meli

BSD/Linux/macos terminal email client with support for multiple accounts and Maildir / mbox / notmuch / IMAP / JMAP / NNTP (Usenet).

Try anold, outdated but online and interactive web demo powered by WebAssembly!

• Say hello on#meli on OFTC IRC, or,
• #meli:matrix.org Matrix bridge (if operational)
• Mailing lists
• Main repositoryhttps://git.meli-email.org/meli/meli Report bugs and/or feature requests inmeli's issue tracker
  Official git mirrors

  • https://codeberg.org/meli/meli
  • https://github.com/meli/meli
  • https://ayllu-forge.org/meli/meli
  • https://gitlab.com/meli-project/meli

Table of contents:

• Install
• Build
  • Cargo Compile-time Features
• Quick start
  • Supported E-mail backends
  • E-mail submission backends
  • Non-exhaustive list of features
  • HTML Rendering
• Documentation

Install

• Crates.io withcargo on all supported systems and architectureshttps://crates.io/crates/meli

  

  cargo install meli

  Install latest development snapshot from git repository:

  cargo install --git https://git.meli-email.org/meli/meli.git meli

• Official Debian (and Debian derivatives) packageshttps://packages.debian.org/trixie/meli

  

  apt install meli

• AUR (archlinux)https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/meli

  

• OpenSUSEhttps://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory/meli

  

• Alpine Linuxhttps://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=meli

  

  apk install meli

• NetBSD with pkgsrchttps://pkgsrc.se/mail/meli

  

• OpenBSD portshttps://openports.pl/path/mail/meli

  

• macOS with

  • Homebrewhttps://formulae.brew.sh/formula/meli

    

    brew install meli

  • MacPortshttps://ports.macports.org/port/meli/

    

    port install meli

• Nix with Nixpkgshttps://search.nixos.org/packages?query=meli

  

• Pre-built debian package, static binaries foramd64,arm64 architectures

Build

Runmake orcargo build --release --bin meli.

Seemake help output for information on how to use theMakefile.

For detailed building instructions, seeBUILD.md

Cargo Compile-time Features

meli supports opting in and out of features at compile time with cargo features.

The contents of thedefault feature are:

default=["sqlite3","notmuch","smtp","dbus-notifications","gpgme","cli-docs","jmap","static"]

A list of all the features and a description for each follows:

Quick start

# Create configuration file in ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/meli/config.toml:$ meli create-config# Edit configuration in ${EDITOR} or ${VISUAL}:$ meli edit-config# Optionally, install manual pages if installed via cargo:$ meli install-man# Ready to go.$ meli# You can read any manual page with the CLI subcommand `man`:$ meli man meli.7# See help output for all options and subcommands.$ meli --help

See a comprehensive tour ofmeli in the manual pagemeli(7).

See also theQuickstart tutorial online.

After installingmeli, seemeli(1),meli.conf(5),meli(7) andmeli-themes(5) for documentation.Sample configuration and theme files can be found in themeli/docs/samples/ subdirectory.Examples for configuration file settings can be found inmeli.conf.examples(5)Manual pages are alsohosted online.meli by default looks for a configuration file in this location:${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/meli/config.toml.

You can run meli with arbitrary configuration files by setting the${MELI_CONFIG} environment variable to their locations, i.e.:

MELI_CONFIG=./test_config cargo run

Seemeli(7) for an extensive tutorial andmeli.conf(5) for all configuration values.

Main view	Compact main view	Compose with embed terminal editor

Supported E-mail backends

E-mail submission backends

• SMTP
• Pipe to shell script
• Server-side submission when supported

Non-exhaustive list of features

• TLS
• email threading support
• multithreaded, async operation
• optionally run your editor of choice inside meli, with an embeddedxterm-compatible terminal emulator
• plain text configuration in TOML
• ability to open emails in UI tabs and switch to them
• optional sqlite3 index search
• override almost any setting per mailbox, per account
• contact list (+read-only vCard and mutt alias file support)
• forced UTF-8 (other encodings are read-only)
• configurable shortcuts
• theming
• NO_COLOR support
• ascii-only drawing characters option
• view text/html attachments through an html filter command (w3m by default)
• pipe attachments/mail to stuff
• use external attachment file picker instead of typing in an attachment's full path
• GPG signing, encryption, signing + encryption
• GPG signature verification

HTML Rendering

HTML rendering is achieved usingw3m by default.You can use thepager.html_filter setting to override this (for more details you can consultmeli.conf(5)).

Documentation

See a comprehensive tour ofmeli in the manual pagemeli(7).

See also theQuickstart tutorial online.

After installingmeli, seemeli(1),meli.conf(5),meli(7) andmeli-themes(5) for documentation.Sample configuration and theme files can be found in themeli/docs/samples/ subdirectory.Manual pages are alsohosted online.

meli by default looks for a configuration file in this location:${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/meli/config.toml

You can run meli with arbitrary configuration files by setting the${MELI_CONFIG} environment variable to their locations, or use the[-c, --config] argument:

MELI_CONFIG=./test_config meli

or

meli -c ./test_config