README.org

email/notmuch

Table of Contents

• Description
  • Module Flags
  • Plugins
• Prerequisites
  • MacOS
  • Arch Linux
  • NixOS
  • openSUSE
  • Debian/Ubuntu
• Features
• Configuration
  • Downloading your email
  • Sending mail
  • Customize *notmuch-hello* buffer
  • Changing the notmuch landing page
  • Writing HTML Emails
• Troubleshooting

Description

This module turns Emacs into an email client using notmuch.

Module Flags

• +org Enables org-mime for writing HTML emails using org-mode.
• +afew Enables integration with afew.

Plugins

• notmuch
• org-mime* (with +org flag)
• counsel-notmuch*
• helm-notmuch*

Prerequisites

This module requires:

• Either gmailieer (default), mbsync or offlineimap (to sync mail with)
• notmuch, to index and tag your downloaded messages.
• afew , optionally to initially tag your downloaded messages.

MacOS

Arch Linux

Run one of the following commands.

pacman -S isync notmuch #mbsync

pacman -S offlineimap notmuch

See: Arch Wiki - Notmuch

NixOS

environment.systemPackages = with pkgs; [
    notmuch
    # And one of the following
    gmailieer
    isync
    offlineimap
];

An example of setting up mbsync and notmuch with home-manager

openSUSE

Debian/Ubuntu

Features

Keymap	Command	Description
SPC m u	+notmuch/update	Download, sync, and index emails with notmuch
SPC m c	+notmuch/compose	Compose new email

Configuration

Downloading your email

To download your email you need a sync backend. Out of the box, this module supports Gmailier (the default), mbsync, and offlineimap (ordered by speed). You may define a custom one as well. The guides below will walk you through setting them up with notmuch.

Later, once you’ve set up a sync backend and downloaded your email, you must index your email for the first time:

notmuch new

lieer

Lieer, formerly called Gmailieer, is the indexing tool used by default. To install lieer, see the installation docs.

offlineimap

To use offlineimap, change +notmuch-sync-backend:

;; add to ~/.doom.d/config.el
(setq +notmuch-sync-backend 'offlineimap)

Next, write a configuration file for offlineimap. Here is a comprehensive example and another minimal one.

As a real world example, here is my old config, where it is configured to download mail to \~/.mail. I used unix pass to securely store my login credentials.

Finally, download your email with offlineimap -o. This may take a while, especially if you have thousands of emails.

mbsync

To use mbsync, change +notmuch-sync-backend:

(setq +notmuch-sync-backend 'mbsync)

;; Use `mbsync-xdg' if your mbsync config lives in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/isync:
(setq +notmuch-sync-backend 'mbsync-xdg)

The steps needed to set up notmuch with mbsync are similar to the ones for offlineimap.

Start with writing a \~/.mbsyncrc to store your configuration. An example for GMAIL can be found on the ArchWiki which will also explain how its integration with notmuch for auto synchronization. A non-GMAIL example is available as a gist here.

Finally, download your email with mbsync --all. This may take a while, but will be quicker than offlineimap.

Custom method

If you have a unique method for synchronizing your email, you can define your own backend:

(setq +notmuch-sync-backend 'custom
      ;; Set this to an arbitrary shell command
      +notmuch-sync-command "my-notmuch-sync-cmd")

Sending mail

• notmuch docs: Sending mail
• notmuch docs: msmtp, message mode and multiple accounts
• notmuch docs: sending mail using smtpmail

Customize *notmuch-hello* buffer

It is possible to change the *notmuch-hello* buffer if you want to.

(after! notmuch
  (setq notmuch-show-log nil
        notmuch-hello-sections `(notmuch-hello-insert-saved-searches
                                 notmuch-hello-insert-alltags)
        ;; To hide headers while composing an email
        notmuch-message-headers-visible nil))

Changing the notmuch landing page

You may want to forego the *notmuch-hello* buffer by having M-x =notmuch or SPC o m take you straight to a search page.

When using SPC o m the +notmuch-home-function is called. By default it uses the notmuch function and so has the same familiar behavior of running a vanilla install of notmuch-emacs. But, by overwriting this function you can run a custom search as your landing page.

(setq +notmuch-home-function (lambda () (notmuch-search "tag:inbox")))

Writing HTML Emails

The org-mime package provides functionality for composing emails in org-mode and transforming them to HTML. This feature is enabled using the +org flag.

Example use cases:

• To convert an email to an HTML email use M-x org-mime-htmlize
• To compose email using an org-mode editor buffer, use M-x org-mime-edit-mail-in-org-mode

If you’d like to make configuration changes to org-mime, you may do so normally. By default the output of org-mime-htmlize includes section numbers, a byline, and a table of contents. That’s probably more formal than the emails you’re used to sending, so here’s some example configuration that turns those features off.

config.el

(after! org-mime
  (setq org-mime-export-options '(:section-numbers nil
                                  :with-author nil
                                  :with-toc nil)))

Troubleshooting