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Ctrl+1. The module the application opens in: folders down the left, the message list in the middle, the message itself on the right.
Mail speaks IMAP, POP3 and SMTP and nothing else. There is no service behind it — no account
with us, no relay, no sync server. Every message you have is a row in a SQLite file under
~/.local/share/mailbox/accounts/, kept as the bytes it arrived as.
The View tab's Current View offers three, and they differ only in how much of each message the list shows:
| Compact | Two lines a message — sender and subject, then a preview line. The default. |
| Single | One line a message, for a list you scan rather than read. |
| Preview | Compact with more of the message's first words. |
Beside them, Arrangement groups the list: by Date, From, To, Categories, Flag Status, Flag Start, Flag Due or Size. An arrangement is a grouping and a sort — arranging by Date bands the list into Today, Yesterday and the rest, which is why the headings change with it.
Layout is where the reading pane goes: to the right, underneath, or off. A great many people read with it off; every flow in this application is built to work that way.
Finding a message. Ctrl+E puts the caret in the search box. It takes words, and it takes
the reference's own grammar — key:value, and anything else is a word to search for:
from: to: cc: subject: body:
|
Who and what. Quote a phrase: subject:"release notes". |
category: |
A colour category by name. |
attachment:yes read:no unread:yes flagged:yes
|
Yes or no. |
importance:high |
high, normal or low. |
size:large |
tiny, small, medium, large, verylarge. |
received: sent: due:
|
today, yesterday, thisweek, lastweek and the rest. |
Search Folders save a search as a folder that stays up to date, and All Mailboxes searches every account at once. Search is local and full-text; where a server supports it, an unindexed search can be handed to the server as well — untranslatable queries never leave the machine.
Rules. Home › Rules, or right-click a message and Create Rule. Rules run here as mail arrives, and where your server speaks ManageSieve they are also compiled to Sieve and published, so they go on sorting while your machine is off. Automatic Replies (Out of Office) is on the File tab's Info page and works the same way: the server holds it, so it answers while you are away rather than while you are running.
Junk. A Bayesian filter trained on what you mark, not on somebody's list. Safe and blocked senders always win over the filter. Nothing is deleted; junk goes to the Junk folder.
Sending, and unsending. Undo Send holds a message briefly before it goes. Schedule send holds it until a time you name. Snooze takes a message out of the inbox until you want it back. Quick Steps are one-press chains — file, forward and mark read in a single button.
Reading safely. Every message goes through a sanitizer before the rendering engine sees it. Remote images are blocked by default and a bar names the hosts that wanted to be fetched. DKIM, SPF and DMARC results are shown on the message, with warnings for lookalike domains and display-name spoofing. S/MIME and OpenPGP are built in both directions and ship disabled — nothing cryptographic happens until you switch it on. See Hardening for the whole picture.
An account can send as more than one address — a work alias, a role address, a domain that forwards into the same inbox. Account Settings › E-mail › Identities… lists them; each has its own name, its own Reply-To and its own signature, and the From line on a new message is a menu of all of them. Every identity goes out through that account's own outgoing server, so a provider that does not know an address may refuse to carry mail from it.
- Signatures: File › Options › Mail › Signatures. One for new mail and one for replies, per address.
- Accounts: File › Account Settings. Adding one runs autoconfig from your address; Gmail, Yahoo and AOL want an app password rather than your own.
- Older mail: a folder keeps a rolling window and the list ends in a more row that fetches the next hundred. The window gates downloads, never what is kept.