[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
# Getting Started with Notmuch
*This is a work in progress.*
[[!toc levels=2]]
This is your friendly guide and tutorial to getting started with Notmuch. It
will help you through the first steps of setting up Notmuch.
All Notmuch commands have [manual
pages](https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/). Please refer to them for
details.
## Prerequisites
In order to use Notmuch, you will need to have your email messages stored in
your local filesystem, one message per file. For example,
[Maildir](http://cr.yp.to/proto/maildir.html), Maildir++, and MH formats work
like this, while [mbox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbox) does not. Storing
the messages one message per file is the only hard dependency for trying out
Notmuch.
We will get back to delivering messages later, for now we'll just assume you
already have messages in this format.
## Installation
On Linux, the easiest way to install Notmuch is through your distribution's
package repository. If you're installing Notmuch from a [git
checkout](https://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch) or a [source
release](https://notmuchmail.org/releases/), please refer to the
[INSTALL](https://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch/blob/HEAD:/INSTALL) document.
## Configuration
To configure Notmuch, just run
notmuch
This will interactively guide you through the setup process, and save the
configuration to `$HOME/.notmuch-config`. If you'd like to change the
configuration in the future, you can either edit that file directly, or run
`notmuch setup`.
This step only modifies the configuration file.
## Initial Indexing
Notmuch needs a search database to operate. The next step is to run
notmuch new
to index all your messages in the search database. The database will be stored
in `.notmuch` directory under your mail store. The database is not a replacement
or storage for your messages; it's just an index to find the right message
files.
Notmuch does not modify or delete your mails. This is one of the main design
principles of Notmuch. (The only exception is renaming files upon tagging
according to the Maildir specification if the `maildir.synchronize_flags`
configuration option is set.) It should be safe to try Notmuch.
Depending on the amount of mail you have the initial indexing process can take a
long time, so expect that. Also, the resulting database will require roughly the
same amount of storage space as your current collection of email.
After this step, you can try out the [Notmuch command line
interface](https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/man1/notmuch.html), or
[[Notmuch Emacs interface|notmuch-emacs]].
## Converting Existing mbox to Maildir
The [`mb2md`](http://batleth.sapienti-sat.org/projects/mb2md/) tool can be used
to convert existing mbox files to Maildir.
Beware that the source and destination directory options to `mb2md` are relative
to the user's home directory, not relative to the current working directory.
## Delivering New Messages
Notmuch itself does not receive messages. There is no IMAP or POP support. You
will need to set up other tools, such as fetchmail, offlineimap, or mbsync, to
receive the messages.
There are two ways to deliver and index messages:
* Use an external tool (such as offlineimap or mbsync) to deliver the messages
to your mail store, and run `notmuch new` to discover and index the newly
delivered messages (and any other changes in the mail store).
* Use an external tool (such as fetchmail) receive the messages, and configure
the tool to use `notmuch insert` as a Mail Delivery Agent to deliver the
messages to your mail store and index them.
## Automation Via Hooks
Notmuch supports running [user defined
hooks](https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/man5/notmuch-hooks.html)
before or after certain commands. Hooks can be arbitrary executable
programs or scripts. For example, if you always run your mail delivery
tool first and `notmuch new` after that, you can run the tool from
Notmuch `pre-new` hook, and simply run `notmuch new` to do both. If
you always do some tagging after indexing of new messages, you may
want to set up a `post-new` or `post-insert` hook to do that
automatically.
## Backing Up and Restoring the Database
The Notmuch database contains a search index of your messages, along with all
the tags you've added to your messages. The search index can be regenerated by
indexing the messages again, but the tags will be lost if the database is
lost. (If you have `maildir.synchronize_flags` configuration option enabled,
also some of the tags can be regenerated from maildir flags.)
To create a plain-text dump of the tags, run
notmuch dump --output=dump.txt
To restore the tags from the dump, run
notmuch restore --input=dump.txt
## Removing Notmuch
Did not like it after all? All you need to do is remove the database and the
configuration file. The database is stored in the `.notmuch` directory under
your mail store. And your mail store is at `notmuch config get database.path`.
You may want to use the `notmuch dump` command to create a backup of any tags
you've added before removing the database.
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