Chapter 9. Reference

If set to yes, when composing messages and no subject is given at the subject prompt, composition will be aborted. If set to no, composing messages with no subject given at the subject prompt will never be aborted.

If set to yes, composition will automatically abort after editing the message body if no changes are made to the file (this check only happens after the first edit of the file). When set to no, composition will never be aborted.

The default file in which to save aliases created by the <create-alias> function. Entries added to this file are encoded in the character set specified by $config_charset if it is set or the current character set otherwise.

Note: Mutt will not automatically source this file; you must explicitly use the “source” command for it to be executed in case this option points to a dedicated alias file.

The default for this option is the currently used muttrc file, or “~/.muttrc” if no user muttrc was found.

Specifies the format of the data displayed for the “alias” menu. The following printf(3)-style sequences are available:

Controls whether 8-bit data is converted to 7-bit using either Quoted- Printable or Base64 encoding when sending mail.

Controls whether ANSI color codes in messages (and color tags in rich text messages) are to be interpreted. Messages containing these codes are rare, but if this option is set, their text will be colored accordingly. Note that this may override your color choices, and even present a security problem, since a message could include a line like

[-- PGP output follows ...

and give it the same color as your attachment color (see also $crypt_timestamp).

When set, an arrow (“->”) will be used to indicate the current entry in menus instead of highlighting the whole line. On slow network or modem links this will make response faster because there is less that has to be redrawn on the screen when moving to the next or previous entries in the menu.

If set, Mutt will use plain ASCII characters when displaying thread and attachment trees, instead of the default ACS characters.

If set, Mutt will prompt you for blind-carbon-copy (Bcc) recipients before editing an outgoing message.

If set, Mutt will prompt you for carbon-copy (Cc) recipients before editing the body of an outgoing message.

If set, Mutt will prompt you for follow-up groups before editing the body of an outgoing message.

If set, Mutt will prompt you for x-comment-to field before editing the body of an outgoing message.

This variable is a colon-separated list of character encoding schemes for messages without character encoding indication. Header field values and message body content without character encoding indication would be assumed that they are written in one of this list. By default, all the header fields and message body without any charset indication are assumed to be in “us-ascii”.

For example, Japanese users might prefer this:

set assumed_charset="iso-2022-jp:euc-jp:shift_jis:utf-8"

However, only the first content is valid for the message body.

This variable is a colon-separated list of character encoding schemes for text file attachments. Mutt uses this setting to guess which encoding files being attached are encoded in to convert them to a proper character set given in $send_charset.

If unset, the value of $charset will be used instead. For example, the following configuration would work for Japanese text handling:

set attach_charset="iso-2022-jp:euc-jp:shift_jis:utf-8"

Note: for Japanese users, “iso-2022-*” must be put at the head of the value as shown above if included.

This variable describes the format of the “attachment” menu. The following printf(3)-style sequences are understood:

For an explanation of “soft-fill”, see the $index_format documentation.

The separator to add between attachments when operating (saving, printing, piping, etc) on a list of tagged attachments.

If this variable is unset, when operating (saving, printing, piping, etc) on a list of tagged attachments, Mutt will concatenate the attachments and will operate on them as a single attachment. The $attach_sep separator is added after each attachment. When set, Mutt will operate on the attachments one by one.

This is the string that will precede a message which has been included in a reply. For a full listing of defined printf(3)-like sequences see the section on $index_format.

When set, functions in the index menu which affect a message will be applied to all tagged messages (if there are any). When unset, you must first use the <tag-prefix> function (bound to “;” by default) to make the next function apply to all tagged messages.

When set along with $edit_headers, Mutt will skip the initial send-menu (prompting for subject and recipients) and allow you to immediately begin editing the body of your message. The send-menu may still be accessed once you have finished editing the body of your message.

Note: when this option is set, you cannot use send-hooks that depend on the recipients when composing a new (non-reply) message, as the initial list of recipients is empty.

Also see $fast_reply.

When this variable is set, mutt will beep when an error occurs.

When this variable is set, mutt will beep whenever it prints a message notifying you of new mail. This is independent of the setting of the $beep variable.

Controls whether you will be asked to confirm bouncing messages. If set to yes you don't get asked if you want to bounce a message. Setting this variable to no is not generally useful, and thus not recommended, because you are unable to bounce messages.

When this variable is set, mutt will include Delivered-To headers when bouncing messages. Postfix users may wish to unset this variable.

Note: On Debian systems, this option is unset by default in /etc/Muttrc.

When this variable is set, mutt will place the cursor at the beginning of the current line in menus, even when the $arrow_cursor variable is unset, making it easier for blind persons using Braille displays to follow these menus. The option is unset by default because many visual terminals don't permit making the cursor invisible.

If this variable is set, Mutt will mark all articles in newsgroup as read when you quit the newsgroup (catchup newsgroup).

This variable specifies the file where the certificates you trust are saved. When an unknown certificate is encountered, you are asked if you accept it or not. If you accept it, the certificate can also be saved in this file and further connections are automatically accepted.

You can also manually add CA certificates in this file. Any server certificate that is signed with one of these CA certificates is also automatically accepted.

Example:

set certificate_file=~/.mutt/certificates

Character set your terminal uses to display and enter textual data. It is also the fallback for $send_charset.

Upon startup Mutt tries to derive this value from environment variables such as $LC_CTYPE or $LANG.

Note: It should only be set in case Mutt isn't able to determine the character set used correctly.

When this variable is set, mutt will use file size attribute instead of access time when checking for new mail in mbox and mmdf folders.

This variable is unset by default and should only be enabled when new mail detection for these folder types is unreliable or doesn't work.

