If set , hitting backspace against an empty prompt aborts the prompt.

Specifies the key that can be used to abort prompts. The format is the same as used in "bind" commands. The default is equivalent to "Ctrl-G". Note that the specified key should not be used in other bindings, as the abort operation has higher precedence and the binding will not have the desired effect.

Example:

set abort_key = "<Esc>"

Please note that when using <Esc> as the abort key, you may also want to set the environment variable ESCDELAY to a low value or even 0 which will reduce the time that ncurses waits to distinguish singular <Esc> key presses from the start of a terminal escape sequence. The default time is 1000 milliseconds and thus quite noticeable.

If set to yes , when composing messages containing the regular expression specified by $abort_noattach_regex and no attachments are given, composition will be aborted. If set to no , composing messages as such will never be aborted.

Example:

set abort_noattach_regex = "\\<attach(|ed|ments?)\\>"

Specifies a regular expression to match against the body of the message, to determine if an attachment was mentioned but mistakenly forgotten. If it matches, $abort_noattach will be consulted to determine if message sending will be aborted.

Like other regular expressions in NeoMutt, the search is case sensitive if the pattern contains at least one upper case letter, and case insensitive otherwise.

If set to yes , when composing messages and no subject is given at the subject prompt, composition will be aborted. If set to no , composing messages with no subject given at the subject prompt will never be aborted.

If set to yes , composition will automatically abort after editing the message body if no changes are made to the file (this check only happens after the first edit of the file). When set to no , composition will never be aborted.

If set, this command is used to retrieve account credentials. The command is invoked passing a number of --key value arguments with the specifics of the account to lookup. The command writes to standard output a number of key: value lines. Currently supported arguments are --hostname , --username , and --type , where type can be any of imap , imaps , pop , pops , smtp , smtps , nntp , and nntps . Currently supported output lines are login , username , and password .

The default file in which to save aliases created by the <create-alias> function. Entries added to this file are encoded in the character set specified by $config_charset if it is set or the current character set otherwise.

Note: NeoMutt will not automatically source this file; you must explicitly use the " source" command for it to be executed in case this option points to a dedicated alias file.

The default for this option is the currently used neomuttrc file, or "~/.neomuttrc" if no user neomuttrc was found.

Specifies the format of the data displayed for the " alias" menu. The following printf(3)-style sequences are available:

For an explanation of "soft-fill", see the $index_format documentation.

The following sequences are deprecated; they will be removed in the future.

Specifies how the entries in the "alias" menu are sorted. The following are legal values:

Note: This also affects the entries of the address query menu, thus potentially overruling the order of entries as generated by $query_command.

Controls whether 8-bit data is converted to 7-bit using either Quoted- Printable or Base64 encoding when sending mail.

Controls whether ANSI color codes in messages (and color tags in rich text messages) are to be interpreted. Messages containing these codes are rare, but if this option is set , their text will be colored accordingly. Note that this may override your color choices, and even present a security problem, since a message could include a line like

[-- PGP output follows ...

and give it the same color as your attachment color (see also $crypt_timestamp).

When set , an arrow ("->") will be used to indicate the current entry in menus instead of highlighting the whole line. On slow network or modem links this will make response faster because there is less that has to be redrawn on the screen when moving to the next or previous entries in the menu.

Specifies the string of arrow_cursor when arrow_cursor enabled.

If set , NeoMutt will use plain ASCII characters when displaying thread and attachment trees, instead of the default ACS characters.

If set , NeoMutt will prompt you for blind-carbon-copy (Bcc) recipients before editing an outgoing message.

If set , NeoMutt will prompt you for carbon-copy (Cc) recipients before editing the body of an outgoing message.

If set, NeoMutt will prompt you for follow-up groups before editing the body of an outgoing message.

If set, NeoMutt will prompt you for x-comment-to field before editing the body of an outgoing message.

This variable is a colon-separated list of character encoding schemes for messages without character encoding indication. Header field values and message body content without character encoding indication would be assumed that they are written in one of this list. By default, all the header fields and message body without any charset indication are assumed to be in "us-ascii".

For example, Japanese users might prefer this:

set assumed_charset="iso-2022-jp:euc-jp:shift_jis:utf-8"

However, only the first content is valid for the message body.

This variable is a colon-separated list of character encoding schemes for text file attachments. NeoMutt uses this setting to guess which encoding files being attached are encoded in to convert them to a proper character set given in $send_charset.

If unset , the value of $charset will be used instead. For example, the following configuration would work for Japanese text handling:

set attach_charset="iso-2022-jp:euc-jp:shift_jis:utf-8"

Note: for Japanese users, "iso-2022-*" must be put at the head of the value as shown above if included.

This variable describes the format of the "attachment" menu. The following printf(3)-style sequences are understood:

For an explanation of "soft-fill", see the $index_format documentation.

The directory where attachments are saved.

This variable, when set to true, will cause attachments to be saved to the 'attach_save_dir' location without prompting the user for the filename.

The separator to add between attachments when operating (saving, printing, piping, etc) on a list of tagged attachments.

If this variable is unset , when operating (saving, printing, piping, etc) on a list of tagged attachments, NeoMutt will concatenate the attachments and will operate on them as a single attachment. The $attach_sep separator is added after each attachment. When set , NeoMutt will operate on the attachments one by one.

This is the string that will precede a replied-to message which is quoted in the main body of the reply (this is the case when $include is set).

For a full listing of defined printf(3)-like sequences see the section on $index_format. See also $attribution_locale.

The locale used by strftime(3) to format dates in the attribution strings. Legal values are the strings your system accepts for the locale environment variable $LC_TIME.

This variable is to allow the attribution date format to be customized by recipient or folder using hooks. By default, NeoMutt will use your locale environment, so there is no need to set this except to override that default.

Affected variables are: $attribution_intro, $attribution_trailer, $forward_attribution_intro, $forward_attribution_trailer, $indent_string.

Similar to the $attribution_intro variable, this is the string that will come after a replied-to message which is quoted in the main body of the reply (this is the case when $include is set).

For a full listing of defined printf(3)-like sequences see the section on $index_format. See also $attribution_locale.

When set along with $edit_headers, NeoMutt will skip the initial send-menu (prompting for subject and recipients) and allow you to immediately begin editing the body of your message. The send-menu may still be accessed once you have finished editing the body of your message.

Note: when this option is set , you can't use send-hooks that depend on the recipients when composing a new (non-reply) message, as the initial list of recipients is empty.

Also see $fast_reply.

When set , NeoMutt assumes the presence of a List-Post header means the recipient is subscribed to the list. Unless the mailing list is in the "unsubscribe" or "unlist" lists, it will be added to the " subscribe" list. Parsing and checking these things slows header reading down, so this option is disabled by default.

When set , functions in the index menu which affect a message will be applied to all tagged messages (if there are any). When unset, you must first use the <tag-prefix> function (bound to ";" by default) to make the next function apply to all tagged messages.

When set , enables autocrypt, which provides passive encryption protection with keys exchanged via headers. See " autocryptdoc" for more details. (Autocrypt only)

This variable describes the format of the "autocrypt account" menu. The following printf(3)-style sequences are understood

(Autocrypt only)

This variable sets where autocrypt files are stored, including the GPG keyring and SQLite database. See " autocryptdoc" for more details. (Autocrypt only)

When set , replying to an autocrypt email automatically enables autocrypt in the reply. You may want to unset this if you're using the same key for autocrypt as normal web-of-trust, so that autocrypt isn't forced on for all encrypted replies. (Autocrypt only)

When this variable is set , NeoMutt will beep when an error occurs.

When this variable is set , NeoMutt will beep whenever it prints a message notifying you of new mail. This is independent of the setting of the $beep variable.

Controls whether you will be asked to confirm bouncing messages. If set to yes you don't get asked if you want to bounce a message. Setting this variable to no is not generally useful, and thus not recommended, because you are unable to bounce messages.

When this variable is set , NeoMutt will include Delivered-To headers when bouncing messages. Postfix users may wish to unset this variable.

When this variable is set , NeoMutt will place the cursor at the beginning of the current line in menus, even when the $arrow_cursor variable is unset , making it easier for blind persons using Braille displays to follow these menus. The option is unset by default because many visual terminals don't permit making the cursor invisible.

When this variable is set , NeoMutt will abbreviate mailbox names in the browser mailbox list, using '~' and '=' shortcuts.

The default "alpha" setting of $browser_sort uses locale-based sorting (using strcoll(3) ), which ignores some punctuation. This can lead to some situations where the order doesn't make intuitive sense. In those cases, it may be desirable to unset this variable.

Specifies how to sort entries in the file browser. By default, the entries are sorted alphabetically. Valid values:

You may optionally use the "reverse-" prefix to specify reverse sorting order (example: " set browser_sort=reverse-date ").

The "unread" value is a synonym for "new".

If this variable is set , the browser will group directories before files.

If this variable is set , NeoMutt will mark all articles in newsgroup as read when you quit the newsgroup (catchup newsgroup).

This variable specifies the file where the certificates you trust are saved. When an unknown certificate is encountered, you are asked if you accept it or not. If you accept it, the certificate can also be saved in this file and further connections are automatically accepted.

You can also manually add CA certificates in this file. Any server certificate that is signed with one of these CA certificates is also automatically accepted.

Example:

set certificate_file=~/.neomutt/certificates

(OpenSSL and GnuTLS only)

When this variable is set , the <change-folder> function mailbox suggestion will start at the next folder in your " mailboxes" list, instead of starting at the first folder in the list.

Character set your terminal uses to display and enter textual data. It is also the fallback for $send_charset.

Upon startup NeoMutt tries to derive this value from environment variables such as $LC_CTYPE or $LANG.

Note: It should only be set in case NeoMutt isn't able to determine the character set used correctly.

When this variable is set , NeoMutt will use file size attribute instead of access time when checking for new mail in mbox and mmdf folders.

This variable is unset by default and should only be enabled when new mail detection for these folder types is unreliable or doesn't work.

Note that enabling this variable should happen before any " mailboxes" directives occur in configuration files regarding mbox or mmdf folders because NeoMutt needs to determine the initial new mail status of such a mailbox by performing a fast mailbox scan when it is defined. Afterwards the new mail status is tracked by file size changes.

Note: this option only affects maildir and MH style mailboxes.

When set , NeoMutt will check for new mail delivered while the mailbox is open. Especially with MH mailboxes, this operation can take quite some time since it involves scanning the directory and checking each file to see if it has already been looked at. If this variable is unset , no check for new mail is performed while the mailbox is open.

