mutt-wizard/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 away from internet and keep backups

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 stores locally 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
- Can automatically set mail updates as often as you want to sync your mail and update you when new mail arrives
- 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/).

*NOTE:* If you have used an older version of mutt-wizard, especially when it used to use `offlineimap`, you need to remove your old configs. Back anything up that's important and run:

```
rm -rf ~/.config/mutt ~/.msmtprc ~/.config/msmtp ~/.offlineimap ~/.offlineimaprc ~/.config/offlineimap ~/.mbsyncrc
```

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

- `mw add` -- add a new email account
- `mw ls` -- list existing accounts
- `mw pass` -- revise an account's password
- `mw delete` -- deleted an added account
- `mw purge` -- delete all accounts and settings
- `mw cron` -- toggle/configure a cronjob to sync mail

## Dependencies

- `neomutt` - the email client.
- `isync` - downloads and syncs the mail. (required at install)
- `msmtp` - sends the email.
- `pass` - safely encrypts passwords (required at install)

### Optional

- `w3m` - view HTML email and images in neomutt.
- `[notmuch](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, although the included `mailsync` script does this for you.
- `libnotify`/`libnotify-bin` - allows notifications when syncthing mail with `mailsync`
- `abook` - a terminal-based address book. Pressing tab while typing an address to send mail to will suggest contacts that are in your abook.
- A cron manager - if you want to enable the auto-sync feature.
- `pam-gnupg` - this is a more general program that I use. It 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).

## 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

## New stuff and improvements since the original release

- `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 long 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:

- For Gmail accounts, remember also to enable third-party ("""less secure""") applications before attempting installation. You might also need to manually "Enable IMAP" in the settings.
- Protonmail accounts will require you to set up "Protonmail Bridge" to access PM's IMAP and SMTP servers. Configure that before running mutt-wizard.
- 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
- Out-of-the-box compatibility with Protonmail Bridge
- Option to ignore `domains.csv` (for troubleshooting)
- Option to keep configuration for accounts that failed to connect (maybe)