path: root/README.md

# mutt-wizard

Get this great stuff without effort:

- A full-featured and autoconfigured email client on the terminal with neomutt
- Mail stored offline so you can view and write email while you're away from
  internet and keep backups
- Provides a `mailsync` script that can be scheduled to run as often as you
  like, which downloads/syncs mail and notifies you when new mail has arrived.

Specifically, this wizard:

- Determines your email server's IMAP and SMTP servers and ports
- Creates dotfiles for `neomutt`, `isync`, and `msmtp` appropriate for your
  email address
- Encrypts and locally stores your password for easy remote access, accessible
  only by your GPG key
- Handles as many as nine separate email accounts automatically
- Auto-creates bindings to switch between accounts or between mailboxes
- Provides sensible defaults and an attractive appearance for the neomutt email
  client
- If mutt-wizard doesn't know your server's IMAP/SMTP info by default, it will
  prompt you for them and will put them in all the right places.

## Install and Use

```
git clone https://github.com/LukeSmithxyz/mutt-wizard
cd mutt-wizard
sudo make install
```

User of Arch-based distros can also install mutt-wizard from the AUR as [mutt-wizard-git](https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/mutt-wizard-git/).

The mutt-wizard is run with the command `mw`. Once everything is setup, you'll use `neomutt` to access your mail.

- `mw -a you@email.com` -- add a new email account
- `mw -l` -- list existing accounts
- `mw -y your@email.com` -- sync an email account
- `mw -Y` -- sync all configured email accounts
- `mw -d` -- choose an account to delete
- `mw -D your@email.com` -- delete account settings without confirmation
- `mw -t 30` -- toggle automatic mailsync to every 30 minutes
- `mw -T` -- toggle mailsync without specifying minutes (default is 10)
- `pass edit mw-your@email.com` -- revise an account's password

### Options usable when adding an account

#### Providing arguments

- `-u` -- Give an account username if different from the email address.
- `-n` -- A real name to be used by the account. Put in quotations if multiple words
- `-i` -- IMAP server address
- `-I` -- IMAP server port (otherwise assumed to be 993)
- `-s` -- SMTP server address
- `-S` -- SMTP server port (otherwise assumed to be 587)
- `-m` -- Maximum number of emails to be kept offline. No maximum is default functionality.
- `-x` -- Account password. You will be prompted for it otherwise.

#### General Settings

- `-p` -- Add a Protonmail account
- `-f` -- Assume mailbox names and force account configuration without connecting online at all.
- `-o` -- Configure mutt for an account, but do not keep mail offline.

## Dependencies

- `neomutt` - the email client.
- `curl` - tests connections (required at install).
- `isync` - downloads and syncs the mail (required if storing IMAP mail locally).
- `msmtp` - sends the email.
- `pass` - safely encrypts passwords (required at install).

There's a chance of errors if you use a slow-release distro like Ubuntu, Debian or Mint. If you get errors in `neomutt`, install the most recent version manually or manually remove the offending lines in the config in `/usr/share/mutt-wizard/mutt-wizard.muttrc`.

### Optional

- `pam-gnupg` - Automatically logs you into your GPG key on login so you will never need to input your password once logged on to your system. Check the repo and directions out [here](https://github.com/cruegge/pam-gnupg).
- `lynx` - view HTML email in neomutt.
- `notmuch` - index and search mail. Install it and run `notmuch setup`, tell it that your mail is in `~/.local/share/mail/` (although `mw` will do this automatically if you haven't set notmuch up before). You can run it in mutt with `ctrl-f`. Run `notmuch new` to process new mail.
- `abook` - a terminal-based address book. Pressing tab while typing an address to send mail to will suggest contacts that are in your abook.
- `urlview` - outputs urls in mail to browser.
- `cronie` - (or any other major cronjob manager) to set up automatic mail syncing.

