NOTMUCH(1)
NAME
notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging
SYNOPSIS
notmuch [option ...] command [arg ...]
DESCRIPTION
Notmuch is a command-line based program for indexing, searching, read‐
ing, and tagging large collections of email messages.
This page describes how to get started using notmuch from the command
line, and gives a brief overview of the commands available. For more
information on e.g. notmuch show consult the notmuch-show(1) man page,
also accessible via notmuch help show
The quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
notmuch command with no arguments, which will interactively guide you
through the process of indexing your mail.
NOTE
While the command-line program notmuch provides powerful functionality,
it does not provide the most convenient interface for that functional‐
ity. More sophisticated interfaces are expected to be built on top of
either the command-line interface, or more likely, on top of the not‐
much library interface. See https://notmuchmail.org for more about al‐
ternate interfaces to notmuch. The emacs-based interface to notmuch
(available under emacs/ in the Notmuch source distribution) is probably
the most widely used at this time.
OPTIONS
Supported global options for notmuch include
--help [command-name]
Print a synopsis of available commands and exit. With an op‐
tional command name, show the man page for that subcommand.
--version
Print the installed version of notmuch, and exit.
--config=FILE
Specify the configuration file to use. This overrides any con‐
figuration file specified by NOTMUCH_CONFIG. The empty string is
a permitted and sometimes useful value of FILE, which tells not-
much to use only configuration metadata from the database.
--uuid=HEX
Enforce that the database UUID (a unique identifier which per‐
sists until e.g. the database is compacted) is HEX; exit with an
error if it is not. This is useful to detect rollover in modifi‐
cation counts on messages. You can find this UUID using e.g.
notmuch count --lastmod
All global options except --config can also be specified after the com‐
mand. For example, notmuch subcommand --uuid=HEX is equivalent to not-
much --uuid=HEX subcommand.
COMMANDS
SETUP
The notmuch setup command is used to configure Notmuch for first use,
(or to reconfigure it later).
The setup command will prompt for your full name, your primary email
address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory con‐
taining your email archives. Your answers will be written to a configu‐
ration file in NOTMUCH_CONFIG (if set) or ${HOME}/.notmuch-config .
This configuration file will be created with descriptive comments, mak‐
ing it easy to edit by hand later to change the configuration. Or you
can run notmuch setup again to change the configuration.
The mail directory you specify can contain any number of sub-directo‐
ries and should primarily contain only files with individual email mes‐
sages (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If there are other,
non-email files (such as indexes maintained by other email programs)
then notmuch will do its best to detect those and ignore them.
Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is cur‐
rently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir format
with a utility such as mb2md(1) before running notmuch setup.
Invoking notmuch with no command argument will run setup if the setup
command has not previously been completed.
OTHER COMMANDS
Several of the notmuch commands accept search terms with a common syn‐
tax. See notmuch-search-terms(7) for more details on the supported syn‐
tax.
The notmuch-search(1), notmuch-show(1), notmuch-address(1) and not‐
much-count(1) commands are used to query the email database.
The notmuch-reply(1) command is useful for preparing a template for an
email reply.
The notmuch-tag(1) command is the only command available for manipulat‐
ing database contents.
The notmuch-dump(1) and notmuch-restore(1) commands can be used to cre‐
ate a textual dump of email tags for backup purposes, and to restore
from that dump.
The notmuch-config(1) command can be used to get or set settings in the
notmuch configuration file.
CUSTOM COMMANDS
If the given command is not known to notmuch, notmuch tries to execute
the external notmuch-<subcommand> in PATH instead. This allows users to
have their own notmuch related tools to be run via the notmuch command.
By design, this does not allow notmuch's own commands to be overridden
using external commands.
OPTION SYNTAX
All options accepting an argument can be used with '=' or ':' as a sep‐
arator. Except for boolean options (which would be ambiguous), a space
can also be used as a separator. The following are all equivalent:
notmuch --config=alt-config config get user.name
notmuch --config:alt-config config get user.name
notmuch --config alt-config config get user.name
ENVIRONMENT
The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior
of notmuch.
NOTMUCH_CONFIG
Specifies the location of the notmuch configuration file. See
notmuch-config(1) for details.
NOTMUCH_DATABASE
Specifies the location of the notmuch database. See notmuch-con‐
fig(1) for details.
NOTMUCH_PROFILE
Selects among notmuch configurations. See notmuch-config(1) for
details.
NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
Location to write a talloc memory usage report. See talloc_en-
able_leak_report_full in talloc(3) for more information.
NOTMUCH_DEBUG_QUERY
If set to a non-empty value, the notmuch library will print (to
stderr) Xapian queries it constructs.
SEE ALSO
notmuch-address(1), notmuch-compact(1), notmuch-config(1), not‐
much-count(1), notmuch-dump(1), notmuch-hooks(5), notmuch-insert(1),
notmuch-new(1), notmuch-properties(7), notmuch-reindex(1), notmuch-re‐
ply(1), notmuch-restore(1), notmuch-search(1), notmuch-search-terms(7),
notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)
The notmuch website: https://notmuchmail.org
CONTACT
Feel free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before
posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
Real-time interaction with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
(server: irc.libera.chat, channel: #notmuch).
AUTHOR
Carl Worth and many others
COPYRIGHT
2009-2022, Carl Worth and many others
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