aerc

aerc is a terminal-based e-mail client with Vim-style keybindings and an ex-command system. It uses an embedded teminal which allows to use any terminal-editor as an embedded component to compose e-mails. aerc comes with inbuilt support for IMAP and SMTP, but also supports Maildir and Notmuch. While aerc provides a simple wizard to set up an e-mail account, the complete configuration is handled in text files within $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aerc.

aerc is written in Go and uses the Tcell package for the terminal UI.

Installation

Install the aerc package.

Tips and tricks

Khard as addressbook provider

khard can be configured as an address book provider[1]:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aerc/aerc.conf

[compose]
address-book-cmd=khard email --parsable --remove-first-line %s

Send from an alias

In the section corresponding to the account having multiple email addresses (at least one alias) of the accounts.conf file (refer to aerc-accounts(5)), add the following line:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aerc/accounts.conf

use-envelope-from = true

This will read the from address from the header to choose the alias to use.

Display Notmuch tags

When using Notmuch as a backend in the accounts.conf file (refer to aerc-notmuch(5)), one may display the Notmuch's tags inside the mail list by adding the following inside the aerc.conf [2]:

$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/aerc/aerc.conf

[ui]
index-columns=date<=,name<20,flags>=,subject<*,notmuch>=
column-notmuch= \
{{- (map .Labels \
        (exclude .Folder) \
        (exclude "replied|passed|attachment|flagged|unread|draft") \
        | join ",") -}}

Save sent mails

If you want to save every sent mail in a specific directory in your mailbox, put the following line into accounts.conf.

To save every mail in a mail box named "SENT":

copy-to = SENT