## Neomutt user interface

To give you an example of the interface, here's an idea:

- `m` - send mail (uses your default `$EDITOR` to write)
- `j`/`k` and `d`/`u` - vim-like bindings to go down and up (or `d`/`u` to go down/up a page).
- `l` - open mail, or attachment page or attachment
- `h` - the opposite of `l`
- `r`/`R` - reply/reply all to highlighted mail
- `s` - save selected mail or selected attachment
- `gs`,`gi`,`ga`,`gd`,`gS` - Press `g` followed by another letter to change mailbox: `s`ent, `i`nbox, `a`rchive, `d`rafts, `S`pam, etc.
- `M` and `C` - For `M`ove and `C`opy: follow them with one of the mailbox letters above, i.e. `MS` means "move to Spam".
- `i#` - Press `i` followed by a number 1-9 to go to a different account. If you add 9 accounts via mutt-wizard, they will each be assigned a number.
- `a` to add address/person to abook and `Tab` while typing address to complete one from book.
- `?` - see all keyboard shortcuts
- `ctrl-j`/`ctrl-k` - move up and down in sidebar, `ctrl-o` opens mailbox.
- `ctrl-b` - open a menu to select a url you want to open in you browser.
-
## New stuff and improvements since the original release

- `mw` is now scriptable with command-line options and can run successfully
  without any interaction, making it possible to deploy in a script.
- `isync`/`mbsync` has replaced `offlineimap` as the backend. Offlineimap was
  error-prone, bloated, used obsolete Python 2 modules and required separate
  steps to install the system.
- `mw` is now an installed program instead of just a script needed to be kept
  in your mutt folder.
- `dialog` is no longer used (le bloat) and the interface is simply text
  commands.
- More autogenerated shortcuts that allow quickly moving and copying mail
  between boxes.
- More elegant attachment handling. Image/video/pdf attachments without relying
  on the neomutt instance.
- abook integration by default.
- The messy template files and other directories have been moved or removed,
  leaving a clean config folder.
- msmtp configs moved to `~/.config/` and mail default location moved to
  `~/.local/share/mail/`, reducing mess in `~`.
- `pass` is used as a password manager instead of separately saving passwords.
- Script is POSIX sh compliant.
- Error handling for the many people who don't read or follow directions. Less
  errors generally.
- Addition of a manual `man mw`

## Help the Project!

- Try mutt-wizard out on weird machines and weird email addresses and report
  any errors.
- Open a PR to add new server information into `domains.csv` so their users can
  more easily use mutt-wizard.
- If nothing else, [Donate!](https://paypal.me/LukeMSmith)

See Luke's website [here](https://lukesmith.xyz). Email him at
[luke@lukesmith.xyz](mailto:luke@lukesmith.xyz).

mutt-wizard is free/libre software, licensed under the GPLv3.

## Details for Tinkerers

- The critical `mutt`/`neomutt` files are in `~/.config/mutt/`.
- Put whatever global settings you want in `muttrc`. mutt-wizard will add some
  lines to this file which you shouldn't remove unless you know what you're
  doing, but you can move them up/down over your personal config lines if you
  need to. If you get binding conflict errors in mutt, you might need to do
  this.
- Each of the accounts that mutt-wizard generates will have custom settings set
  in a separate file in `accounts/`. You can edit these freely if you want to
  tinker with settings specific to an account.
- In `/usr/share/mutt-wizard` are several global config files, including
  `mutt-wizard`'s default settings. You can overwride this in your `muttrc` if
  you wish.

## Watch out for these things:

### Gmail

Gmail accounts should require an
[application password](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/185833) to
work unless you allow Gmail to access "less secure" applications. You may also
need to "Enable IMAP" in your Gmail settings.

### Protonmail

Protonmail accounts will require you to set up "Protonmail Bridge" to access
PM's IMAP and SMTP servers. Configure that before running mutt-wizard. Note
that when mutt-wizard asks for a password, you should put in your
[bridge password](https://protonmail.com/bridge/thunderbird#3), not your
account password.

Protonmail bridge is prone to timing out. Watch out for this while adding an
account. If the bridge times out, try again. It might help to
[increase the timeout](https://protonmail.com/support/knowledge-base/thunderbird-connection-server-timed-error/)
in your `mbsyncrc`.

### Other

- If you have a university email, or enterprise-hosted email for work, there
  might be other hurdles or two-factor authentication you have to jump through.
  Some, for example, will want you to create a separate IMAP password, etc.
 - `isync` is not fully UTF-8 compatible, so non-Latin characters may be
   garbled (although sync should succeed). `mw` will also not autocreate
   mailbox shortcuts since it is looking for English mailbox names. I strongly
   recommend you to set your email language to English on your mail server to
   avoid these problems.

## To-do

- Add ~~Mac OS~~/~~BSD~~ compatibility (the script is confirmed to work for Mac OS and FreeBSD now)
- ~~Out-of-the-box compatibility with Protonmail Bridge~~ (I believe this is done, but more bug-testing is welcome since I don't have PM)