Ubuntu Manpage: notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging

Provided by: notmuch_0.38.3-5ubuntu1_amd64

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, reading, 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 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 functionality. More sophisticated interfaces are expected to  be  built  on
       top  of either the command-line interface, or more likely, on top of the notmuch library interface. See ‐
       https://notmuchmail.org for more about alternate 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 optional 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  configuration file specified by
              NOTMUCH_CONFIG. The empty string is a permitted and sometimes useful value of  FILE,  which  tells
              notmuch to use only configuration metadata from the database.

       --uuid=HEX
              Enforce  that  the  database  UUID  (a unique identifier which persists until e.g. the database is
              compacted) is HEX; exit with an error if  it  is  not.  This  is  useful  to  detect  rollover  in
              modification 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 command. For example, notmuch
       subcommand --uuid=HEX is equivalent to notmuch --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 containing your email archives. Your answers will be written to a
configuration file in NOTMUCH_CONFIG (if set) or ${HOME}/.notmuch-config . This configuration file will
be created with descriptive comments, making 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-directories and should primarily contain
only files with individual email messages (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 currently 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 syntax. See notmuch-search-terms for
more details on the supported syntax.

The notmuch-search, notmuch-show, notmuch-address and notmuch-count commands are used to query the email
database.

The notmuch-reply command is useful for preparing a template for an email reply.

The notmuch-tag command is the only command available for manipulating database contents.

The notmuch-dump and notmuch-restore commands can be used to create a textual dump of email tags for
backup purposes, and to restore from that dump.

The notmuch-config command can be used to get or set settings in the notmuch configuration file.

EXTERNAL 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.
The environment variable NOTMUCH_CONFIG will be set according to --config, if the latter is present.

OPTION SYNTAX
All options accepting an argument can be used with '=' or ':' as a separator. 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

DUPLICATE MESSAGE FILES

       Notmuch  considers the Message-ID to be the primary identifier of message. Per RFC 5322 the Message-ID is
       supposed to be globally unique, but this fails in two distinct ways. When you receive copies of a message
       via a mechanism like Cc or via a mailing list, the copies are typically interchangeable. In the  case  of
       some  broken  mail  sending  software, the same Message-ID is used for completely unrelated messages. The
       options search --duplicate and show --duplicate options provide the user with control over which  message
       file  is  displayed.  Front  ends  will need to provide their own interface, see e.g. the Emacs front-end
       Dealing with duplicates.

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 for details.

       NOTMUCH_DATABASE
              Specifies the location of the notmuch database. See notmuch-config for details.

       NOTMUCH_PROFILE
              Selects among notmuch configurations. See notmuch-config for details.

       NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
              Location to write a talloc memory usage report. See  talloc_enable_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.

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

       2009-2024, Carl Worth and many others

0.38.3                                            Mar 11, 2025                                        NOTMUCH(1)