When set , NeoMutt will collapse all threads when entering a folder.

When unset , NeoMutt will not collapse a thread if it contains any flagged messages.

When unset , NeoMutt will not collapse a thread if it contains any unread messages.

When set , NeoMutt will use and allow 24bit colours (aka truecolor aka directcolor). For colours to work properly support from the terminal is required as well as a properly set TERM environment variable advertising the terminals directcolor capability, e.g. "TERM=xterm-direct".

NeoMutt tries to detect whether the terminal supports 24bit colours and enables this variable if it does. If this fails for some reason, you can force 24bit colours by setting this variable manually. You may also try to force a certain TERM environment variable by starting NeoMutt from a terminal as follows (this results in wrong colours if the terminal does not implement directcolors):

TERM=xterm-direct neomutt

Note: This variable must be set before using any `color` commands.

When set , NeoMutt will prompt for confirmation when trying to use <detach-file> on the first entry in the compose menu. This is to help prevent irreversible loss of the typed message by accidentally hitting 'D' in the menu.

Note: NeoMutt only prompts for the first entry. It doesn't keep track of which message is the typed message if the entries are reordered, or if the first entry was already deleted.

Controls the format of the status line displayed in the "compose" menu. This string is similar to $status_format, but has its own set of printf(3)-like sequences:

See the text describing the $status_format option for more information on how to set $compose_format.

This variable specifies the minimum number of rows that have to be available for the message preview window to shown.

Show the message preview above the attachments list. By default it is shown below it.

When set , Neomutt will display a preview of message in the compose view.

When set , Neomutt will display user-defined headers (set via my_hdr or from editing with edit-headers).

When defined, NeoMutt will recode commands in rc files from this encoding to the current character set as specified by $charset and aliases written to $alias_file from the current character set.

Please note that if setting $charset it must be done before setting $config_charset.

Recoding should be avoided as it may render unconvertible characters as question marks which can lead to undesired side effects (for example in regular expressions).

When set , NeoMutt will prompt for confirmation when appending messages to an existing mailbox.

When set , NeoMutt will prompt for confirmation when saving messages to a mailbox which does not yet exist before creating it.

Sets the default Content-Type for the body of newly composed messages.

This variable controls whether or not copies of your outgoing messages will be saved for later references. Also see $record, $save_name, $force_name and " fcc-hook".

Controls whether NeoMutt will weed headers when invoking the <decode-copy> or <decode-save> functions.

When set , NeoMutt will recurse inside multipart/alternatives while performing attachment searching and counting(see attachments).

Traditionally, multipart/alternative parts have simply represented different encodings of the main content of the email. Unfortunately, some mail clients have started to place email attachments inside one of alternatives. Setting this will allow NeoMutt to find and count matching attachments hidden there, and include them in the index via %X or through ~X pattern matching.

Setting this variable will cause NeoMutt to always attempt to PGP encrypt outgoing messages. This is probably only useful in connection to the " send-hook" command. It can be overridden by use of the pgp menu, when encryption is not required or signing is requested as well. If $smime_is_default is set , then OpenSSL is used instead to create S/MIME messages and settings can be overridden by use of the smime menu instead. (Crypto only)

This variable controls whether or not NeoMutt may automatically enable PGP encryption/signing for messages. See also $crypt_auto_encrypt, $crypt_reply_encrypt, $crypt_auto_sign, $crypt_reply_sign and $smime_is_default.

Setting this variable will cause NeoMutt to always attempt to cryptographically sign outgoing messages. This can be overridden by use of the pgp menu, when signing is not required or encryption is requested as well. If $smime_is_default is set , then OpenSSL is used instead to create S/MIME messages and settings can be overridden by use of the smime menu instead of the pgp menu. (Crypto only)

This variable controls whether or not NeoMutt may automatically enable S/MIME encryption/signing for messages. See also $crypt_auto_encrypt, $crypt_reply_encrypt, $crypt_auto_sign, $crypt_reply_sign and $smime_is_default.

Controls the characters used in cryptography flags.

If set, then you will be prompted for confirmation of keys when using the crypt-hook command. If unset, no such confirmation prompt will be presented. This is generally considered unsafe, especially where typos are concerned.

Setting this variable will cause NeoMutt to automatically enable and disable encryption, based on whether all message recipient keys can be located by NeoMutt.

When this option is enabled, NeoMutt will enable/disable encryption each time the TO, CC, and BCC lists are edited. If $edit_headers is set, NeoMutt will also do so each time the message is edited.

While this is set, encryption can't be manually enabled/disabled. The pgp or smime menus provide a selection to temporarily disable this option for the current message.

If $crypt_auto_encrypt or $crypt_reply_encrypt enable encryption for a message, this option will be disabled for that message. It can be manually re-enabled in the pgp or smime menus. (Crypto only)

When set, this modifies the behavior of $crypt_opportunistic_encrypt to only search for "strong keys", that is, keys with full validity according to the web-of-trust algorithm. A key with marginal or no validity will not enable opportunistic encryption.

For S/MIME, the behavior depends on the backend. Classic S/MIME will filter for certificates with the 't'(trusted) flag in the .index file. The GPGME backend will use the same filters as with OpenPGP, and depends on GPGME's logic for assigning the GPGME_VALIDITY_FULL and GPGME_VALIDITY_ULTIMATE validity flag.

When set, NeoMutt will display protected headers ("Memory Hole") in the pager, When set, NeoMutt will display protected headers in the pager, and will update the index and header cache with revised headers.

Protected headers are stored inside the encrypted or signed part of an an email, to prevent disclosure or tampering. For more information see https://github.com/autocrypt/protected-headers Currently NeoMutt only supports the Subject header.

Encrypted messages using protected headers often substitute the exposed Subject header with a dummy value (see $crypt_protected_headers_subject). NeoMutt will update its concept of the correct subject after the message is opened, i.e. via the <display-message> function. If you reply to a message before opening it, NeoMutt will end up using the dummy Subject header, so be sure to open such a message first. (Crypto only)

When $crypt_protected_headers_read is set, and a message with a protected Subject is opened, NeoMutt will save the updated Subject into the header cache by default. This allows searching/limiting based on the protected Subject header if the mailbox is re-opened, without having to re-open the message each time. However, for mbox/mh mailbox types, or if header caching is not set up, you would need to re-open the message each time the mailbox was reopened before you could see or search/limit on the protected subject again.

When this variable is set, NeoMutt additionally saves the protected Subject back in the clear-text message headers . This provides better usability, but with the tradeoff of reduced security. The protected Subject header, which may have previously been encrypted, is now stored in clear-text in the message headers. Copying the message elsewhere, via NeoMutt or external tools, could expose this previously encrypted data. Please make sure you understand the consequences of this before you enable this variable. (Crypto only)

When $crypt_protected_headers_write is set, and the message is marked for encryption, this will be substituted into the Subject field in the message headers.

To prevent a subject from being substituted, unset this variable, or set it to the empty string. (Crypto only)

Controls whether NeoMutt will weed protected header fields. (Crypto only)

When set, NeoMutt will generate protected headers for signed and encrypted emails.

Protected headers are stored inside the encrypted or signed part of an an email, to prevent disclosure or tampering. For more information see https://github.com/autocrypt/protected-headers

Currently NeoMutt only supports the Subject header. (Crypto only)

If set , automatically PGP or OpenSSL encrypt replies to messages which are encrypted. (Crypto only)

If set , automatically PGP or OpenSSL sign replies to messages which are signed.

Note: this does not work on messages that are encrypted and signed! (Crypto only)

If set , automatically PGP or OpenSSL sign replies to messages which are encrypted. This makes sense in combination with $crypt_reply_encrypt, because it allows you to sign all messages which are automatically encrypted. This works around the problem noted in $crypt_reply_sign, that NeoMutt is not able to find out whether an encrypted message is also signed. (Crypto only)

If set , NeoMutt will include an informative block before an encrypted part, with details about the encryption. (Crypto only)

If set , NeoMutt will include a time stamp in the lines surrounding PGP or S/MIME output, so spoofing such lines is more difficult. If you are using colors to mark these lines, and rely on these, you may unset this setting. (Crypto only)

This variable controls the use of the GPGME-enabled crypto backends. If it is set and NeoMutt was built with GPGME support, the gpgme code for S/MIME and PGP will be used instead of the classic code. Note that you need to set this option in .neomuttrc; it won't have any effect when used interactively.

Note that the GPGME backend does not support creating old-style inline (traditional) PGP encrypted or signed messages (see $pgp_auto_inline).

Controls whether NeoMutt uses PKA (see http://www.g10code.de/docs/pka-intro.de.pdf) during signature verification (only supported by the GPGME backend).

If "yes" , always attempt to verify PGP or S/MIME signatures. If "ask-*" , ask whether or not to verify the signature. If "no" , never attempt to verify cryptographic signatures. (Crypto only)

Instead of using $date_format it is encouraged to use "%[fmt]" directly in the corresponding format strings, where "fmt" is the value of $date_format. This allows for a more fine grained control of the different menu needs.

This variable controls the format of the date printed by the "%d" sequence in $index_format. This is passed to the strftime(3) function to process the date, see the man page for the proper syntax.

Unless the first character in the string is a bang ("!"), the month and week day names are expanded according to the locale. If the first character in the string is a bang, the bang is discarded, and the month and week day names in the rest of the string are expanded in the C locale (that is in US English).

Format strings using this variable are:

UI: $folder_format, $index_format, $mailbox_folder_format, $message_format

Composing: $attribution_intro, $forward_attribution_intro, $forward_attribution_trailer, $forward_format, $indent_string.

Debug logging is controlled by the variables $debug_file and $debug_level . $debug_file specifies the root of the filename. NeoMutt will add "0" to the end. Each time NeoMutt is run with logging enabled, the log files are rotated. A maximum of five log files are kept, numbered 0 (most recent) to 4 (oldest).

This option can be enabled on the command line, "neomutt -l mylog"

See also: $debug_level

Debug logging is controlled by the variables $debug_file and $debug_level .

The debug level controls how much information is saved to the log file. If you have a problem with NeoMutt, then enabling logging may help find the cause. Levels 1-3 will usually provide enough information for writing a bug report. Levels 4,5 will be extremely verbose.

Warning: Logging at high levels may save private information to the file.

