Mutt vs NeoMutt

Mutt is a small but very powerful text-based mail client for Unix operating systems.

Mutt supports POP and IMAP protocols for receiving emails. It opens with a colored interface, making it user-friendly for sending emails from the command line.

NeoMutt is a command line mail reader (or MUA) versatile and highly configurable, based on Mutt and forked from it, with added features. It is a email client that just works with excellent performance, since it starts instantly, and a great tool to streamline communication.

NeoMutt is a text-based application which interacts with users through different menus, a context sensitive help line at the top and the command line. The command line is used to display informational and error messages as well as for prompts and for entering interactive commands.

NeoMutt is configured through variables which makes it a highly versatile tool meant to be customized to user needs and preferences.

Finally, NeoMutt is a useful tool for every Kernel developers to send comments and patches with all the necessary information.

How to configure it

Follow the official configuration page to configure NeoMutt.

NeoMutt can be used customized to connect to a Gmail account. i suggest to follow this guide to be able to sertup NeoMutt with Gmail in a straightforward way.

Mailsync is a way of synchronizing a mailboxes that deals with IMAP servers, like Gmail does. In fact, Mailsync keeps a copy of my mail on the filesystem, and synchronizes that with the IMAP server to update them and keep it all consistent.

How to use it

As said before NeoMutt has a huge list of possible configuration and commands.

Here an extremely small subset of commands I use the most.

command context effect
? all help
q all quit
c main menu open a different folder
D main menu delete message
m main menu create new message
o main manu Sort messages
p main manu print current message
s main menu save message
U main menu undelete message with pattern
- message prev page
<space> message next page
<up> message prev message
<down> message next message
l message view attachment
r message reply
g - R message reply to all

When you first open NeoMutt you enter into the main menu, while when un enter onto an email we’ll se the message section.

The full list of commands: