1 # Tips and Tricks for using notmuch with Emacs
3 One of the more popular notmuch message reading clients is
4 **notmuch.el**, an [emacs](http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/) major
5 mode for interacting with notmuch. It is included in the notmuch
6 package. This page goes over some usage tips for using notmuch with
13 To use the Notmuch emacs mode, first add the following line to your
18 or you can load the package via autoload:
20 (autoload 'notmuch "notmuch" "notmuch mail" t)
22 Then, either run "emacs -f notmuch", or execute the command `M-x
23 notmuch` from within a running emacs.
25 ## Navigating & reading mails
27 When first starting notmuch in emacs, you will be presented with the
28 notmuch "hello" page. From here you can do searches, see lists of
29 recent searches, saved searches, message tags, help information, etc.
31 Executing a search will open a new buffer in `notmuch-search-mode`
32 displaying the search results. Each line in the search results
33 represents a message thread. Hitting the '?' key will show help for
36 In general, the 'q' will kill the current notmuch buffer and return
37 you to the previous buffer (sort of like a 'pop').
39 In search mode, navigating to a thread and hitting return will then
40 open a new buffer in `notmuch-show-mode`, which will show the actual
41 message contents of the thread.
45 In any notmuch mode, you can start a new message by hitting the 'm'
46 key. To reply to a message or thread, just hit the 'r' key.
48 When composing new messages, you will be entered in emacs's
49 `message-mode`, which is a powerful mode for composing and sending
50 messages. When in message mode, you can type `C-c ?` for help.
52 If you would like to use address autocompletion when composing
53 messages, see [address completion](#address_completion).
55 When you are ready to send a message, type `C-c C-c`. By default
56 message mode will use your sendmail command to send mail, so make sure
57 that works. One annoying standard configuration of message mode is
58 that it will hide the sent mail in your emacs frame stack, but it will
59 not close it. If you type several mails in an emacs session they will
60 accumulate and make switching between buffers more annoying. You can
61 avoid that behavior by adding `(setq message-kill-buffer-on-exit t)`
62 in your `.emacs` file (or doing `M-x
63 customize-variable<RET>message-kill-buffer-on-exit<RET>`) which will
64 really close the mail window after sending it.
68 Using the `M-x mml-attach-file` command, you can attach any file to be
69 sent with your mail. By default this command is bound to the menu item
70 *Attachments--Attach File* with the key binding `C-c C-a`. The
71 variable `mml-dnd-attach-options` (`M-x
72 customize-variable<RET>mml-dnd-attach-options<RET>`) can be set to
73 allow the prompting for various attachment options (such as
74 inline/attachment) if you want to do that.
76 For those who prefer a more graphical interface, you can also simply
77 drag and drop files from a file manager into a mail composition window
78 to have them attached. In Ubuntu this works without any modifications
79 if files are dragged from the file manager.
81 And for those who prefer working from command line, the following
82 script opens new emacs window with empty message and attaches files
83 mentioned as script arguments. (Note: The script expects that you have
84 `(server-start)` in your `.emacs` file.)