This option can be enabled on the command line, "neomutt -d 2"

See also: $debug_file

This variable controls how some hooks are interpreted if their pattern is a plain string or a regex. i.e. they don't contain a pattern, like ~f

The hooks are: fcc-hook, fcc-save-hook, index-format-hook, message-hook, reply-hook, save-hook, send-hook and send2-hook.

The hooks are expanded when they are declared, so a hook will be interpreted according to the value of this variable at the time the hook is declared.

The default value matches if the message is either from a user matching the regular expression given, or if it is from you (if the from address matches " alternates") and is to or cc'ed to a user matching the given regular expression.

Controls whether or not messages are really deleted when closing or synchronizing a mailbox. If set to yes , messages marked for deleting will automatically be purged without prompting. If set to no , messages marked for deletion will be kept in the mailbox.

If this option is set , NeoMutt will untag messages when marking them for deletion. This applies when you either explicitly delete a message, or when you save it to another folder.

If this option is set , NeoMutt will enable the Security development features. See: https://github.com/neomutt/neomutt/discussions/4251

If this option is set , NeoMutt's received-attachments menu will not show the subparts of individual messages in a multipart/digest. To see these subparts, press "v" on that menu.

When set, specifies a command used to filter messages. When a message is viewed it is passed as standard input to $display_filter, and the filtered message is read from the standard output.

When preparing the message, NeoMutt inserts some escape sequences into the text. They are of the form: <esc>]9;XXX<bel> where "XXX" is a random 64-bit number.

If these escape sequences interfere with your filter, they can be removed using a tool like ansifilter or sed 's/^\x1b]9;[0-9]\+\x7//'

If they are removed, then PGP and MIME headers will no longer be coloured. This can be fixed by adding this to your config: color body magenta default '^\[-- .* --\]$'.

This variable sets the request for when notification is returned. The string consists of a comma separated list (no spaces!) of one or more of the following: never , to never request notification, failure , to request notification on transmission failure, delay , to be notified of message delays, success , to be notified of successful transmission.

Example:

set dsn_notify="failure,delay"

Note: when using $sendmail for delivery, you should not enable this unless you are either using Sendmail 8.8.x or greater or a MTA providing a sendmail(1)-compatible interface supporting the -N option for DSN. For SMTP delivery, DSN support is auto-detected so that it depends on the server whether DSN will be used or not.

This variable controls how much of your message is returned in DSN messages. It may be set to either hdrs to return just the message header, or full to return the full message.

Example:

set dsn_return=hdrs

Note: when using $sendmail for delivery, you should not enable this unless you are either using Sendmail 8.8.x or greater or a MTA providing a sendmail(1)-compatible interface supporting the -R option for DSN. For SMTP delivery, DSN support is auto-detected so that it depends on the server whether DSN will be used or not.

This variable controls whether NeoMutt, when $sort is set to threads , threads messages with the same Message-Id together. If it is set , it will indicate that it thinks they are duplicates of each other with an equals sign in the thread tree.

This option allows you to edit the header of your outgoing messages along with the body of your message.

Although the compose menu may have localized header labels, the labels passed to your editor will be standard RFC2822 headers, (e.g. To:, Cc:, Subject:). Headers added in your editor must also be RFC2822 headers, or one of the pseudo headers listed in " edit-header". NeoMutt will not understand localized header labels, just as it would not when parsing an actual email.

Note that changes made to the References: and Date: headers are ignored for interoperability reasons.

This variable specifies which editor is used by NeoMutt. It defaults to the value of the $VISUAL, or $EDITOR, environment variable, or to the string "vi" if neither of those are set.

The $editor string may contain a %s escape, which will be replaced by the name of the file to be edited. If the %s escape does not appear in $editor , a space and the name to be edited are appended.

The resulting string is then executed by running

sh -c 'string'

where string is the expansion of $editor described above.

This variable specifies the subject to be used when replying to an email with an empty subject. It defaults to "Re: your mail".

When set , NeoMutt will quoted-printable encode messages when they contain the string "From " (note the trailing space) in the beginning of a line. This is useful to avoid the tampering certain mail delivery and transport agents tend to do with messages (in order to prevent tools from misinterpreting the line as a mbox message separator).

The file which includes random data that is used to initialize SSL library functions. (OpenSSL only)

Manually sets the envelope sender for outgoing messages. This value is ignored if $use_envelope_from is unset .

If set, contains the name of the external program used by "~I" patterns. This will usually be a wrapper script around mairix, mu, or similar indexers other than notmuch (for which there is optional special support).

Here is an example how it works. Let's assume $external_search_command is set to "mairix_filter", and mairix_filter is a script which runs the old but well loved mairix indexer with the arguments given to mairix_filter, in the "raw" mode of mairix, producing on the standard output a list of Message-IDs, one per line.

If possible, it also filters down the results coming from mairix such that only messages in the current folder remain. It can do this because it gets a hidden first argument which is the path to the folder. (This can be the type of clean and simple script called a one-liner .)

Now if NeoMutt gets a limit or tag command followed by the pattern "~I '-t s:bleeping='", mairix_filter runs mairix with the arguments from inside the quotes (the quotes are needed because of the space after "-t"), mairix finds all messages with "bleeping" in the Subject plus all messages sharing threads with these and outputs their file names, and mairix_filter translates the file names into Message-IDs. Finally, NeoMutt reads the Message-IDs and targets the matching messages with the command given to it.

You, the user, still have to rewrite the mairix_filter script to match the behavior of your indexer, but this should help users of indexers other than notmuch to integrate them cleanly with NeoMutt.

When set , the initial prompt for recipients (to, cc, bcc) and subject are skipped when the relevant information is already provided. These cases include replying to messages and passing the relevant command line arguments. The initial prompt for recipients is also skipped when composing a new message to the current message sender, while the initial prompt for subject is also skipped when forwarding messages.

Note: this variable has no effect when the $auto_edit variable is set .

See also: $auto_edit, $edit_headers, $ask_cc, $ask_bcc

This variable controls whether or not attachments on outgoing messages are saved along with the main body of your message.

Note: $fcc_before_send forces the default (set) behavior of this option.

When this variable is set , FCCs will occur before sending the message. Before sending, the message cannot be manipulated, so it will be stored the exact same as sent: $fcc_attach and $fcc_clear will be ignored (using their default values).

When unset , the default, FCCs will occur after sending. Variables $fcc_attach and $fcc_clear will be respected, allowing it to be stored without attachments or encryption/signing if desired.

When this variable is set , FCCs will be stored unencrypted and unsigned, even when the actual message is encrypted and/or signed.

Note: $fcc_before_send forces the default (unset) behavior of this option. (PGP only)

See also $pgp_self_encrypt, $smime_self_encrypt

Controls the characters used in several flags.

If set, flagged messages can't be deleted.

Specifies the default location of your mailboxes. A "+" or "=" at the beginning of a pathname will be expanded to the value of this variable. Note that if you change this variable (from the default) value you need to make sure that the assignment occurs before you use "+" or "=" for any other variables since expansion takes place when handling the " mailboxes" command.

This variable allows you to customize the file browser display to your personal taste. This string is similar to $index_format, but has its own set of printf(3)-like sequences:

For an explanation of "soft-fill", see the $index_format documentation.

* = can be optionally printed if nonzero

%m, %n, and %N only work for monitored mailboxes. %m requires $mail_check_stats to be set. %n requires $mail_check_stats to be set (except for IMAP mailboxes).

Controls whether or not the "Mail-Followup-To:" header field is generated when sending mail. When set , NeoMutt will generate this field when you are replying to a known mailing list, specified with the " subscribe" or " lists" commands.

This field has two purposes. First, preventing you from receiving duplicate copies of replies to messages which you send to mailing lists, and second, ensuring that you do get a reply separately for any messages sent to known lists to which you are not subscribed.

The header will contain only the list's address for subscribed lists, and both the list address and your own email address for unsubscribed lists. Without this header, a group reply to your message sent to a subscribed list will be sent to both the list and your address, resulting in two copies of the same email for you.

If this variable is set and the keyword "poster" is present in Followup-To header, follow-up to newsgroup function is not permitted. The message will be mailed to the submitter of the message via mail.

This variable is similar to $save_name, except that NeoMutt will store a copy of your outgoing message by the username of the address you are sending to even if that mailbox does not exist.

Also see the $record variable.

When forwarding inline (i.e. $mime_forward unset or answered with "no" and $forward_decode set ), attachments which cannot be decoded in a reasonable manner will be attached to the newly composed message if this quadoption is set or answered with "yes".

This is the string that will precede a message which has been forwarded in the main body of a message (when $mime_forward is unset). For a full listing of defined printf(3)-like sequences see the section on $index_format. See also $attribution_locale.

This is the string that will follow a message which has been forwarded in the main body of a message (when $mime_forward is unset). For a full listing of defined printf(3)-like sequences see the section on $index_format. See also $attribution_locale.

Controls the decoding of complex MIME messages into text/plain when forwarding a message. The message header is also RFC2047 decoded. This variable is only used, if $mime_forward is unset , otherwise $mime_forward_decode is used instead.

Controls the handling of encrypted messages when forwarding a message. When set , the outer layer of encryption is stripped off. This variable is only used if $mime_forward is set and $mime_forward_decode is unset .

This quadoption controls whether or not the user is automatically placed in the editor when forwarding messages. For those who always want to forward with no modification, use a setting of "no".

This variable controls the default subject when forwarding a message. It uses the same format sequences as the $index_format variable.

When set , forwarded messages included in the main body of the message (when $mime_forward is unset ) will be quoted using $indent_string.

When set , forwarded messages set the "In-Reply-To:" and "References:" headers in the same way as normal replies would. Hence the forwarded message becomes part of the original thread instead of starting a new one.

When set , this variable contains a default "from" address. It can be overridden using " my_hdr" (including from a " send-hook") and $reverse_name. This variable is ignored if $use_from is unset .

If not specified, then it may be read from the environment variable $EMAIL.

Controls the character used to prefix the %F and %L fields in the index.

If this is empty or unset (default), the traditional long "To ", "Cc " and "Bcc " prefixes are used. If set but too short to include a character for a particular case, a single space will be prepended to the field. To prevent any prefix at all from being added in a particular case, use the special value CR (aka ^M) for the corresponding character.

This slightly odd interface is necessitated by NeoMutt's handling of string variables; one can't tell a variable that is unset from one that is set to the empty string.

