:email notmuch

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1. Description

This module turns Emacs into an email client using notmuch.

1.1. Maintainers

This module has no dedicated maintainers. Become a maintainer?

1.2. Module flags

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

1.4. Hacks

No hacks documented for this module.

2. Prerequisites

This module requires:

2.1. TODO MacOS

2.2. Arch Linux

Run one of the following commands.

# ⎘
pacman -S isync notmuch #mbsync
# ⎘
pacman -S offlineimap notmuch

See: Arch Wiki - Notmuch

2.3. 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

2.4. TODO openSUSE

2.5. TODO Debian/Ubuntu

3. TODO Usage

This module’s usage documentation is incomplete. Complete it?

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

4. TODO Configuration

This module’s configuration documentation is incomplete. Complete it?

4.1. 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

4.1.1. lieer

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

4.1.2. offlineimap

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

# ⎘
;; add to $DOOMDIR/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.

4.1.3. 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.

4.1.4. 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")

4.3. 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))

4.4. 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")))

4.5. 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.

# ⎘
;; add to $DOOMDIR/config.el
(after! org-mime
  (setq org-mime-export-options '(:section-numbers nil
				  :with-author nil
				  :with-toc nil)))

5. Troubleshooting

There are no known problems with this module. Report one?

6. TODO Appendix

This module has no appendix yet. Write one?