[[!img notmuch-logo.png alt="Notmuch logo" class="left"]]
# Notmuch -- Just an email system
If you've been looking for a fast, global-search and tag-based email
system to use within your text editor or in a terminal...
If you're the kind of person that gets excited about being able to
write shell scripts for exploring and manipulating your email...
If you're a developer of an existing email program and would love a
good library interface for fast, global search with support for
arbitrary tags...
If you want the convenience of fast, reliable search of all your
email, but don't want to give a 3rd-party access to your email...
Then notmuch may be exactly what you've been looking for.
[[!toc levels=2]]
## Why is it named Notmuch?
* "Not much mail" is what Notmuch thinks about your email
collection. Even if you receive 12000 messages per month or have on
the order of millions of messages that you've been saving for
decades. Regardless, Notmuch will be able to quickly search all of
it. It's just plain not much mail.
* "Not much mail" is also what you should have in your inbox at any
time. Notmuch gives you what you need, (tags and fast search), so
that you can keep your inbox tamed and focus on what really matters
in your life, (which is surely not email).
* Notmuch is an answer to [Sup](http://sup-heliotrope.github.io/).
Sup is a very good email program written by William Morgan (and
others) and is the direct inspiration for Notmuch. Notmuch began as
an effort to rewrite performance-critical pieces of Sup in C rather
than Ruby. From there, it grew into a separate project. One
significant contribution Notmuch makes compared to Sup is the
separation of the indexer/searcher from the user interface. (Notmuch
provides a library interface so that its indexing/searching/tagging
features can be integrated into any email program.)
* Notmuch is not much of an email program. It doesn't receive messages
(no POP or IMAP support). It doesn't send messages (no mail composer,
no network code at all). And for what it does do (email search) that
work is provided by an external library,
[Xapian](http://xapian.org). So if Notmuch provides no user
interface and Xapian does all the heavy lifting, then what's left
here? Not much.
## News
[[Notmuch news|news]] (mostly release notes and changes).
## Getting Started
To get started with Notmuch, just run "notmuch" at the command line.
This command will walk you through initial setup, including specifying
the location of your mail store and how to start the initial indexing.
For a little more detailed guide, see [[Getting Started with
Notmuch|getting-started]].
## Email Clients and Front Ends
Notmuch ships with a powerful set of [command-line
tools](https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/man1/notmuch.html), an
[[email client for Emacs|notmuch-emacs]], another [client for
vim](https://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch/blob/HEAD:/vim/README),
and a [[Mutt integration script|notmuch-mutt]].
There are also many other [[email clients, frontends and tools|frontends]] based
on Notmuch.
## Documentation
* [Notmuch official documentation (manual pages)](https://notmuchmail.org/doc/latest/)
* [[Email clients and frontends|frontends]]
* [[General how-tos|howto]]
* [[Frequently Asked Questions|faq]]
* [[Searching]]
* [[Excluding and deleting messages|excluding]]
* [[Initial tagging|Initial_Tagging]]
* Tips for using Notmuch with [[Emacs|emacstips]], [[Vim|vimtips]], [[Postfix & Dovecot|postfixdovecottips]] and [[Mutt|mutttips]]
* [[Emacs remote usage|remoteusage]]
* [[Performance|performance]]
* [[References|references]]
* [[Notmuch Library Language Bindings|bindings]]
Apart from the wiki, help is available via email and on IRC (see
below). Join the mailing list. Read the archives. Ask questions.
## Screenshots
* [[Emacs UI screenshots|screenshots]]
## Obtaining Notmuch
[Notmuch source releases](https://notmuchmail.org/releases/) are available as
source tar balls.
Notmuch is packaged for at least the following operating systems and
distributions:
* [Arch Linux](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/?q=notmuch)
* [Debian](http://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=notmuch)
* [Fedora](https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/notmuch)
* [FreeBSD](http://www.freshports.org/mail/notmuch)
* [Gentoo](http://packages.gentoo.org/package/net-mail/notmuch)
* [NetBSD](http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/mail/notmuch/README.html)
* [openSUSE](https://build.opensuse.org/search?search_text=notmuch)
* macOS [Homebrew](https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/blob/09baa1c3f5a30f8450d2145d4fd988e4b4d48070/Formula/notmuch.rb), [MacPorts](https://ports.macports.org/port/notmuch), or [pkgsrc](http://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/current/pkgsrc/mail/notmuch/README.html).
* [Slackware](http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.37/office/notmuch/)
* [Ubuntu](http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=notmuch)
## Contact: Email & IRC
Comments? Please feel free to email the notmuch mailing list:
<mailto:notmuch@notmuchmail.org> (subscription is not required, but you can
also subscribe to the
[notmuch mailing list](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/list/)). You
can also browse the
[online list archives](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/nmweb/) or
download an [archive](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/archive/notmuch-list.tar.xz)
of the entire mailing-list.
The archive unpacks to maildir format which is convenient for reading
the archives within notmuch itself.
If you prefer real-time chat, there is often someone on the
[#notmuch](irc://irc.libera.chat/#notmuch)@irc.libera.chat IRC channel. Don't
ask if you can ask a question, just ask, and please wait for an answer, we might
not be in your timezone.
## Troubleshooting, Reporting Bugs and Feature Requests
Please send bug reports and feature requests to the [Notmuch mailing
list](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/list/)
<mailto:notmuch@notmuchmail.org>.
For hints about troubleshooting and bug reporting see [[bugs]].
Please see the [nmbug status page](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/status/) for
lists of [known bugs](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/status/#Bugs) and [feature
requests](https://nmbug.notmuchmail.org/status/#Wish-list).
## Development and Contributing
All of the code for Notmuch is available as [free
software](https://www.fsf.org/licensing/essays/free-sw.html) released
under the GNU [GPL version
3](https://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl.html). The latest
versions can be checked out via git with this command:
git clone https://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch
You can browse the [Notmuch code history
online](https://git.notmuchmail.org/git/notmuch). [The Notmuch OpenHub project
page](https://www.openhub.net/p/notmuch) has a nice summary of the codebase and
activity.
Continuous integration build and test suite status: [](https://travis-ci.org/notmuch/notmuch)
Contributions, such as patches, to Notmuch are most welcome. Please refer to the
[[guide to contributing|contributing]].
## Website
This website is a wiki, maintained using [ikiwiki](http://ikiwiki.info). Here
are [[instructions on how to edit the wiki|wikiwriteaccess]]. The wiki contents
are mostly [[dual licensed under CC-BY-SA-3.0 and GPLv3+|COPYING]].
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