A regular expression used by NeoMutt to parse the GECOS field of a password entry when expanding the alias. The default value will return the string up to the first "," encountered. If the GECOS field contains a string like "lastname, firstname" then you should set it to " .* ".

This can be useful if you see the following behavior: you address an e-mail to user ID "stevef" whose full name is "Steve Franklin". If NeoMutt expands "stevef" to '"Franklin" stevef@foo.bar' then you should set the $gecos_mask to a regular expression that will match the whole name so NeoMutt will expand "Franklin" to "Franklin, Steve".

When set, this is the string that will precede every message as a greeting phrase to the recipients.

"Format strings" are similar to the strings used in the "C" function printf to format output (see the man page for more detail). The following sequences are defined in NeoMutt:

This variable allows you to customize the newsgroup browser display to your personal taste. This string is similar to " index_format", but has its own set of printf()-like sequences:

When unset , the header fields normally added by the " my_hdr" command are not created. This variable must be unset before composing a new message or replying in order to take effect. If set , the user defined header fields are added to every new message.

When set , this variable causes NeoMutt to include the header of the message you are replying to into the edit buffer. The $weed setting applies.

This variable points to the header cache database. If the path points to an existing directory, NeoMutt will create a dedicated header cache database per folder. Otherwise, the path points to a regular file, which will be created as needed and used as a shared global header cache for all folders. By default it is unset so no header caching will be used.

Header caching can greatly improve speed when opening POP, IMAP MH or Maildir folders, see " caching" in the NeoMutt Guide for details.

This variable specifies the header cache backend. If no backend is specified, the first available backend will be used in the following order: tokyocabinet, kyotocabinet, qdbm, rocksdb, gdbm, bdb, tdb, lmdb.

When NeoMutt is compiled with lz4, zstd or zlib, this option can be used to setup the compression level.

When NeoMutt is compiled with lz4, zstd or zlib, the header cache backend can use these compression methods for compressing the cache files. This results in much smaller cache file sizes and may even improve speed.

When set , color header regexes behave like color body regexes: color is applied to the exact text matched by the regex. When unset , color is applied to the entire header.

One use of this option might be to apply color to just the header labels.

See " color" for more details.

When set , help lines describing the bindings for the major functions provided by each menu are displayed on the first line of the screen.

Note: The binding will not be displayed correctly if the function is bound to a sequence rather than a single keystroke. Also, the help line may not be updated if a binding is changed while NeoMutt is running. Since this variable is primarily aimed at new users, neither of these should present a major problem.

When set , NeoMutt will skip the host name part of $hostname variable when adding the domain part to addresses.

This variable specifies a list of comma-separated private notmuch/imap tags which should not be printed on screen.

When set , NeoMutt will not show the presence of messages that are hidden by limiting, in the thread tree.

When set , NeoMutt will not show the presence of missing messages in the thread tree.

When set , NeoMutt will not show the subject of messages in the thread tree that have the same subject as their parent or closest previously displayed sibling.

When set , NeoMutt will not show the presence of messages that are hidden by limiting, at the top of threads in the thread tree. Note that when $hide_limited is set , this option will have no effect.

When set , NeoMutt will not show the presence of missing messages at the top of threads in the thread tree. Note that when $hide_missing is set , this option will have no effect.

This variable controls the size (in number of strings remembered) of the string history buffer per category. The buffer is cleared each time the variable is set.

Note that strings (e.g. commands) starting with a space are never recorded in the history. This is for example useful to prevent leaking sensitive information into the history file or for one off tests.

Also note that a string is not added to the history if it exactly matches its immediate predecessor, e.g. executing the same command twice in a row results in only one copy being added to the history. To prevent duplicates over all entries use $history_remove_dups.

The file in which NeoMutt will save its history.

Also see $save_history.

Controls the format of the entries of the history list. This string is similar to $index_format, but has its own set of printf(3)-like sequences:

When set , all of the string history will be scanned for duplicates when a new entry is added. Duplicate entries in the $history_file will also be removed when it is periodically compacted.

When set , NeoMutt will not display attachments with a disposition of "attachment" inline even if it could render the part to plain text. These MIME parts can only be viewed from the attachment menu.

If unset , NeoMutt will render all MIME parts it can properly transform to plain text.

This variable controls whether or not a Mail-Followup-To header is honored when group-replying to a message.

Specifies the fully-qualified hostname of the system NeoMutt is running on containing the host's name and the DNS domain it belongs to. It is used as the domain part (after "@") for local email addresses.

If not specified in a config file, then NeoMutt will try to determine the hostname itself.

Optionally, NeoMutt can be compiled with a fixed domain name.

Also see $use_domain and $hidden_host.

When set , NeoMutt will show you international domain names decoded. Note: You can use IDNs for addresses even if this is unset . This variable only affects decoding. (IDN only)

When set , NeoMutt will encode international domain names using IDN. Unset this if your SMTP server can handle newer (RFC6531) UTF-8 encoded domains. (IDN only)

Affects the behavior of the <reply> function when replying to messages from mailing lists (as defined by the " subscribe" or " lists" commands). When set , if the "Reply-To:" field is set to the same value as the "To:" field, NeoMutt assumes that the "Reply-To:" field was set by the mailing list to automate responses to the list, and will ignore this field. To direct a response to the mailing list when this option is set , use the <list-reply> function; <group-reply> will reply to both the sender and the list.

This is a colon-separated list of authentication methods NeoMutt may attempt to use to log in to an IMAP server, in the order NeoMutt should try them. Authentication methods are either "login" or the right side of an IMAP "AUTH=xxx" capability string, e.g. "digest-md5", "gssapi" or "cram-md5". This option is case-insensitive. If it's unset (the default) NeoMutt will try all available methods, in order from most-secure to least-secure.

Example:

set imap_authenticators="gssapi:cram-md5:login"

Note: NeoMutt will only fall back to other authentication methods if the previous methods are unavailable. If a method is available but authentication fails, NeoMutt will not connect to the IMAP server.

When set , NeoMutt will fetch the set of subscribed folders from your server whenever a mailbox is selected , and add them to the set of mailboxes it polls for new mail just as if you had issued individual " mailboxes" commands.

When set , NeoMutt will use the CONDSTORE extension (RFC7162) if advertised by the server. NeoMutt's current implementation is basic, used only for initial message fetching and flag updates.

For some IMAP servers, enabling this will slightly speed up downloading initial messages. Unfortunately, Gmail is not one those, and displays worse performance when enabled. Your mileage may vary.

When set , NeoMutt will use the COMPRESS=DEFLATE extension (RFC4978) if advertised by the server.

In general a good compression efficiency can be achieved, which speeds up reading large mailboxes also on fairly good connections.

This contains the list of characters that NeoMutt will use as folder separators for IMAP paths, when no separator is provided on the IMAP connection.

When set to a value greater than 0, new headers will be downloaded in groups of this many headers per request. If you have a very large mailbox, this might prevent a timeout and disconnect when opening the mailbox, by sending a FETCH per set of this many headers, instead of a single FETCH for all new headers.

NeoMutt requests these header fields in addition to the default headers ("Date:", "From:", "Sender:", "Subject:", "To:", "Cc:", "Message-Id:", "References:", "Content-Type:", "Content-Description:", "In-Reply-To:", "Reply-To:", "Lines:", "List-Post:", "X-Label:") from IMAP servers before displaying the index menu. You may want to add more headers for spam detection.

Note: This is a space separated list, items should be uppercase and not contain the colon, e.g. "X-BOGOSITY X-SPAM-STATUS" for the "X-Bogosity:" and "X-Spam-Status:" header fields.

When set , NeoMutt will attempt to use the IMAP IDLE extension to check for new mail in the current mailbox. Some servers (dovecot was the inspiration for this option) react badly to NeoMutt's implementation. If your connection seems to freeze up periodically, try unsetting this.

This variable specifies the maximum amount of time in seconds that NeoMutt will wait before polling open IMAP connections, to prevent the server from closing them before NeoMutt has finished with them. The default is well within the RFC-specified minimum amount of time (30 minutes) before a server is allowed to do this, but in practice the RFC does get violated every now and then. Reduce this number if you find yourself getting disconnected from your IMAP server due to inactivity.

This variable configures whether IMAP folder browsing will look for only subscribed folders or all folders. This can be toggled in the IMAP browser with the <toggle-subscribed> function.

Your login name on the IMAP server.

This variable defaults to the value of $imap_user.

The command to run to generate an OAUTH refresh token for authorizing your connection to your IMAP server. This command will be run on every connection attempt that uses the OAUTHBEARER or XOAUTH2 authentication mechanisms. See " oauth" for details.

Specifies the password for your IMAP account. If unset , NeoMutt will prompt you for your password when you invoke the <imap-fetch-mail> function or try to open an IMAP folder.

Warning : you should only use this option when you are on a fairly secure machine, because the superuser can read your neomuttrc even if you are the only one who can read the file.

When set , NeoMutt will not open new IMAP connections to check for new mail. NeoMutt will only check for new mail over existing IMAP connections. This is useful if you don't want to be prompted for user/password pairs on NeoMutt invocation, or if opening the connection is slow.

When set , NeoMutt will avoid implicitly marking your mail as read whenever you fetch a message from the server. This is generally a good thing, but can make closing an IMAP folder somewhat slower. This option exists to appease speed freaks.

Controls the number of IMAP commands that may be queued up before they are sent to the server. A deeper pipeline reduces the amount of time NeoMutt must wait for the server, and can make IMAP servers feel much more responsive. But not all servers correctly handle pipelined commands, so if you have problems you might want to try setting this variable to 0.

Note: Changes to this variable have no effect on open connections.

This variable specifies the maximum amount of time in seconds that NeoMutt will wait for a response when polling IMAP connections for new mail, before timing out and closing the connection. Set to 0 to disable timing out.

When set , NeoMutt will use the QRESYNC extension (RFC7162) if advertised by the server. NeoMutt's current implementation is basic, used only for initial message fetching and flag updates.

Note: this feature is currently experimental. If you experience strange behavior, such as duplicate or missing messages please file a bug report to let us know.

When set , NeoMutt will use the IMAP ENABLE extension (RFC5161) to select CAPABILITIES. Some servers (notably Coremail System IMap Server) do not properly respond to ENABLE commands, which might cause NeoMutt to hang. If your connection seems to freeze at login, try unsetting this. See also https://github.com/neomutt/neomutt/issues/1689

When set , NeoMutt will send an IMAP ID command (RFC2971) to the server when logging in if advertised by the server. This command provides information about the IMAP client, such as "NeoMutt" and the current version.

