Himalaya

Minimalist CLI email client, written in Rust.

The project is under active development. Do not use in production before the v1.0.0 (see the roadmap).

Table of contents

Motivation

Bringing emails to the terminal is a pain. The mainstream TUI, (neo)mutt, takes time to configure. The default mapping is not intuitive when coming from the Vim environment. It is even scary to use at the beginning, since you are dealing with sensitive data!

The aim of Himalaya is to extract the email logic into a simple (yet solid) CLI API that can be used either directly from the terminal or UIs. It gives users more flexibility.

Installation

curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/soywod/himalaya/master/install.sh | bash

See the wiki section for other installation methods.

Configuration

# ~/.config/himalaya/config.toml

name = "Your full name"
downloads-dir = "/abs/path/to/downloads"
signature = "Regards,"

[gmail]
default = true
email = "[email protected]"

imap-host = "imap.gmail.com"
imap-port = 993
imap-login = "[email protected]"
imap-passwd-cmd = "pass show gmail"

smtp-host = "smtp.gmail.com"
smtp-port = 487
smtp-login = "[email protected]"
smtp-passwd-cmd = "security find-internet-password -gs gmail -w"

See the wiki section for all the options.

Usage

himalaya 0.2.0
soywod <[email protected]>
📫 Minimalist CLI email client

USAGE:
    himalaya [OPTIONS] [SUBCOMMAND]

FLAGS:
    -h, --help       Prints help information
    -V, --version    Prints version information

OPTIONS:
    -a, --account <STRING>     Selects a specific account
    -m, --mailbox <MAILBOX>    Selects a specific mailbox [default: INBOX]
    -o, --output <STRING>      Defines the output format [default: plain]  [possible values: plain, json]

SUBCOMMANDS:
    attachments    Downloads all message attachments
    copy           Copy a message to the targetted mailbox
    delete         Delete a message
    flags          Handles flags
    forward        Forwards a message
    help           Prints this message or the help of the given subcommand(s)
    idle           Spawns a blocking idle daemon
    list           Lists all messages
    mailboxes      Lists all mailboxes
    move           Move a message to the targetted mailbox
    read           Reads text bodies of a message
    reply          Answers to a message
    save           Saves a raw message
    search         Lists messages matching the given IMAP query
    send           Sends a raw message
    template       Generates a message template
    write          Writes a new message

See the wiki section for more information about commands.

List mailboxes

Shows mailboxes in a basic table.

List messages

Shows messages in a basic table.

Search messages

Shows filtered messages in a basic table. The query should follow the RFC-3501.

Download attachments

Downloads all attachments from a message directly to the downloads-dir.

Read a message

Shows the text content of a message (text/plain if exists, otherwise text/html).

Write a new message

himalaya write

Opens your default editor (from the $EDITOR environment variable) to compose a new message.

Reply to a message

himalaya reply --all 5123

Opens your default editor to reply to a message.

Forward a message

himalaya forward 5123

Opens your default editor to forward a message.

Copy a message

himalaya copy 5123 Sent

Copies a message to the targetted mailbox.

Move a message

himalaya move 5123 Drafts

Moves a message to the targetted mailbox.

Delete a message

himalaya delete 5123

Moves a message.

Listen to new messages

himalaya idle

Starts a session in idle mode (blocking). When a new message arrives, it runs the command notify-cmd defined in the config file.

Here a use case with systemd:

# ~/.config/systemd/user/himalaya.service

[Unit]
Description=Himalaya new messages notifier

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/himalaya idle
Restart=always
RestartSec=5

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

systemctl --user enable himalaya.service
systemctl --user start  himalaya.service

Interfaces

Not yet, but feel free to contribute ;)

• Vim plugin

Credits

• IMAP RFC3501
• Iris, the himalaya predecessor
• isync, an email synchronizer for offline usage
• NeoMutt, an email terminal user interface
• Alpine, an other email terminal user interface
• mutt-wizard, a tool over NeoMutt and isync
• rust-imap, a rust IMAP lib