89 fullpath=$(readlink --canonicalize "$1")
90 attach_cmds="$attach_cmds (mml-attach-file \"$fullpath\")"
93 emacsclient -a '' -c -e "(progn (compose-mail) $attach_cmds)"
98 # Advanced tips and tweaks
100 ## Use separate emacs lisp file for notmuch configuration
102 Instead of adding notmuch configuration code to `.emacs`, there
103 is an option to collect those to a separate file (which is only
104 loaded when `notmuch` is invoked). To do this, write, for example
105 a file called `~/.emacs.d/my-notmuch.el`:
107 ;;; my-notmuch.el -- my notmuch mail configuration
110 ;;; add here stuff required to be configured *before*
111 ;;; notmuch is loaded;
113 ;; uncomment and modify in case some elisp files are not found in load-path
114 ;; (add-to-list 'load-path "~/vc/ext/notmuch/emacs")
119 ;;; add here stuff required to be configured *after*
120 ;;; notmuch is loaded;
122 ;; uncomment & modify if you want to use external smtp server to send mail
123 ;; (setq smtpmail-smtp-server "smtp.server.tld"
124 ;; message-send-mail-function 'message-smtpmail-send-it)
125 ;; uncomment to debug smtp sending problems
126 ;; (setq smtpmail-debug-info t)
128 Then, add to `.emacs`:
130 (autoload 'notmuch "~/.emacs.d/my-notmuch" "notmuch mail" t)
133 ## Add a key binding to add/remove/toggle a tag
135 The `notmuch-{search,show}-{add,remove}-tag` functions are very useful
136 for making quick tag key bindings. For instance, here's an example
137 of how to make a key binding to add the "spam" tag and remove the
138 "inbox" tag in notmuch-show-mode:
140 In notmuch versions up to 0.11.x
142 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "S"
144 "mark message as spam"
146 (notmuch-show-add-tag "spam")
147 (notmuch-show-remove-tag "inbox")))
149 Starting from notmuch 0.12 the functions `notmuch-show-add-tag` and
150 `notmuch-show-remove-tag` have changed to be more versatile and lost
151 noninteractive use. When upgrading to 0.12 the above needs to be
154 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "S"
156 "mark message as spam"
158 (notmuch-show-tag-message "+spam" "-inbox")))
160 You can do the same for threads in `notmuch-search-mode` by just
161 replacing "show" with "search" in the called functions.
163 Starting from notmuch 0.12 use `notmuch-search-tag-thread` instead:
165 (define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "S"
167 "mark messages in thread as spam"
169 (notmuch-show-tag-thread "+spam" "-inbox")))
171 Starting from notmuch 0.13 use `notmuch-search-tag` -- it has a little
172 different usage syntax:
174 (define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "S"
176 "mark messages in thread as spam"
178 (notmuch-search-tag '("+spam" "-inbox"))))
180 The definition above makes use of a lambda function, but you could
181 also define a separate function first:
183 (defun notmuch-show-tag-spam ()
184 "mark message as spam"
186 (notmuch-show-add-tag "spam")
187 (notmuch-show-remove-tag "inbox")))
188 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "S" 'notmuch-show-tag-spam)
190 (See above for analogy how to apply this for notmuch 0.12 and later)
192 Here's a more complicated example of how to add a toggle "deleted"
195 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "d"
197 "toggle deleted tag for message"
199 (if (member "deleted" (notmuch-show-get-tags))
200 (notmuch-show-remove-tag "deleted")
201 (notmuch-show-add-tag "deleted"))))
203 And version for notmuch 0.12
205 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "d"
207 "toggle deleted tag for message"
209 (notmuch-show-tag-message
210 (if (member "deleted" (notmuch-show-get-tags))
211 "-deleted" "+deleted"))))
213 ## Adding many tagging keybindings
215 If you want to have have many tagging keybindings, you can save the typing
216 the few lines of boilerplate for every binding (for versions before 0.12,
217 you will need to change notmuch-show-apply-tag-macro).
