This section is intended as a brief overview of how to use Mutt. There are many other features which are described elsewhere in the manual. There is even more information available in the Mutt FAQ and various web pages. See the Mutt Page for more details.
The keybindings described in this section are the defaults as distributed. Your local system administrator may have altered the defaults for your site. You can always type ``?'' in any menu to display the current bindings.
The first thing you need to do is invoke mutt, simply by typing mutt at the command line. There are various command-line options, see either the mutt man page or the reference.
Information is presented in menus, very similar to ELM. Here is a table showing the common keys used to navigate menus in Mutt.
j or Down next-entry move to the next entry
k or Up previous-entry move to the previous entry
z or PageDn page-down go to the next page
Z or PageUp page-up go to the previous page
= or Home first-entry jump to the first entry
* or End last-entry jump to the last entry
q quit exit the current menu
? help list all keybindings for the current menu
Mutt has a builtin line editor which is used as the primary way to input textual data such as email addresses or filenames. The keys used to move around while editing are very similar to those of Emacs.
^A or <Home> bol move to the start of the line
^B or <Left> backward-char move back one char
^D or <Delete> delete-char delete the char under the cursor
^E or <End> eol move to the end of the line
^F or <Right> forward-char move forward one char
^K kill-eol delete to the end of the line
^U kill-line delete entire line
^W kill-word kill the word in front of the cursor
<Up> history-up recall previous string from history
<Down> history-down recall next string from history
<BackSpace> backspace kill the char in front of the cursor
^G n/a abort
<Tab> n/a complete filename (only when prompting for a file)
<Return> n/a finish editing
You can remap the editor functions using the bind command. For example, to make the Delete key delete the character in front of the cursor rather than under, you could use
bind editor <delete> backspace
Similar to many other mail clients, there are two modes in which mail is read in Mutt. The first is the index of messages in the mailbox, which is called the ``index'' in Mutt. The second mode is the display of the message contents. This is called the ``pager.''
The next few sections describe the functions provided in each of these modes.
c change to a different mailbox
ESC c change to a folder in read-only mode
C copy the current message to another mailbox
ESC C decode a message and copy it to a folder
ESC s decode a message and save it to a folder
D delete messages matching a pattern
d delete the current message
F mark as important
l show messages matching a pattern
N mark message as new
o change the current sort method
O reverse sort the mailbox
q save changes and exit
s save-message
t toggle the tag on a message
ESC t toggle tag on entire message thread
u undelete-message
v view-attachments
x abort changes and exit
<Return> display-message
<Tab> jump to the next new message
@ show the author's full e-mail address
$ save changes to mailbox
/ search
ESC / search-reverse
^L clear and redraw the screen
^T tag messages matching a pattern
^U undelete messages matching a pattern
In addition to who sent the message and the subject, a short summary of the disposition of each message is printed beside the message number. Zero or more of the following ``flags'' may appear, which mean:
D message is deleted
K contains a PGP public key
M requires mailcap to view
N message is new
O message is old
P message is PGP encrypted
r message has been replied to
S message is PGP signed
! message is flagged
* message is tagged
Some of the status flags can be turned on or off using
Furthermore, the following flags reflect who the message is addressed to. They can be customized with the $to_chars variable.
+ message is to you and you only
T message is to you, but also to or cc'ed to others
C message is cc'ed to you
F message is from you
By default, Mutt uses its builtin pager to display the body of messages. The pager is very similar to the Unix program less though not nearly as featureful.
<Return> go down one line
<Space> display the next page (or next message if at the end of a message)
- go back to the previous page
n display the next message
? show keybindings
/ search for a regular expression (pattern)
\ toggle search pattern coloring
In addition, many of the functions from the index are available in the pager, such as delete-message or copy-message (this is one advantage over using an external pager to view messages).
Also, the internal pager supports a couple other advanced features. For one, it will accept and translate the ``standard'' nroff sequences for bold and underline. These sequences are a series of either the letter, backspace (^H), the letter again for bold or the letter, backspace, ``_'' for denoting underline. Mutt will attempt to display these in bold and underline respectively if your terminal supports them. If not, you can use the bold and underline color objects to specify a color or mono attribute for them.
