1NOTMUCH(1) notmuch NOTMUCH(1)
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6 notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging
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9 notmuch [option ...] command [arg ...]
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12 Notmuch is a command-line based program for indexing, searching, read‐
13 ing, and tagging large collections of email messages.
14 This page describes how to get started using notmuch from the command
16 line, and gives a brief overview of the commands available. For more
17 information on e.g. notmuch show consult the notmuch-show(1) man page,
18 also accessible via notmuch help show
19 The quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
21 notmuch command with no arguments, which will interactively guide you
22 through the process of indexing your mail.
23
25 While the command-line program notmuch provides powerful functionality,
26 it does not provide the most convenient interface for that functional‐
27 ity. More sophisticated interfaces are expected to be built on top of
28 either the command-line interface, or more likely, on top of the not‐
29 much library interface. See https://notmuchmail.org for more about al‐
30 ternate interfaces to notmuch. The emacs-based interface to notmuch
31 (available under emacs/ in the Notmuch source distribution) is probably
32 the most widely used at this time.
33
35 Supported global options for notmuch include
36 --help [command-name]
38 Print a synopsis of available commands and exit. With an op‐
39 tional command name, show the man page for that subcommand.
40 --version
42 Print the installed version of notmuch, and exit.
43 --config=FILE
45 Specify the configuration file to use. This overrides any con‐
46 figuration file specified by ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG}. The empty string
47 is a permitted and sometimes useful value of FILE, which tells
48 notmuch to use only configuration metadata from the database.
49 --uuid=HEX
51 Enforce that the database UUID (a unique identifier which per‐
52 sists until e.g. the database is compacted) is HEX; exit with an
53 error if it is not. This is useful to detect rollover in modifi‐
54 cation counts on messages. You can find this UUID using e.g.
55 notmuch count --lastmod
56 All global options except --config can also be specified after the com‐
58 mand. For example, notmuch subcommand --uuid=HEX is equivalent to not‐
59 much --uuid=HEX subcommand.
60
62 SETUP
63 The notmuch setup command is used to configure Notmuch for first use,
64 (or to reconfigure it later).
65 The setup command will prompt for your full name, your primary email
67 address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory con‐
68 taining your email archives. Your answers will be written to a configu‐
69 ration file in ${NOTMUCH_CONFIG} (if set) or ${HOME}/.notmuch-config .
70 This configuration file will be created with descriptive comments, mak‐
71 ing it easy to edit by hand later to change the configuration. Or you
72 can run notmuch setup again to change the configuration.
73 The mail directory you specify can contain any number of sub-directo‐
75 ries and should primarily contain only files with individual email mes‐
76 sages (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If there are other,
77 non-email files (such as indexes maintained by other email programs)
78 then notmuch will do its best to detect those and ignore them.
79 Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
81 messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is cur‐
82 rently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir format
83 with a utility such as mb2md before running notmuch setup .
84 Invoking notmuch with no command argument will run setup if the setup
86 command has not previously been completed.
87 OTHER COMMANDS
89 Several of the notmuch commands accept search terms with a common syn‐
90 tax. See notmuch-search-terms(7) for more details on the supported syn‐
91 tax.
92 The search, show, address and count commands are used to query the
94 email database.
95 The reply command is useful for preparing a template for an email re‐
97 ply.
98 The tag command is the only command available for manipulating database
100 contents.
101 The dump and restore commands can be used to create a textual dump of
103 email tags for backup purposes, and to restore from that dump.
104 The config command can be used to get or set settings in the notmuch
106 configuration file.
107 CUSTOM COMMANDS
109 If the given command is not known to notmuch, notmuch tries to execute
110 the external notmuch-<subcommand> in ${PATH} instead. This allows users
111 to have their own notmuch related tools to be run via the notmuch com‐
112 mand. By design, this does not allow notmuch's own commands to be over‐
113 ridden using external commands.
114 OPTION SYNTAX
116 All options accepting an argument can be used with '=' or ':' as a sep‐
117 arator. Except for boolean options (which would be ambiguous), a space
118 can also be used as a separator. The following are all equivalent:
119 notmuch --config=alt-config config get user.name
121 notmuch --config:alt-config config get user.name
122 notmuch --config alt-config config get user.name
123
125 The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior
126 of notmuch.
127 NOTMUCH_CONFIG
129 Specifies the location of the notmuch configuration file. Not‐
130 much will use ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this variable is not
131 set.
132 NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
134 Location to write a talloc memory usage report. See talloc_en‐
135 able_leak_report_full in talloc(3) for more information.
136 NOTMUCH_DEBUG_QUERY
138 If set to a non-empty value, the notmuch library will print (to
139 stderr) Xapian queries it constructs.
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142 notmuch-address(1), notmuch-compact(1), notmuch-config(1), not‐
143 much-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), notmuch-hooks(5), notmuch-insert(1),
144 notmuch-new(1), notmuch-properties(7), notmuch-reindex(1), notmuch-re‐
145 ply(1), notmuch-restore(1), notmuch-search(1), notmuch-search-terms(7),
146 notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)
147 The notmuch website: https://notmuchmail.org
149
151 Feel free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
152 list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before
153 posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
154 Real-time interaction with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
156 (server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).
157
159 Carl Worth and many others
160
162 2009-2021, Carl Worth and many others
1630.32.1 May 17, 2021 NOTMUCH(1)