219 (eval-after-load 'notmuch-show
220 '(define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "`" 'notmuch-show-apply-tag-macro))
222 (setq notmuch-show-tag-macro-alist
224 '("m" "+notmuch::patch" "+notmuch::moreinfo" "-notmuch::needs-review")
225 '("n" "+notmuch::patch" "+notmuch::needs-review" "-notmuch::pushed")
226 '("o" "+notmuch::patch" "+notmuch::obsolete"
227 "-notmuch::needs-review" "-notmuch::moreinfo")
228 '("p" "-notmuch::pushed" "-notmuch::needs-review"
229 "-notmuch::moreinfo" "+pending")
230 '("P" "-pending" "-notmuch::needs-review" "-notmuch::moreinfo" "+notmuch::pushed")
231 '("r" "-notmuch::patch" "+notmuch::review")
232 '("s" "+notmuch::patch" "-notmuch::obsolete" "-notmuch::needs-review" "-notmuch::moreinfo" "+notmuch::stale")
233 '("t" "+notmuch::patch" "-notmuch::needs-review" "+notmuch::trivial")
234 '("w" "+notmuch::patch" "+notmuch::wip" "-notmuch::needs-review")))
236 (defun notmuch-show-apply-tag-macro (key)
238 (let ((macro (assoc key notmuch-show-tag-macro-alist)))
239 (apply 'notmuch-show-tag-message (cdr macro))))
241 ## Restore reply-to-all key binding to 'r'
243 Starting from notmuch 0.12 the 'r' key is bound to reply-to-sender instead of
244 reply-to-all. Here's how to swap the reply to sender/all bindings in show mode:
246 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "r" 'notmuch-show-reply)
247 (define-key notmuch-show-mode-map "R" 'notmuch-show-reply-sender)
251 (define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "r" 'notmuch-search-reply-to-thread)
252 (define-key notmuch-search-mode-map "R" 'notmuch-search-reply-to-thread-sender)
255 ## How to do FCC/BCC...
257 The Emacs interface to notmuch will automatically add an `Fcc`
258 header to your outgoing mail so that any messages you send will also
259 be saved in your mail store. You can control where this copy of the
260 message is saved by setting the variables `message-directory` (which
261 defines a base directory) and `notmuch-fcc-dirs` which defines the
262 subdirectory relative to `message-directory` in which to save the
263 mail. Enter a directory (without the maildir `/cur` ending which
264 will be appended automatically). To customize both variables at the
265 same time, use the fancy command:
267 M-x customize-apropos<RET>\(notmuch-fcc-dirs\)\|\(message-directory\)
269 This mechanism also allows you to select different folders to be
270 used for the outgoing mail depending on your selected `From`
271 address. Please see the documentation for the variable
272 `notmuch-fcc-dirs` in the customization window for how to arrange
275 ## How to customize `notmuch-saved-searches`
277 When starting notmuch, a list of saved searches and message counts is
278 displayed, replacing the older `notmuch-folders` command. The set of
279 saved searches displayed can be modified directly from the notmuch
280 interface (using the `[save]` button next to a previous search) or by
281 customising the variable `notmuch-saved-searches`.
283 An example setting might be:
285 (setq notmuch-saved-searches '(("inbox" . "tag:inbox")
286 ("unread" . "tag:inbox AND tag:unread")
287 ("notmuch" . "tag:inbox AND to:notmuchmail.org")))
289 Of course, you can have any number of saved searches, each configured
290 with any supported search terms (see "notmuch help search-terms").
292 Some users find it useful to add `and not tag:delete` to those
293 searches, as they use the `delete` tag to mark messages as
294 deleted. This causes messages that are marked as deleted to be removed
295 from the commonly used views of messages. Use whatever seems most
298 ## Viewing HTML messages with an external viewer
300 The emacs client can display an HTML message inline using either the
301 `html2text` library or some text browser, like w3m or lynx. This is
302 controlled by the `mm-text-html-renderer` variable.
304 The first option is theorically better, because it can generate
305 strings formatted for emacs and do whatever you want, e.g., substitute
306 text inside <b> tags for bold text in the buffer. The library, however
307 is still in a very early development phase and cannot yet process
308 properly many elements, like tables and <style> directives, and even
309 the generated text is often poorly formatted.
311 Among the available browsers, w3m seems to do a better job converting
312 the html, and if you have the w3m emacs package, you can use it,
313 instead of the w3m-standalone, and thus preserve the text formatting.