Additionally, the internal pager supports the ANSI escape sequences for character attributes. Mutt translates them into the correct color and character settings. The sequences Mutt supports are:
ESC [ Ps;Ps;Ps;...;Ps m
where Ps =
0 All Attributes Off
1 Bold on
4 Underline on
5 Blink on
7 Reverse video on
3x Foreground color is x
4x Background color is x
Colors are
0 black
1 red
2 green
3 yellow
4 blue
5 magenta
6 cyan
7 white
Mutt uses these attributes for handling text/enriched messages, and they can also be used by an external autoview script for highlighting purposes. Note: If you change the colors for your display, for example by changing the color associated with color2 for your xterm, then that color will be used instead of green.
When the mailbox is sorted by threads, there are a few additional functions available in the index and pager modes.
^D delete-thread delete all messages in the current thread
^U undelete-thread undelete all messages in the current thread
^N next-thread jump to the start of the next thread
^P previous-thread jump to the start of the previous thread
^R read-thread mark the current thread as read
ESC d delete-subthread delete all messages in the current subthread
ESC u undelete-subthread undelete all messages in the current subthread
ESC n next-subthread jump to the start of the next subthread
ESC p previous-subthread jump to the start of the previous subthread
ESC r read-subthread mark the current subthread as read
ESC t tag-thread toggle the tag on the current thread
ESC v collapse-thread toggle collapse for the current thread
ESC V collapse-all toggle collapse for all threads
P parent-message jump to parent message in thread
Note: Collapsing a thread displays only the first message in the thread and hides the others. This is useful when threads contain so many messages that you can only see a handful of threads on the screen. See %M in $index_format. For example, you could use "%?M?(#%03M)&(%4l)?" in $index_format to optionally display the number of hidden messages if the thread is collapsed.
See also: $strict_threads.
Creates a new alias based upon the current message (or prompts for a new one). Once editing is complete, an alias command is added to the file specified by the $alias_file variable for future use. Note: Specifying an $alias_file does not add the aliases specified there-in, you must also source the file.
display-toggle-weed
(default: h)
Toggles the weeding of message header fields specified by ignore commands.
This command (available in the ``index'' and ``pager'') allows you to edit the raw current message as it's present in the mail folder. After you have finished editing, the changed message will be appended to the current folder, and the original message will be marked for deletion.
enter-command
(default: ``:'')
This command is used to execute any command you would normally N ./usr/share/doc/mutt/html/manual-1.html 0100644 0000000 0000000 00000006173 07643232561 016647 0 ustar root root
Mutt is a small but very powerful text-based MIME mail client. Mutt is highly configurable, and is well suited to the mail power user with advanced features like key bindings, keyboard macros, mail threading, regular expression searches and a powerful pattern matching language for selecting groups of messages.
To subscribe to one of the following mailing lists, send a message with the
word subscribe in the body to
list-name-request@mutt.org.
Note: all messages posted to mutt-announce are automatically forwarded to mutt-users, so you do not need to be subscribed to both lists.
For a list of mirror sites, please refer to http://www.mutt.org/download.html.
Visit channel #mutt on DALnet (www.dal.net) to chat with other people interested in Mutt.
See the newsgroup comp.mail.mutt.
Mutt is Copyright (C) 1996-2000 Michael R. Elkins <me@cs.hmc.edu> and others
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place - Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111, USA.
This section is intended as a brief overview of how to use Mutt. There are many other features which are described elsewhere in the manual. There is even more information available in the Mutt FAQ and various web pages. See the Mutt Page for more details.
The keybindings described in this section are the defaults as distributed. Your local system administrator may have altered the defaults for your site. You can always type ``?'' in any menu to display the current bindings.
The first thing you need to do is invoke mutt, simply by typing mutt at the command line. There are various command-line options, see either the mutt man page or the reference.
Information is presented in menus, very similar to ELM. Here is a table showing the common keys used to navigate menus in Mutt.
j or Down next-entry move to the next entry
k or Up previous-entry move to the previous entry
z or PageDn page-down go to the next page
Z or PageUp page-up go to the previous page
= or Home first-entry jump to the first entry
* or End last-entry jump to the last entry
q quit exit the current menu
? help list all keybindings for the current menu
Mutt has a builtin line editor which is used as the primary way to input textual data such as email addresses or filenames. The keys used to move around while editing are very similar to those of Emacs.
