Since: NeoMutt 2026-03-01
This feature is under active development. Its behaviour and keybindings may change in future releases.
Sidebar Search lets you jump to any mailbox in the Sidebar by typing a few characters of its name. As you type, the Sidebar filters itself in real time, hiding entries that don't match and highlighting the best match. Pressing Enter opens the highlighted mailbox; pressing Ctrl-G cancels and restores the original view.
If the Sidebar is currently hidden, it will be shown temporarily during the search and hidden again afterwards.
The search uses the Fuzzy Search engine, so you don't need to type the exact name. For example, typing “mlnd” is enough to reach “mailinglists/neomutt-dev”.
The search is started with the
sidebar-start-search function. It has no default keybinding, so you must add one yourself. A natural choice is
Ctrl-S.
bind sidebar \CS sidebar-start-search
A prompt reading “Sidebar search:” will appear at the bottom of the screen. Type your search pattern and the Sidebar will filter as you type.
While the search prompt is active, two sets of keybindings are available simultaneously:
Up and Down move the highlight through the filtered Sidebar so you can pick a different match without leaving the prompt.
<sidebar-abort-search> (bound to
Escape by default) closes the search prompt without making a selection.
The full set of line-editor keybindings is available for editing the search pattern. Examples include:
<backward-char> /
<forward-char> — move the cursor left or right
<bol> /
<eol> — jump to the start or end of the pattern
<backward-word> /
<forward-word> — skip a word at a time
<backspace> /
<delete-char> — delete a character
<kill-word> /
<kill-eol> — delete to end of word or line
Any binding defined in the
editor map can be used; use
:bind editor to customise them.
Sidebar Search uses smart case matching:
If every letter in your pattern is lowercase, the search is case-insensitive . Typing “inbox” matches “INBOX”, “Inbox”, and “inbox”.
If your pattern contains even one uppercase letter, the search becomes case-sensitive . Typing “Inbox” will only match mailboxes whose name contains a capital “I”.
This lets you search without caring about case in everyday use, while still being able to narrow down precisely when you need to.
Mailbox names are matched as byte sequences, so UTF-8 mailbox names work correctly: multi-byte characters are never split, and non-ASCII characters are matched exactly as typed.
Case folding applies only to the ASCII letters A–Z. Accented characters, CJK characters, and other non-ASCII text are always matched byte-for-byte. Smart case detection also considers only ASCII letters, so a pattern consisting entirely of non-ASCII characters is treated as case-insensitive.
Every mailbox that contains all the letters of your pattern (in order) is shown; the rest are hidden. Visible mailboxes are sorted so that the best match is highlighted automatically. The ranking rewards intuitive matches:
Word boundaries score highest.
Matching the first letter of a path component (after
/,
.,
-, or
_ ) or the very start of the name is rewarded more than a match buried in the middle of a word.
Consecutive letters score higher than scattered ones. Typing “box” will rank “mail box ” above a mailbox where the three letters appear far apart.
Compact matches beat spread-out ones. The closer together the matched letters are, the better the score.
Shorter names are preferred. When two mailboxes match equally well, the shorter name ranks higher.
New and unread mail boost the score. Mailboxes with unread messages are ranked higher so that relevant mailboxes rise to the top when you're looking for something to read. Each new (unseen) message adds 2 points; each unread (seen but not read) message adds 1 point.
This expando is a temporary development aid and will be removed in a future release.
During development it can be useful to see the raw fuzzy score assigned to each sidebar entry. Add the
%f (or
%{fuzzy-score} ) expando to your
$sidebar_format string:
set sidebar_format = "%D%* %n [%f]"
The score is
-1 when no search is active (all mailboxes are shown). Once a search pattern is entered, each visible entry shows its numeric score; hidden entries show
-1.