315 But if the rendering fails for one reason or another, or if you really
316 need to see the graphical presentation of the HTML message, it can be
317 useful to display the message in an external viewer, such as a web
318 browser. Here's a little script that Keith Packard wrote, which he
324 cat "$@" > "$dir"/msg
325 if munpack -C "$dir" -t < "$dir"/msg 2>&1 | grep 'Did not find'; then
326 sed -n '/[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]/,$p' "$dir"/msg > $dir/part1.html
329 for i in "$dir"/part*; do
330 if grep -q -i -e '<html>' -e 'text/html' "$i"; then
337 Save that script somewhere in your `${PATH}`, make it executable,
338 and change the invocation of `iceweasel` to any other HTML viewer if
339 necessary. Then within the emacs client, press '|' to pipe the
340 current message, then type "view-html".
342 Keith mentions the following caveat, "Note that if iceweasel isn't
343 already running, it seems to shut down when the script exits. I
346 ## msmtp, message mode and multiple accounts
348 As an alternative to running a mail server such as sendmail or postfix
349 just to send email, it is possible to use
350 [msmtp](http://msmtp.sourceforge.net/). This small application will
351 look like `/usr/bin/sendmail` to a MUA such as emacs message mode, but
352 will just forward the email to an external SMTP server. It's fairly
353 easy to set up and it supports several accounts for using different
354 SMTP servers. The msmtp pages have several examples.
356 A typical scenario is that you want to use the company SMTP server
357 for email coming from your company email address, and your personal
358 server for personal email. If msmtp is passed the envelope address
359 on the command line (the -f/--from option) it will automatically
360 pick the matching account. The only trick here seems to be getting
361 emacs to actually pass the envelope from. There are a number of
362 overlapping configuration variables that control this, and it's a
363 little confusion, but setting these three works for me:
365 - `mail-specify-envelope-from`: `t`
367 - `message-sendmail-envelope-from`: `header`
369 - `mail-envelope-from`: `header`
371 With that in place, you need a `.msmtprc` with the accounts configured
372 for the domains you want to send out using specific SMTP servers and
373 the rest will go to the default account.
375 If you have a hard time getting the above to work for you, as I did,
376 it's also possible to add a message-send-mail-hook in your .emacs to
377 send the from header explicitly as an argument to msmtp as described
378 [here](http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/GnusMSMTP#toc2) on the
382 ## <span id="address_completion">Address completion when composing</span>
384 There are currently three solutions to this:
388 [bbdb](http://bbdb.sourceforge.net) is a contact database for emacs
389 that works quite nicely together with message mode, including
390 address autocompletion.
392 ### notmuch database as an address book
394 You can also use the notmuch database as a mail address book itself.
395 To do this you need a command line tool that outputs likely address
396 candidates based on a search string. There are currently three
399 * The python tool `notmuch_address.py` (`git clone
400 http://commonmeasure.org/~jkr/git/notmuch_addresses.git`) (slower, but
401 no compilation required so good for testing the setup)
404 [addrlookup](http://github.com/spaetz/vala-notmuch) (faster, but
405 needs compiling). The addrlookup binary needs to be compiled.
407 `http://github.com/spaetz/vala-notmuch/raw/static-sources/src/addrlookup.c`
410 cc -o addrlookup addrlookup.c `pkg-config --cflags --libs gobject-2.0` -lnotmuch
412 * Shell/fgrep/perl combination [nottoomuch-addresses.sh](http://www.iki.fi/too/nottoomuch/nottoomuch-addresses/).
413 This tools maintains it's own address "database" gathered from email
414 files notmuch knows and search from that "database" is done by `fgrep(1)`.
416 You can perform tab-completion using any of these programs.
417 Just add the following to your .emacs:
419 (require 'notmuch-address)
420 (setq notmuch-address-command "/path/to/address_fetching_program")
421 (notmuch-address-message-insinuate)
425 [GooBook](http://code.google.com/p/goobook/) is a command-line tool for
426 accessing Google Contacts. Install and set it up according to its documentation.