When set , NeoMutt will display warning messages from the IMAP server as error messages. Since these messages are often harmless, or generated due to configuration problems on the server which are out of the users' hands, you may wish to suppress them at some point.

The name of the user whose mail you intend to access on the IMAP server.

This variable defaults to your user name on the local machine.

If set to "yes", NeoMutt will look for a mailcap entry with the " copiousoutput " flag set for every MIME attachment it doesn't have an internal viewer defined for. If such an entry is found, NeoMutt will use the viewer defined in that entry to convert the body part to text form.

Controls whether or not a copy of the message(s) you are replying to is included in your reply.

Controls whether or not NeoMutt includes separately encrypted attachment contents when replying.

This variable was added to prevent accidental exposure of encrypted contents when replying to an attacker. If a previously encrypted message were attached by the attacker, they could trick an unwary recipient into decrypting and including the message in their reply.

Controls whether or not NeoMutt includes only the first attachment of the message you are replying.

Specifies the string to prepend to each line of text quoted in a message to which you are replying. You are strongly encouraged not to change this value, as it tends to agitate the more fanatical netizens.

The value of this option is ignored if $text_flowed is set, because the quoting mechanism is strictly defined for format=flowed.

This option is a format string, please see the description of $index_format for supported printf(3)-style sequences.

This variable allows you to customize the message index display to your personal taste.

"Format strings" are similar to the strings used in the C function printf(3) to format output (see the man page for more details). For an explanation of the %<...> construct, see the status_format description. The following sequences are defined in NeoMutt:

Date format expressions can be constructed based on relative dates. Using the date formatting operators along with nested conditionals, the date format can be modified based on how old a message is. See the section on "Conditional Dates" for an explanation and examples

Note that for mbox/mmdf, "%l" applies to the unprocessed message, and for maildir/mh, the value comes from the "Lines:" header field when present (the meaning is normally the same). Thus the value depends on the encodings used in the different parts of the message and has little meaning in practice.

"Soft-fill" deserves some explanation: Normal right-justification will print everything to the left of the "%>", displaying padding and whatever lies to the right only if there's room. By contrast, soft-fill gives priority to the right-hand side, guaranteeing space to display it and showing padding only if there's still room. If necessary, soft-fill will eat text leftwards to make room for rightward text.

Note that these expandos are supported in " save-hook", " fcc-hook" and " fcc-save-hook", too.

If set, specifies the program and arguments used to deliver news posted by NeoMutt. Otherwise, NeoMutt posts article using current connection to news server. The following printf-style sequence is understood:

Example:

set inews="/usr/local/bin/inews -hS"

How to invoke ispell (GNU's spell-checking software).

If set , read messages marked as flagged will not be moved from your spool mailbox to your $mbox mailbox or to the "mbox" specified by a mbox-hook command.

Note that $keep_flagged only has an effect if $move is set.

If set , the date in the Date header of emails that you send will be in your local timezone. If unset a UTC date will be used instead to avoid leaking information about your current location.

This variable configures how often (in seconds) NeoMutt should look for new mail. Also see the $timeout variable.

When set , NeoMutt will only notify you about new mail that has been received since the last time you opened the mailbox. When unset , NeoMutt will notify you if any new mail exists in the mailbox, regardless of whether you have visited it recently.

When set , NeoMutt will periodically calculate message statistics of a mailbox while polling for new mail. It will check for unread, flagged, and total message counts. (Note: IMAP mailboxes only support unread and total counts).

Because this operation is more performance intensive, it defaults to unset , and has a separate option, $mail_check_stats_interval, to control how often to update these counts.

Message statistics can also be explicitly calculated by invoking the <check-stats> function.

When $mail_check_stats is set , this variable configures how often (in seconds) NeoMutt will update message counts.

This variable allows you to customize the file browser display to your personal taste. It's only used to customize network mailboxes (e.g. imap). This string is identical in formatting to the one used by " $folder_format".

This variable specifies a list of colon-separated files to consult when attempting to display MIME bodies not directly supported by NeoMutt. The default value is generated during startup: see the " mailcap" section of the manual.

$mailcap_path is overridden by the environment variable $MAILCAPS.

The default search path is from RFC1524.

If set , NeoMutt will restrict possible characters in mailcap % expandos to a well-defined set of safe characters. This is the safe setting, but we are not sure it doesn't break some more advanced MIME stuff.

DON'T CHANGE THIS SETTING UNLESS YOU ARE REALLY SURE WHAT YOU ARE DOING!

If set , NeoMutt will poll both the new and cur directories of a maildir folder for new messages. This might be useful if other programs interacting with the folder (e.g. dovecot) are moving new messages to the cur directory. Note that setting this option may slow down polling for new messages in large folders, since NeoMutt has to scan all cur messages.

Use the value as maildir field delimiter. This is a single-character used to accommodate maildir mailboxes on platforms where `:` is not allowed in a filename. The recommended alternative on such platforms is `;`. Neomutt supports all non-alphanumeric values except for `-`, `.`, `\`, `/`. Note: this only applies to maildir-style mailboxes. Setting it will have no effect on other mailbox types.

Check for Maildir unaware programs other than NeoMutt having modified maildir files when the header cache is in use. This incurs one stat(2) per message every time the folder is opened (which can be very slow for NFS folders).

If set , messages marked as deleted will be saved with the maildir trashed flag instead of unlinked. Note: this only applies to maildir-style mailboxes. Setting it will have no effect on other mailbox types.

Prefix for macros created using mark-message. A new macro automatically generated with <mark-message>a will be composed from this prefix and the letter a .

Controls whether or not NeoMutt marks new unread messages as old if you exit a mailbox without reading them. With this option set , the next time you start NeoMutt, the messages will show up with an "O" next to them in the index menu, indicating that they are old.

Controls the display of wrapped lines in the internal pager. If set, a "+" marker is displayed at the beginning of wrapped lines.

Also see the $smart_wrap variable.

A regular expression used in the file browser, optionally preceded by the not operator "!". Only files whose names match this mask will be shown. The match is always case-sensitive.

This specifies the folder into which read mail in your $spool_file folder will be appended.

Also see the $move variable.

The default mailbox type used when creating new folders. May be any of "mbox", "MMDF", "MH" or "Maildir".

This can also be set using the -m command-line option.

If unset , NeoMutt will remove your address (see the " alternates" command) from the list of recipients when replying to a message.

This variable controls the number of lines of context that are given when scrolling through menus. (Similar to $pager_context.)

When unset , the bottom entry of menus will never scroll up past the bottom of the screen, unless there are less entries than lines. When set , the bottom entry may move off the bottom.

When set , menus will be scrolled up or down one line when you attempt to move across a screen boundary. If unset , the screen is cleared and the next or previous page of the menu is displayed (useful for slow links to avoid many redraws).

If set , NeoMutt will clean out obsolete entries from the message cache when the mailbox is synchronized. You probably only want to set it every once in a while, since it can be a little slow (especially for large folders).

Set this to a directory and NeoMutt will cache copies of messages from your IMAP and POP servers here. You are free to remove entries at any time.

When setting this variable to a directory, NeoMutt needs to fetch every remote message only once and can perform regular expression searches as fast as for local folders.

Also see the $message_cache_clean variable.

This is the string displayed in the "attachment" menu for attachments of type message/rfc822. For a full listing of defined printf(3)-like sequences see the section on $index_format.

If set , forces NeoMutt to interpret keystrokes with the high bit (bit 8) set as if the user had pressed the Esc key and whatever key remains after having the high bit removed. For example, if the key pressed has an ASCII value of 0xf8, then this is treated as if the user had pressed Esc then "x". This is because the result of removing the high bit from 0xf8 is 0x78, which is the ASCII character "x".

When unset , NeoMutt will mimic mh's behavior and rename deleted messages to ,<old file name> in mh folders instead of really deleting them. This leaves the message on disk but makes programs reading the folder ignore it. If the variable is set , the message files will simply be deleted.

This option is similar to $maildir_trash for Maildir folders.

The name of the MH sequence used for flagged messages.

The name of the MH sequence used to tag replied messages.

The name of the MH sequence used for unseen messages.

When set , the message you are forwarding will be attached as a separate message/rfc822 MIME part instead of included in the main body of the message. This is useful for forwarding MIME messages so the receiver can properly view the message as it was delivered to you. If you like to switch between MIME and not MIME from mail to mail, set this variable to "ask-no" or "ask-yes".

Also see $forward_decode and $mime_forward_decode.

Controls the decoding of complex MIME messages into text/plain when forwarding a message while $mime_forward is set . Otherwise $forward_decode is used instead.

When forwarding multiple attachments of a MIME message from the attachment menu, attachments which can't be decoded in a reasonable manner will be attached to the newly composed message if this option is set .

This specifies a command to run, to determine the mime type of a new attachment when composing a message. Unless $mime_type_query_first is set, this will only be run if the attachment's extension is not found in the mime.types file.

The string may contain a "%s", which will be substituted with the attachment filename. NeoMutt will add quotes around the string substituted for "%s" automatically according to shell quoting rules, so you should avoid adding your own. If no "%s" is found in the string, NeoMutt will append the attachment filename to the end of the string.

The command should output a single line containing the attachment's mime type.

Suggested values are "xdg-mime query filetype" or "file -bi".

When set , the $mime_type_query_command will be run before the mime.types lookup.

If this variable is set , then NeoMutt will move read messages from your spool mailbox to your $mbox mailbox or to the "mbox" specified by a mbox-hook command.

See also $keep_flagged.

This variable, when set , makes the thread tree narrower, allowing deeper threads to fit on the screen.

Operations that expect to transfer a large amount of data over the network will update their progress every $net_inc kilobytes. If set to 0, no progress messages will be displayed.

See also $read_inc, $write_inc and $net_inc.

If set , NeoMutt will call this command after a new message is received. See the $status_format documentation for the values that can be formatted into this command.

This variable pointing to directory where NeoMutt will save cached news articles and headers in. If unset , articles and headers will not be saved at all and will be reloaded from the server each time.

This variable specifies domain name or address of NNTP server.

You can also specify username and an alternative port for each news server, e.g. [[s]news://][username[:password]@]server[:port]

This option can also be set using the command line option "-g", the environment variable $NNTPSERVER, or putting the server name in the file "/etc/nntpserver".

