NeoMutt is a small but very powerful text based program for reading and sending electronic mail under Unix operating systems, including support for color terminals, MIME, OpenPGP, and a threaded sorting mode.
It’s a project of projects, as it brings together many patches to extend Mutt.
NeoMutt is configured through variables which, if the user wants to permanently use a non-default value, are written to configuration files. NeoMutt supports a rich config file syntax to make even complex configuration files readable and commentable.
Because NeoMutt allows for customizing almost all key bindings, there are so-called “functions” which can be executed manually (using the command line) or in macros. Macros allow the user to bind a sequence of commands to a single key or a short key sequence instead of repeating a sequence of actions over and over.
NeoMutt supports a “hook” concept which allows the user to execute arbitrary configuration commands and functions in certain situations such as entering a folder, starting a new message or replying to an existing one. These hooks can be used to highly customize NeoMutt’s behavior including managing multiple identities, customizing the display for a folder or even implementing auto-archiving based on a per-folder basis and much more.
Key Features
- Attach Headers Color – Color attachment headers using regex, just like mail bodies.
- Compose to Sender – Send new mail to the sender of the current mail.
- Compressed Folders – Read from/write to compressed mailboxes.
- Conditional Dates – Use rules to choose date format.
- Custom Mailbox Tags – Implements Notmuch tags and Imap keywords.
- Encrypt-to-Self – Save a self-encrypted copy of emails.
- Fmemopen – Replace some temporary files with memory buffers.
- Forgotten Attachment – Alert user when (s)he forgets to attach a file to an outgoing email.
- Global Hooks – Define actions to run globally within NeoMutt.
- Header Cache Compression – Options for compressing the header cache files.
- Ifdef – Conditional config options.
- Index Color – Custom rules for theming the email index.
- Initials Expando – Expando for author’s initials.
- Kyoto Cabinet – Kyoto Cabinet backend for the header cache.
- Limit Current Thread – Focus on one Email Thread.
- LMDB – LMDB backend for the header cache.
- Multiple FCC – Save multiple copies of outgoing mail.
- Nested If – Allow complex nested conditions in format strings.
- New Mail – Execute a command upon the receipt of new mail.
- NNTP – Talk to a Usenet news server.
- Notmuch – Email search engine.
- Progress Bar – Show a visual progress bar on slow operations.
- Quasi-Delete – Mark emails that should be hidden, but not deleted.
- Reply With X-Orig-To – Direct reply to email using X-Original-To header.
- Sensible Browser – Make the file browser behave.
- Sidebar – Panel containing list of Mailboxes.
- Skip Quoted – Leave some context visible.
- Status Color – Custom rules for theming the status bar.
- TLS-SNI – Negotiate with a server for a TLS/SSL certificate.
- Trash Folder – Automatically move deleted emails to a trash bin.
Website: neomutt.org
Support: Guide
Developer: Richard Russon and many contributors
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
NeoMutt is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Console Email Clients | |
|---|---|
| NeoMutt | Brings together many patches to extend Mutt |
| mu4e | An extension of mu that runs a full-featured email client within Emacs |
| Himalaya | CLI email client written in Rust |
| Sup | Curses threads-with tags style email client |
| Mutt | Small but very powerful text based program |
| Alpine | Alternatively Licensed Program for Internet News and Email |
| meli | Configurable and extensible e-mail client with sane defaults |
| nmail | User interface similar to alpine / pine |
| alot | Lets notmuch handle your mailindex and uses a toolkit to render its display |
| Wanderlust | Mail/news management system with IMAP4rev1 support for Emacs |
| aerc | Billed as a "pretty good email client" |
| Cone | COnsole Newsreader And Emailer |
| matcha | Powerful, feature-rich email client for your terminal |
| bower | Curses frontend for the Notmuch email system |
| Vmail | Vim interface to Gmail |
| neatmail | Non-interactive email client |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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