Tooling: command-line mail client

Oct 11, 2017

mutt allows you to access a mailbox via command line and it has a good-enough user interface.

All configuration is kept in ~/.mutt folder. Here’s how I configured it to access different fodlers/accounts navigating via F-keys.

Create a account file named like ~/.mutt/account.%accontname% , for example account.com.gmail.test for test@gmail.com. Here’s a template:

 set my_server = %CHANGEME%
 set my_smtp_server = %CHANGEME%
 set my_user = %CHANGEME%
 set my_pass = %CHANGEME%
 # Account - SMTP
 set smtp_url = "smtp://$my_user:$my_pass@$my_smtp_server:587"
 set smtp_pass = $my_pass
 set imap_user = $my_user
 set imap_pass = $my_pass
 set ssl_force_tls = yes
 set ssl_starttls = no
 set ssl_verify_host = no
 set ssl_verify_dates = no
 #
 # Default inbox
 #
 set spoolfile=imaps://$my_server/INBOX
 #
 # Default location of mailboxes
 #
 set folder=imaps://$my_server/INBOX
 bind index G imap-fetch-mail
 #bind index d purge-message

In ~/.mutt/muttrc file register folder-hook and add a macro for each account. In following example test@gmail.com account is registered and mapped to F2.
```
 folder-hook 'account.com.gmail.test' 'source ~/.mutt/account.com.gmail.test'
 macro index  'source ~/.mutt/account.com.gmail.test!'
```

In ~/.mutt/muttrc file define a default account:

 # Default account
 source ~/.mutt/account.com.gmail.test

Define a shortcut to fetch new emails (in ~/.mutt/muttrc):
```
 bind index G imap-fetch-mail
```