Character set of newsgroups descriptions.

The file, containing info about subscribed newsgroups - names and indexes of read articles. The following printf-style sequence is understood:

Configuration file for notmuch. Use 'auto' to detect configuration.

Configuration profile for notmuch.

This variable specifies the default limit used in notmuch queries.

This variable specifies the default Notmuch database in format notmuch://<absolute path>.

The messages tagged with these tags are excluded and not loaded from notmuch DB to NeoMutt unless specified explicitly.

This variable specifies notmuch tag which is used for flagged messages. The variable is used to count flagged messages in DB and set the flagged flag when modifying tags. All other NeoMutt commands use standard (e.g. maildir) flags.

This variable specifies the timeout for database open in seconds.

This variable specifies the default query type (threads or messages) used in notmuch queries.

This variable contains the position of the current search for window based vfolder.

This variable contains the currently setup notmuch search for window based vfolder.

This variable sets the time duration of a windowed notmuch query. Accepted values all non negative integers. A value of 0 disables the feature.

This variable enables windowed notmuch queries even if window duration is 0.

This variable contains additional notmuch search terms for messages to be shown regardless of date.

Example:

Using "notmuch://?query=tag:inbox" as the mailbox and "tag:flagged and tag:unread" as the or terms, NeoMutt will produce a query window such as:

notmuch://?query=tag:inbox and (date:... or (tag:flagged and tag:unread))

This variable sets the time base of a windowed notmuch query. Accepted values are 'minute', 'hour', 'day', 'week', 'month', 'year'

This variable specifies whether, when writing a just-sent message to the $record, the message should also be added to the notmuch DB. Replies inherit the notmuch tags from the original message. See $nm_record_tags for how to modify the set of notmuch tags assigned to sent messages written to the record.

This variable specifies the notmuch tag modifications (addition, removal, toggling) applied to messages added to the Neomutt record when $nm_record is true. See the description of the <modify-labels> function for the syntax.

This variable specifies notmuch tag which is used for replied messages. The variable is used to set the replied flag when modifying tags. All other NeoMutt commands use standard (e.g. maildir) flags.

This variable specifies notmuch tag which is used for unread messages. The variable is used to count unread messages in DB and set the unread flag when modifying tags. All other NeoMutt commands use standard (e.g. maildir) flags.

This is a colon-delimited list of authentication methods NeoMutt may attempt to use to log in to a news server, in the order NeoMutt should try them. Authentication methods are either "user" or any SASL mechanism, e.g. "digest-md5", "gssapi" or "cram-md5". This option is case-insensitive. If it's unset (the default) NeoMutt will try all available methods, in order from most-secure to least-secure.

Example:

set nntp_authenticators="digest-md5:user"

Note: NeoMutt will only fall back to other authentication methods if the previous methods are unavailable. If a method is available but authentication fails, NeoMutt will not connect to the IMAP server.

This variable defines number of articles which will be in index when newsgroup entered. If active newsgroup have more articles than this number, oldest articles will be ignored. Also controls how many articles headers will be saved in cache when you quit newsgroup.

This variable controls whether or not existence of each article is checked when newsgroup is entered.

This variable controls whether or not descriptions for each newsgroup must be loaded when newsgroup is added to list (first time list loading or new newsgroup adding).

Your password for NNTP account.

The time in seconds until any operations on newsgroup except post new article will cause recheck for new news. If set to 0, NeoMutt will recheck newsgroup on each operation in index (stepping, read article, etc.).

Your login name on the NNTP server. If unset and NNTP server requires authentication, NeoMutt will prompt you for your account name when you connect to news server.

This variable specifies which pager you would like to use to view messages. When empty, NeoMutt will use the built-in pager, otherwise this variable should specify the pathname of the external pager you would like to use.

Using an external pager may have some disadvantages: Additional keystrokes are necessary because you can't call NeoMutt functions directly from the pager, and screen resizes cause lines longer than the screen width to be badly formatted in the help menu.

This variable controls the number of lines of context that are given when displaying the next or previous page in the internal pager. By default, NeoMutt will display the line after the last one on the screen at the top of the next page (0 lines of context).

This variable also specifies the amount of context given for search results. If positive, this many lines will be given before a match, if 0, the match will be top-aligned.

This variable controls the format of the one-line message "status" displayed before each message in either the internal or an external pager. The valid sequences are listed in the $index_format section.

Determines the number of lines of a mini-index which is shown when in the pager. The current message, unless near the top or bottom of the folder, will be roughly one third of the way down this mini-index, giving the reader the context of a few messages before and after the message. This is useful, for example, to determine how many messages remain to be read in the current thread. A value of 0 results in no index being shown.

Determines the number of seconds that must elapse after first opening a new message in the pager before that message will be marked as read. A value of 0 results in the message being marked read unconditionally; for other values, navigating to another message or exiting the pager before the timeout will leave the message marked unread. This setting is ignored if $pager is set.

Determines the number of lines of context to show before the unquoted text when using the <skip-quoted> function. When set to a positive number at most that many lines of the previous quote are displayed. If the previous quote is shorter the whole quote is displayed.

The (now deprecated) skip_quoted_offset is an alias for this variable, and should no longer be used.

When set , the internal-pager will not move to the next message when you are at the end of a message and invoke the <next-page> function.

This variable describes the format of the "pattern completion" menu. The following printf(3)-style sequences are understood:

If set , NeoMutt will automatically attempt to decrypt traditional PGP messages whenever the user performs an operation which ordinarily would result in the contents of the message being operated on. For example, if the user displays a pgp-traditional message which has not been manually checked with the <check-traditional-pgp> function, NeoMutt will automatically check the message for traditional pgp.

This option controls whether NeoMutt generates old-style inline (traditional) PGP encrypted or signed messages under certain circumstances. This can be overridden by use of the pgp menu, when inline is not required. The GPGME backend does not support this option.

Note that NeoMutt might automatically use PGP/MIME for messages which consist of more than a single MIME part. NeoMutt can be configured to ask before sending PGP/MIME messages when inline (traditional) would not work.

Also see the $pgp_mime_auto variable.

Also note that using the old-style PGP message format is strongly deprecated . (PGP only)

If set , NeoMutt will check the exit code of the PGP subprocess when signing or encrypting. A non-zero exit code means that the subprocess failed. (PGP only)

If set , NeoMutt will check the status file descriptor output of $pgp_decrypt_command and $pgp_decode_command for GnuPG status codes indicating successful decryption. This will check for the presence of DECRYPTION_OKAY, absence of DECRYPTION_FAILED, and that all PLAINTEXT occurs between the BEGIN_DECRYPTION and END_DECRYPTION status codes.

If unset , NeoMutt will instead match the status fd output against $pgp_decryption_okay. (PGP only)

This format is used to create an old-style "clearsigned" PGP message. Note that the use of this format is strongly deprecated .

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. Note that in this case, %r expands to the search string, which is a list of one or more quoted values such as email address, name, or keyid. (PGP only)

This format strings specifies a command which is used to decode application/pgp attachments.

The PGP command formats have their own set of printf(3)-like sequences:

(PGP only)

This command is used to decrypt a PGP encrypted message.

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. (PGP only)

Note: When decrypting messages using gpg, a pinentry program needs to be invoked unless the password is cached within gpg-agent. Currently, the pinentry-tty program (usually distributed with gpg ) isn't suitable for being invoked by NeoMutt. You are encouraged to use a different pinentry-program when running NeoMutt in order to avoid problems.

See also: https://github.com/neomutt/neomutt/issues/1014

If you assign text to this variable, then an encrypted PGP message is only considered successfully decrypted if the output from $pgp_decrypt_command contains the text. This is used to protect against a spoofed encrypted message, with multipart/encrypted headers but containing a block that is not actually encrypted. (e.g. simply signed and ascii armored text).

Note that if $pgp_check_gpg_decrypt_status_fd is set, this variable is ignored. (PGP only)

This is the default key-pair to use for PGP operations. It will be used for encryption (see $postpone_encrypt and $pgp_self_encrypt).

It will also be used for signing unless $pgp_sign_as is set.

The (now deprecated) pgp_self_encrypt_as is an alias for this variable, and should no longer be used. (PGP only)

This command is used to encrypt a body part without signing it.

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. Note that in this case, %r expands to the search string, which is a list of one or more quoted values such as email address, name, or keyid. (PGP only)

This command is used to both sign and encrypt a body part.

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. (PGP only)

This variable allows you to customize the PGP key selection menu to your personal taste. If $crypt_use_gpgme is set , then it applies to S/MIME key selection menu also. This string is similar to $index_format, but has its own set of printf(3)-like sequences:

See the section "Sending Cryptographically Signed/Encrypted Messages" of the user manual for the meaning of the letters some of these sequences expand to.

(Crypto only) or (PGP only when GPGME disabled)

This command is used to export a public key from the user's key ring.

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. (PGP only)

This command is invoked whenever NeoMutt needs to fetch the public key associated with an email address. Of the sequences supported by $pgp_decode_command, %r is the only printf(3)-like sequence used with this format. Note that in this case, %r expands to the email address, not the public key ID (the key ID is unknown, which is why NeoMutt is invoking this command). (PGP only)

If you assign a text to this variable, then a PGP signature is only considered verified if the output from $pgp_verify_command contains the text. Use this variable if the exit code from the command is 0 even for bad signatures. (PGP only)

Setting this variable will cause NeoMutt to ignore OpenPGP subkeys. Instead, the principal key will inherit the subkeys' capabilities. Unset this if you want to play interesting key selection games. (PGP only)

This command is used to import a key from a message into the user's public key ring.

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. (PGP only)

This command is used to list the public key ring's contents. The output format must be analogous to the one used by

gpg --list-keys --with-colons --with-fingerprint

Note: gpg's fixed-list-mode option should not be used. It produces a different date format which may result in NeoMutt showing incorrect key generation dates.

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. (PGP only)

This command is used to list the secret key ring's contents. The output format must be analogous to the one used by:

gpg --list-keys --with-colons --with-fingerprint

Note: gpg's fixed-list-mode option should not be used. It produces a different date format which may result in NeoMutt showing incorrect key generation dates.

