c Set the CC field
• b Set the BCC field
• y Send
• a Attach a file
• RET View an attachment
• E Edit an attachment
• UP/DOWN Change selected attachment
• D Detach selected attachment
• q Abort composition and return to message list

Other things to try

There is a sidebar patch for mutt. If you want to install it easily on OS X with Homebrew, run this instead of brew install mutt:

brew install kevwil/patches/mutt --with-sidebar-patch

Mutt can be used with GPG, PGP, and SMIME.

If someone is discourteous enough to send you an HTML-only e-mail and you must read it, that can be done.

If you don't want to store your passwords in your muttrc (you don't, right?) and you don't want to enter them once each time you start mutt, you can make mutt get your IMAP and SMTP passwords from the OS X keychain, although YMMV.

Server-side mail filtering with procmail:

# In ~/.procmailrc on the mail server:
:0:
* ^From:.*[email protected]
somebody

:0:
* ^From:.*[email protected]
somebody-else

:0:
* ^(To|Cc):.*[email protected]
some-mailing-list