428 To use GooBook with notmuch, use this wrapper script and set it up like the
432 goobook query "$*" | sed 's/\(.*\)\t\(.*\)\t.*/\2 \<\1\>/' | sed '/^$/d'
434 You can add the sender of a message to Google Contacts by piping the message
435 (`notmuch-show-pipe-message`) to `goobook add`.
437 ## How to sign/encrypt messages with gpg
439 Messages can by signed using gpg by invoking
440 `M-x mml-secure-sign-pgpmime` (or `M-x mml-secure-encrypt-pgpmime`).
441 These functions are available via the standard `message-mode` keybindings
442 `C-c C-m s p` and `C-c C-m c p`. To sign outgoing mail by default, use the
443 `message-setup-hook` in your `.emacs` file:
445 ;; Sign messages by default.
446 (add-hook 'message-setup-hook 'mml-secure-sign-pgpmime)
448 This inserts the required `<#part sign=pgpmime>` into the beginning
449 of the mail text body and will be converted into a pgp signature
450 when sending (so one can just manually delete that line if signing
453 Alternatively, you may prefer to use `mml-secure-message-sign-pgpmime` instead
454 of `mml-secure-sign-pgpmime` to sign the whole message instead of just one
457 ### Troubleshooting message-mode gpg support
459 - If you have trouble with expired subkeys, you may have encountered
460 emacs bug #7931. This is fixed in git commit 301ea744c on
461 2011-02-02. Note that if you have the Debian package easypg
462 installed, it will shadow the fixed version of easypg included with
465 ## Multiple identities using gnus-alias
467 [gnus-alias](http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/GnusAlias) allows you to
468 define multiple identities when using `message-mode`. You can specify
469 the from address, organization, extra headers (including *Bcc*), extra
470 body text, and signature for each identity. Identities are chosen
471 based on a set of rules. When you are in message mode, you can switch
472 identities using gnus-alias.
476 - put `gnus-alias.el` on your load Emacs-Lisp load path (add new directory
477 to load path by writing `(add-to-list 'load-path "/some/load/path")` into
480 - Add the following to your `.emacs`
482 (autoload 'gnus-alias-determine-identity "gnus-alias" "" t)
483 (add-hook 'message-setup-hook 'gnus-alias-determine-identity)
485 Looking into `gnus-alias.el` gives a bit more information...
487 ### Example Configuration
489 Here is an example configuration.
491 ;; Define two identities, "home" and "work"
492 (setq gnus-alias-identity-alist
494 nil ;; Does not refer to any other identity
495 "John Doe <jdoe@example.net>" ;; Sender address
496 nil ;; No organization header
497 nil ;; No extra headers
498 nil ;; No extra body text
502 "John Doe <john.doe@example.com>"
504 (("Bcc" . "john.doe@example.com"))
506 "~/.signature.work")))
507 ;; Use "home" identity by default
508 (setq gnus-alias-default-identity "home")
509 ;; Define rules to match work identity
510 (setq gnus-alias-identity-rules
511 '(("work" ("any" "john.doe@\\(example\\.com\\|help\\.example.com\\)" both) "work"))
512 ;; Determine identity when message-mode loads
513 (add-hook 'message-setup-hook 'gnus-alias-determine-identity)
515 When `gnus-alias` has been loaded (using autoload, require, *M-x load-library*
516 or *M-x load-file* (load-file takes file path -- therefore it can be used
517 without any `.emacs` changes)) the following commands can be used to get(/set)
518 more information (some of these have "extensive documentation"):
520 M-x describe-variable RET gnus-alias-identity-alist
521 M-x describe-variable RET gnus-alias-identity-rules
522 M-x describe-variable RET gnus-alias-default-identity
524 M-x customize-group RET gnus-alias RET
526 M-x gnus-alias-customize RET
528 The last two do the same thing.
530 See also the **Usage:** section in `gnus-alias.el`.