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. (PGP only)

Specifies how the entries in the pgp menu are sorted. The following are legal values:

If you prefer reverse order of the above values, prefix it with "reverse-". (PGP only)

If set , use 64 bit PGP key IDs, if unset use the normal 32 bit key IDs. NOTE: Internally, NeoMutt has transitioned to using fingerprints (or long key IDs as a fallback). This option now only controls the display of key IDs in the key selection menu and a few other places. (PGP only)

This option controls whether NeoMutt will prompt you for automatically sending a (signed/encrypted) message using PGP/MIME when inline (traditional) fails (for any reason).

Also note that using the old-style PGP message format is strongly deprecated . (PGP only)

Setting this variable will cause NeoMutt to always attempt to create an inline (traditional) message when replying to a message which is PGP encrypted/signed inline. This can be overridden by use of the pgp menu, when inline is not required. This option does not automatically detect if the (replied-to) message is inline; instead it relies on NeoMutt internals for previously checked/flagged messages.

Note that NeoMutt might automatically use PGP/MIME for messages which consist of more than a single MIME part. NeoMutt can be configured to ask before sending PGP/MIME messages when inline (traditional) would not work.

Also see the $pgp_mime_auto variable.

Also note that using the old-style PGP message format is strongly deprecated . (PGP only)

If set , signed and encrypted messages will consist of nested multipart/signed and multipart/encrypted body parts.

This is useful for applications like encrypted and signed mailing lists, where the outer layer ( multipart/encrypted ) can be easily removed, while the inner multipart/signed part is retained. (PGP only)

When set , PGP encrypted messages will also be encrypted using the key in $pgp_default_key. (PGP only)

If set , NeoMutt will display non-usable keys on the PGP key selection menu. This includes keys which have been revoked, have expired, or have been marked as "disabled" by the user. (PGP only)

If you have a different key pair to use for signing, you should set this to the signing key. Most people will only need to set $pgp_default_key. It is recommended that you use the keyid form to specify your key (e.g. 0x00112233 ). (PGP only)

This command is used to create the detached PGP signature for a multipart/signed PGP/MIME body part.

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. (PGP only)

If set , NeoMutt will automatically encode PGP/MIME signed messages as quoted-printable. Please note that unsetting this variable may lead to problems with non-verifyable PGP signatures, so only change this if you know what you are doing. (PGP only)

The number of seconds after which a cached passphrase will expire if not used. (PGP only)

If set , NeoMutt expects a gpg-agent(1) process will handle private key passphrase prompts. If unset , NeoMutt will prompt for the passphrase and pass it via stdin to the pgp command.

Note that as of version 2.1, GnuPG automatically spawns an agent and requires the agent be used for passphrase management. Since that version is increasingly prevalent, this variable now defaults set .

NeoMutt works with a GUI or curses pinentry program. A TTY pinentry should not be used.

If you are using an older version of GnuPG without an agent running, or another encryption program without an agent, you will need to unset this variable. (PGP only)

This command is used to verify PGP signatures.

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. (PGP only)

This command is used to verify key information from the key selection menu.

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. (PGP only)

Used in connection with the <pipe-message> function. When unset , NeoMutt will pipe the messages without any preprocessing. When set , NeoMutt will attempt to decode the messages first.

Also see $pipe_decode_weed, which controls whether headers will be weeded when this is set .

For <pipe-message>, when $pipe_decode is set, this further controls whether NeoMutt will weed headers.

The separator to add between messages when piping a list of tagged messages to an external Unix command.

Used in connection with the <pipe-message> function following <tag-prefix>. If this variable is unset , when piping a list of tagged messages NeoMutt will concatenate the messages and will pipe them all concatenated. When set , NeoMutt will pipe the messages one by one. In both cases the messages are piped in the current sorted order, and the $pipe_sep separator is added after each message.

If set , NeoMutt will try all available authentication methods. When unset , NeoMutt will only fall back to other authentication methods if the previous methods are unavailable. If a method is available but authentication fails, NeoMutt will not connect to the POP server.

This is a colon-separated list of authentication methods NeoMutt may attempt to use to log in to an POP server, in the order NeoMutt should try them. Authentication methods are either "user", "apop" or any SASL mechanism, e.g. "digest-md5", "gssapi" or "cram-md5". This option is case-insensitive. If this option is unset (the default) NeoMutt will try all available methods, in order from most-secure to least-secure.

Example:

set pop_authenticators="digest-md5:apop:user"

This variable configures how often (in seconds) NeoMutt should look for new mail in the currently selected mailbox if it is a POP mailbox.

If set , NeoMutt will delete successfully downloaded messages from the POP server when using the <fetch-mail> function. When unset , NeoMutt will download messages but also leave them on the POP server.

The name of your POP server for the <fetch-mail> function. You can also specify an alternative port, username and password, i.e.:

[pop[s]://][username[:password]@]popserver[:port]

where "[...]" denotes an optional part.

If this variable is set , NeoMutt will try to use the " LAST " POP command for retrieving only unread messages from the POP server when using the <fetch-mail> function.

The command to run to generate an OAUTH refresh token for authorizing your connection to your POP server. This command will be run on every connection attempt that uses the OAUTHBEARER authentication mechanism. See " oauth" for details.

Specifies the password for your POP account. If unset , NeoMutt will prompt you for your password when you open a POP mailbox.

Warning : you should only use this option when you are on a fairly secure machine, because the superuser can read your neomuttrc even if you are the only one who can read the file.

Controls whether or not NeoMutt will try to reconnect to the POP server if the connection is lost.

Your login name on the POP server.

This variable defaults to your user name on the local machine.

If set to yes , NeoMutt will post article to newsgroup that have not permissions to posting (e.g. moderated). Note: if news server does not support posting to that newsgroup or totally read-only, that posting will not have an effect.

Controls whether or not messages are saved in the $postponed mailbox when you elect not to send immediately. If set to ask-yes or ask-no , you will be prompted with "Save (postpone) draft message?" when quitting from the "compose" screen.

Also see the $recall variable.

When set , postponed messages that are marked for encryption will be self-encrypted. NeoMutt will first try to encrypt using the value specified in $pgp_default_key or $smime_default_key. If those are not set, it will try the deprecated $postpone_encrypt_as. (Crypto only)

This is a deprecated fall-back variable for $postpone_encrypt. Please use $pgp_default_key or $smime_default_key. (Crypto only)

NeoMutt allows you to indefinitely " postpone sending a message" which you are editing. When you choose to postpone a message, NeoMutt saves it in the mailbox specified by this variable.

Also see the $postpone variable.

If set , a shell command to be executed if NeoMutt fails to establish a connection to the server. This is useful for setting up secure connections, e.g. with ssh(1). If the command returns a nonzero status, NeoMutt gives up opening the server. Example:

set preconnect="ssh -f -q -L 1234:mailhost.net:143 mailhost.net \
sleep 20 < /dev/null > /dev/null"

Mailbox "foo" on "mailhost.net" can now be reached as "{localhost:1234}foo".

Note: For this example to work, you must be able to log in to the remote machine without having to enter a password.

This variable specifies a list of comma-separated languages. RFC8255 : user preferred languages to be searched in parts and display. Example:

set preferred_languages="en,fr,de"

Controls whether or not NeoMutt really prints messages. This is set to "ask-no" by default, because some people accidentally hit "p" often.

This specifies the command pipe that should be used to print messages.

Used in connection with the <print-message> function. If this option is set , the message is decoded before it is passed to the external command specified by $print_command. If this option is unset , no processing will be applied to the message when printing it. The latter setting may be useful if you are using some advanced printer filter which is able to properly format e-mail messages for printing.

Also see $print_decode_weed, which controls whether headers will be weeded when this is set .

For <print-message>, when $print_decode is set, this further controls whether NeoMutt will weed headers.

Used in connection with the <print-message> function. If this option is set , the command specified by $print_command is executed once for each message which is to be printed. If this option is unset , the command specified by $print_command is executed only once, and all the messages are concatenated, with a form feed as the message separator.

Those who use the enscript (1) program's mail-printing mode will most likely want to set this option.

If you use an external $pager, setting this variable will cause NeoMutt to prompt you for a command when the pager exits rather than returning to the index menu. If unset , NeoMutt will return to the index menu when the external pager exits.

This specifies the command NeoMutt will use to make external address queries. The string may contain a "%s", which will be substituted with the query string the user types. NeoMutt will add quotes around the string substituted for "%s" automatically according to shell quoting rules, so you should avoid adding your own. If no "%s" is found in the string, NeoMutt will append the user's query to the end of the string. See " query" (https://neomutt.org/guide/advancedusage.html#query) for more information.

This variable describes the format of the "query" menu. The following printf(3)-style sequences are understood:

For an explanation of "soft-fill", see the $index_format documentation.

The following sequences are deprecated; they will be removed in the future.

This variable controls whether "quit" and "exit" actually quit from NeoMutt. If this option is set , they do quit, if it is unset , they have no effect, and if it is set to ask-yes or ask-no , you are prompted for confirmation when you try to quit.

In order to quit from NeoMutt if this variable is unset , you must send the signal SIGINT to NeoMutt. This can usually be achieved by pressing CTRL-C in the terminal.

A regular expression used in the internal pager to determine quoted sections of text in the body of a message. Quoted text may be filtered out using the <toggle-quoted> command, or colored according to the "color quoted" family of directives.

Higher levels of quoting may be colored differently ("color quoted1", "color quoted2", etc.). The quoting level is determined by removing the last character from the matched text and recursively reapplying the regular expression until it fails to produce a match.

Match detection may be overridden by the $smileys regular expression.

If set to a value greater than 0, NeoMutt will display which message it is currently on when reading a mailbox or when performing search actions such as search and limit. The message is printed after this many messages have been read or searched (e.g., if set to 25, NeoMutt will print a message when it is at message 25, and then again when it gets to message 50). This variable is meant to indicate progress when reading or searching large mailboxes which may take some time. When set to 0, only a single message will appear before the reading the mailbox.

Also see the $write_inc, $net_inc and $time_inc variables and the " tuning" section of the manual for performance considerations.

If set , all folders are opened in read-only mode.

This variable specifies what "real" or "personal" name should be used when sending messages.

If not specified, then the user's "real name" will be read from /etc/passwd. This option will not be used, if " $from" is set.

Controls whether or not NeoMutt recalls postponed messages when composing a new message.

Setting this variable to yes is not generally useful, and thus not recommended. Note that the <recall-message> function can be used to manually recall postponed messages.

Also see $postponed variable.

This specifies the file into which your outgoing messages should be appended. (This is meant as the primary method for saving a copy of your messages, but another way to do this is using the " my_hdr" command to create a "Bcc:" field with your email address in it.)