^A or <Home> bol move to the start of the line
^B or <Left> backward-char move back one char
^D or <Delete> delete-char delete the char under the cursor
^E or <End> eol move to the end of the line
^F or <Right> forward-char move forward one char
^K kill-eol delete to the end of the line
^U kill-line delete entire line
^W kill-word kill the word in front of the cursor
<Up> history-up recall previous string from history
<Down> history-down recall next string from history
<BackSpace> backspace kill the char in front of the cursor
^G n/a abort
<Tab> n/a complete filename (only when prompting for a file)
<Return> n/a finish editing
You can remap the editor functions using the bind command. For example, to make the Delete key delete the character in front of the cursor rather than under, you could use
bind editor <delete> backspace
Similar to many other mail clients, there are two modes in which mail is read in Mutt. The first is the index of messages in the mailbox, which is called the ``index'' in Mutt. The second mode is the display of the message contents. This is called the ``pager.''
The next few sections describe the functions provided in each of these modes.
c change to a different mailbox
ESC c change to a folder in read-only mode
C copy the current message to another mailbox
ESC C decode a message and copy it to a folder
ESC s decode a message and save it to a folder
D delete messages matching a pattern
d delete the current message
F mark as important
l show messages matching a pattern
N mark message as new
o change the current sort method
O reverse sort the mailbox
q save changes and exit
s save-message
t toggle the tag on a message
ESC t toggle tag on entire message thread
u undelete-message
v view-attachments
x abort changes and exit
<Return> display-message
<Tab> jump to the next new message
@ show the author's full e-mail address
$ save changes to mailbox
/ search
ESC / search-reverse
^L clear and redraw the screen
^T tag messages matching a pattern
^U undelete messages matching a pattern
In addition to who sent the message and the subject, a short summary of the disposition of each message is printed beside the message number. Zero or more of the following ``flags'' may appear, which mean:
D message is deleted
K contains a PGP public key
M requires mailcap to view
N message is new
O message is old
P message is PGP encrypted
r message has been replied to
S message is PGP signed
! message is flagged
* message is tagged
Some of the status flags can be turned on or off using
Furthermore, the following flags reflect who the message is addressed to. They can be customized with the $to_chars variable.
+ message is to you and you only
T message is to you, but also to or cc'ed to others
C message is cc'ed to you
F message is from you
By default, Mutt uses its builtin pager to display the body of messages. The pager is very similar to the Unix program less though not nearly as featureful.
<Return> go down one line
<Space> display the next page (or next message if at the end of a message)
- go back to the previous page
n display the next message
? show keybindings
/ search for a regular expression (pattern)
\ toggle search pattern coloring
In addition, many of the functions from the index are available in the pager, such as delete-message or copy-message (this is one advantage over using an external pager to view messages).
Also, the internal pager supports a couple other advanced features. For one, it will accept and translate the ``standard'' nroff sequences for bold and underline. These sequences are a series of either the letter, backspace (^H), the letter again for bold or the letter, backspace, ``_'' for denoting underline. Mutt will attempt to display these in bold and underline respectively if your terminal supports them. If not, you can use the bold and underline color objects to specify a color or mono attribute for them.
Additionally, the internal pager supports the ANSI escape sequences for character attributes. Mutt translates them into the correct color and character settings. The sequences Mutt supports are:
ESC [ Ps;Ps;Ps;...;Ps m
where Ps =
0 All Attributes Off
1 Bold on
4 Underline on
5 Blink on
7 Reverse video on
3x Foreground color is x
4x Background color is x
Colors are
0 black
1 red
2 green
3 yellow
4 blue
5 magenta
6 cyan
7 white
Mutt uses these attributes for handling text/enriched messages, and they can also be used by an external autoview script for highlighting purposes. Note: If you change the colors for your display, for example by changing the color associated with color2 for your xterm, then that color will be used instead of green.
When the mailbox is sorted by threads, there are a few additional functions available in the index and pager modes.
^D delete-thread delete all messages in the current thread
^U undelete-thread undelete all messages in the current thread
^N next-thread jump to the start of the next thread
^P previous-thread jump to the start of the previous thread
^R read-thread mark the current thread as read
ESC d delete-subthread delete all messages in the current subthread
ESC u undelete-subthread undelete all messages in the current subthread
ESC n next-subthread jump to the start of the next subthread
ESC p previous-subthread jump to the start of the previous subthread
ESC r read-subthread mark the current subthread as read
ESC t tag-thread toggle the tag on the current thread
ESC v collapse-thread toggle collapse for the current thread
ESC V collapse-all toggle collapse for all threads
P parent-message jump to parent message in thread
Note: Collapsing a thread displays only the first message in the thread and hides the others. This is useful when threads contain so many messages that you can only see a handful of threads on the screen. See %M in $index_format. For example, you could use "%?M?