Thirty Days of Mutt - Days 4 & 5

| posted in: nerdliness 


Having not used mutt regularly for some time now, I’ve had to relearn its built-in keyboard commands as well as some of the macros that I created.

Custom Keyboard Commands

I currently have four separate email accounts setup in mutt. I’m actually using neomutt which has the sidebar already baked in. I have the sidebar setup to list each account with the folders I’m interested in: INBOX, Drafts, Sent, Junk, and Archive.

I have two sets of macros that let me jump to the inbox of any account directly. I can key .1 or .2 or .3 or .4 to access the accounts by their relative position in the list. I can also use a letter designation: m, r, n, c, preceded by a dot to accomplish the same thing. I set the letter shortcuts up first, and later added the numbers.

I also have a shortcut, .s to save an email to that account’s Archive folder. And a shortcut to move mail to the junk folder, .j. Both of these work in conjunction with to built-in tag, t command to operate on multiple emails.

I can also move up and down the list of mailboxes using the arrow keys. Once a mailbox has focus, pressing the right-arrow key refreshes the contents of that box.

Finally I have some filter defined as macros, allowing me to view unread mail only, .u, to see only today’s email (read or unread), t, to see this week’s mail, .w. .a removes any filter allow all mail to be viewed again.

Being able to customize the possible interactions with mutt is one of its most compelling features.

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Mark H. Nichols

I am a husband, cellist, code prole, nerd, technologist, and all around good guy living and working in fly-over country. You should follow me on Mastodon.