The value of $record is overridden by the $force_name and $save_name variables, and the " fcc-hook" command. Also see $copy and $write_bcc.

This option controls how quotes from format=flowed messages are displayed in the pager and when replying (with $text_flowed unset ). When set, this option adds spaces after each level of quote marks, turning ">>>foo" into "> > > foo".

Note: If $reflow_text is unset , this option has no effect. Also, this option does not affect replies when $text_flowed is set .

When set , NeoMutt will reformat paragraphs in text/plain parts marked format=flowed. If unset , NeoMutt will display paragraphs unaltered from how they appear in the message body. See RFC3676 for details on the format=flowed format.

Also see $reflow_wrap, and $wrap.

This variable controls the maximum paragraph width when reformatting text/plain parts when $reflow_text is set . When the value is 0, paragraphs will be wrapped at the terminal's right margin. A positive value sets the paragraph width relative to the left margin. A negative value set the paragraph width relative to the right margin.

Be aware that the reformatted lines of a paragraph are still subject to $wrap. This means if $reflow_wrap is 40 and $wrap is 30, then the paragraph gets reformatted to 40 characters a line (due to $reflow_wrap) and afterwards each 40-character-line is split at 30 characters (due to $wrap), resulting in alternating line lengths of 30 and 10 characters.

Also see $wrap.

A regular expression used to recognize reply messages when threading and replying. The default value corresponds to the standard Latin "Re:" prefix.

This value may have been localized by the translator for your locale, adding other prefixes that are common in the locale. You can add your own prefixes by appending inside "^(re)". For example: "^(re|sv)" or "^(re|aw|sv)".

The second parenthesized expression matches zero or more bracketed numbers following the prefix, such as "Re[1]: ". The initial "\\[" means a literal left-bracket character. Note the backslash must be doubled when used inside a double quoted string in the neomuttrc. "[0-9]+" means one or more numbers. "\\]" means a literal right-bracket. Finally the whole parenthesized expression has a "*" suffix, meaning it can occur zero or more times.

The last part matches a colon followed by an optional space or tab. Note "\t" is converted to a literal tab inside a double quoted string. If you use a single quoted string, you would have to type an actual tab character, and would need to convert the double-backslashes to single backslashes.

Note: the result of this regex match against the subject is stored in the header cache. Mutt isn't smart enough to invalidate a header cache entry based on changing $reply_regex, so if you aren't seeing correct values in the index, try temporarily turning off the header cache. If that fixes the problem, then once the variable is set to your liking, remove your stale header cache files and turn the header cache back on.

If unset and you are replying to a message sent by you, NeoMutt will assume that you want to reply to the recipients of that message rather than to yourself.

Also see the " alternates" command.

If set , when replying to a message, NeoMutt will use the address listed in the Reply-to: header as the recipient of the reply. If unset , it will use the address in the From: header field instead. This option is useful for reading a mailing list that sets the Reply-To: header field to the list address and you want to send a private message to the author of a message.

This variable provides a toggle. When active, the From: header will be extracted from the current mail's 'X-Original-To:' header. This setting does not have precedence over " reverse_real_name".

Assuming 'fast_reply' is disabled, this option will prompt the user with a prefilled From: header.

When set , the cursor in a list will be automatically advanced to the next (possibly undeleted) message/attachment/entry whenever a command that modifies the current message/attachment/entry is executed.

Examples of such commands are tagging a message, deleting an entry, or saving an attachment.

If set , draft files (specified by -H on the command line) are processed similarly to when resuming a postponed message. Recipients are not prompted for; send-hooks are not evaluated; no alias expansion takes place; user-defined headers and signatures are not added to the message.

If set , draft files previously edited (via -E -H on the command line) will have $resume_draft_files automatically set when they are used as a draft file again.

The first time a draft file is saved, NeoMutt will add a header, X-Mutt-Resume-Draft to the saved file. The next time the draft file is read in, if NeoMutt sees the header, it will set $resume_draft_files.

This option is designed to prevent multiple signatures, user-defined headers, and other processing effects from being made multiple times to the draft file.

This variable controls whether or not NeoMutt will display the "personal" name from your aliases in the index menu if it finds an alias that matches the message's sender. For example, if you have the following alias:

alias juser abd30425@somewhere.net (Joe User)

and then you receive mail which contains the following header:

From: abd30425@somewhere.net

It would be displayed in the index menu as "Joe User" instead of "abd30425@somewhere.net." This is useful when the person's e-mail address is not human friendly.

It may sometimes arrive that you receive mail to a certain machine, move the messages to another machine, and reply to some the messages from there. If this variable is set , the default From: line of the reply messages is built using the address where you received the messages you are replying to if that address matches your " alternates". If the variable is unset , or the address that would be used doesn't match your " alternates", the From: line will use your address on the current machine.

Also see the " alternates" command and $reverse_real_name.

This variable fine-tunes the behavior of the $reverse_name feature.

When it is unset , NeoMutt will remove the real name part of a matching address. This allows the use of the email address without having to also use what the sender put in the real name field.

When it is set , NeoMutt will use the matching address as-is.

In either case, a missing real name will be filled in afterwards using the value of $real_name.

When this variable is set , NeoMutt will decode RFC2047-encoded MIME parameters. You want to set this variable when NeoMutt suggests you to save attachments to files named like:

=?iso-8859-1?Q?file=5F=E4=5F991116=2Ezip?=
=?utf-8?Q?z=C4=99ta.png?=

When this variable is set interactively, the change won't be active until you change folders.

Note that this use of RFC2047's encoding is explicitly prohibited by the standard, but nevertheless encountered in the wild and produced by, e.g., Outlook.

Also note that setting this parameter will not have the effect that NeoMutt generates this kind of encoding. Instead, NeoMutt will unconditionally use the encoding specified in RFC2231.

If set , NeoMutt will take the sender's full address when choosing a default folder for saving a mail. If $save_name or $force_name is set too, the selection of the Fcc folder will be changed as well.

When unset , mailboxes which contain no saved messages will be removed when closed (the exception is $spool_file which is never removed). If set , mailboxes are never removed.

Note: This only applies to mbox and MMDF folders, NeoMutt does not delete MH and Maildir directories.

This variable controls the size of the history (per category) saved in the $history_file file.

Setting this to a value greater than $history is possible. However, there will never be more than $history entries to select from even if more are recorded in the history file.

This variable controls how copies of outgoing messages are saved. When set , a check is made to see if a mailbox specified by the recipient address exists (this is done by searching for a mailbox in the $folder directory with the username part of the recipient address). If the mailbox exists, the outgoing message will be saved to that mailbox, otherwise the message is saved to the $record mailbox.

Also see the $force_name variable.

When set , info about unsubscribed newsgroups will be saved into "newsrc" file and into cache.

When this variable is unset , scoring is turned off. This can be useful to selectively disable scoring for certain folders when the $score_threshold_delete variable and related are used.

Messages which have been assigned a score equal to or lower than the value of this variable are automatically marked for deletion by NeoMutt. Since NeoMutt scores are always greater than or equal to zero, the default setting of this variable will never mark a message for deletion.

Messages which have been assigned a score greater than or equal to this variable's value are automatically marked "flagged".

Messages which have been assigned a score equal to or lower than the value of this variable are automatically marked as read by NeoMutt. Since NeoMutt scores are always greater than or equal to zero, the default setting of this variable will never mark a message read.

For the pager, this variable specifies the number of lines shown before search results. By default, search results will be top-aligned.

A colon-delimited list of character sets for outgoing messages. NeoMutt will use the first character set into which the text can be converted exactly. If your $charset is not "iso-8859-1" and recipients may not understand "UTF-8", it is advisable to include in the list an appropriate widely used standard character set (such as "iso-8859-2", "koi8-r" or "iso-2022-jp") either instead of or after "iso-8859-1".

In case the text can't be converted into one of these exactly, NeoMutt uses $charset as a fallback.

Specifies the program and arguments used to deliver mail sent by NeoMutt. NeoMutt expects that the specified program interprets additional arguments as recipient addresses. NeoMutt appends all recipients after adding a -- delimiter (if not already present). Additional flags, such as for $use_8bit_mime, $use_envelope_from, $dsn_notify, or $dsn_return will be added before the delimiter.

Note: This command is invoked differently from most other commands in NeoMutt. It is tokenized by space, and invoked directly via execvp(3) with an array of arguments - so commands or arguments with spaces in them are not supported. The shell is not used to run the command, so shell quoting is also not supported.

See also: $write_bcc.

Specifies the number of seconds to wait for the $sendmail process to finish before giving up and putting delivery in the background.

NeoMutt interprets the value of this variable as follows:

Note that if you specify a value other than 0, the output of the child process will be put in a temporary file. If there is some error, you will be informed as to where to find the output.

Command to use when spawning a subshell. If not specified, then the user's login shell from /etc/passwd is used.

When set to info, the multipart/alternative information is shown. When set to inline, all of the alternatives are displayed. When not set, the default behavior is to show only the chosen alternative.

If set , news server will be asked for new newsgroups on entering the browser. Otherwise, it will be done only once for a news server. Also controls whether or not number of new articles of subscribed newsgroups will be then checked.

If set , only subscribed newsgroups that contain unread articles will be displayed in browser.

By default the sidebar will show the mailbox's path, relative to the $folder variable. This specifies the number of parent directories to hide from display in the sidebar. For example: If a maildir is normally displayed in the sidebar as dir1/dir2/dir3/maildir, setting sidebar_component_depth=2 will display it as dir3/maildir, having truncated the 2 highest directories.

See also: $sidebar_short_path

This contains the list of characters which you would like to treat as folder separators for displaying paths in the sidebar.

Local mail is often arranged in directories: 'dir1/dir2/mailbox'.

set sidebar_delim_chars='/'

IMAP mailboxes are often named: 'folder1.folder2.mailbox'.

set sidebar_delim_chars='.'

See also: $sidebar_short_path, $sidebar_folder_indent, $sidebar_indent_string.

The default is a Unicode vertical line.

This specifies the characters to be drawn between the sidebar (when visible) and the other NeoMutt panels. ASCII and Unicode line-drawing characters are supported.

The divider char can be set to an empty string for some extra space. If empty, setting the sidebar_background color may help distinguish the sidebar from other panels.

Set this to indent mailboxes in the sidebar.

See also: $sidebar_short_path, $sidebar_indent_string, $sidebar_delim_chars.