Note that enabling this variable should happen before any “mailboxes” directives occur in configuration files regarding mbox or mmdf folders because mutt needs to determine the initial new mail status of such a mailbox by performing a fast mailbox scan when it is defined. Afterwards the new mail status is tracked by file size changes.

Note: this option only affects maildir and MH style mailboxes.

When set, Mutt will check for new mail delivered while the mailbox is open. Especially with MH mailboxes, this operation can take quite some time since it involves scanning the directory and checking each file to see if it has already been looked at. If this variable is unset, no check for new mail is performed while the mailbox is open.

When unset, Mutt will not collapse a thread if it contains any unread messages.

Controls the format of the status line displayed in the “compose” menu. This string is similar to $status_format, but has its own set of printf(3)-like sequences:

See the text describing the $status_format option for more information on how to set $compose_format.

When defined, Mutt will recode commands in rc files from this encoding to the current character set as specified by $charset and aliases written to $alias_file from the current character set.

Please note that if setting $charset it must be done before setting $config_charset.

Recoding should be avoided as it may render unconvertable characters as question marks which can lead to undesired side effects (for example in regular expressions).

When set, Mutt will prompt for confirmation when appending messages to an existing mailbox.

When set, Mutt will prompt for confirmation when saving messages to a mailbox which does not yet exist before creating it.

Causes Mutt to timeout a network connection (for IMAP, POP or SMTP) after this many seconds if the connection is not able to be established. A negative value causes Mutt to wait indefinitely for the connection attempt to succeed.

Sets the default Content-Type for the body of newly composed messages.

This variable controls whether or not copies of your outgoing messages will be saved for later references. Also see $record, $save_name, $force_name and “fcc-hook”.

Setting this variable will cause Mutt to always attempt to PGP encrypt outgoing messages. This is probably only useful in connection to the “send-hook” command. It can be overridden by use of the pgp menu, when encryption is not required or signing is requested as well. If $smime_is_default is set, then OpenSSL is used instead to create S/MIME messages and settings can be overridden by use of the smime menu instead. (Crypto only)

This variable controls whether or not mutt may automatically enable PGP encryption/signing for messages. See also $crypt_autoencrypt, $crypt_replyencrypt, $crypt_autosign, $crypt_replysign and $smime_is_default.

Setting this variable will cause Mutt to always attempt to cryptographically sign outgoing messages. This can be overridden by use of the pgp menu, when signing is not required or encryption is requested as well. If $smime_is_default is set, then OpenSSL is used instead to create S/MIME messages and settings can be overridden by use of the smime menu instead of the pgp menu. (Crypto only)

This variable controls whether or not mutt may automatically enable S/MIME encryption/signing for messages. See also $crypt_autoencrypt, $crypt_replyencrypt, $crypt_autosign, $crypt_replysign and $smime_is_default.

If set, automatically PGP or OpenSSL encrypt replies to messages which are encrypted. (Crypto only)

If set, automatically PGP or OpenSSL sign replies to messages which are signed.

Note: this does not work on messages that are encrypted and signed! (Crypto only)

If set, automatically PGP or OpenSSL sign replies to messages which are encrypted. This makes sense in combination with $crypt_replyencrypt, because it allows you to sign all messages which are automatically encrypted. This works around the problem noted in $crypt_replysign, that mutt is not able to find out whether an encrypted message is also signed. (Crypto only)

If set, mutt will include a time stamp in the lines surrounding PGP or S/MIME output, so spoofing such lines is more difficult. If you are using colors to mark these lines, and rely on these, you may unset this setting. (Crypto only)

This variable controls the use of the GPGME-enabled crypto backends. If it is set and Mutt was built with gpgme support, the gpgme code for S/MIME and PGP will be used instead of the classic code. Note that you need to set this option in .muttrc; it won't have any effect when used interactively.

Controls whether mutt uses PKA (see http://www.g10code.de/docs/pka-intro.de.pdf) during signature verification (only supported by the GPGME backend).

If “yes”, always attempt to verify PGP or S/MIME signatures. If “ask-*”, ask whether or not to verify the signature. If “no”, never attempt to verify cryptographic signatures. (Crypto only)

This variable controls the format of the date printed by the “%d” sequence in $index_format. This is passed to the strftime(3) function to process the date, see the man page for the proper syntax.

Unless the first character in the string is a bang (“!”), the month and week day names are expanded according to the locale specified in the variable $locale. If the first character in the string is a bang, the bang is discarded, and the month and week day names in the rest of the string are expanded in the C locale (that is in US English).

This variable controls how “message-hook”, “reply-hook”, “send-hook”, “send2-hook”, “save-hook”, and “fcc-hook” will be interpreted if they are specified with only a simple regexp, instead of a matching pattern. The hooks are expanded when they are declared, so a hook will be interpreted according to the value of this variable at the time the hook is declared.

The default value matches if the message is either from a user matching the regular expression given, or if it is from you (if the from address matches “alternates”) and is to or cc'ed to a user matching the given regular expression.

Controls whether or not messages are really deleted when closing or synchronizing a mailbox. If set to yes, messages marked for deleting will automatically be purged without prompting. If set to no, messages marked for deletion will be kept in the mailbox.

If this option is set, mutt will untag messages when marking them for deletion. This applies when you either explicitly delete a message, or when you save it to another folder.

If this option is set, mutt's received-attachments menu will not show the subparts of individual messages in a multipart/digest. To see these subparts, press “v” on that menu.

When set, specifies a command used to filter messages. When a message is viewed it is passed as standard input to $display_filter, and the filtered message is read from the standard output.

Contains the path of the mutt_dotlock(8) binary to be used by mutt.

This variable sets the request for when notification is returned. The string consists of a comma separated list (no spaces!) of one or more of the following: never, to never request notification, failure, to request notification on transmission failure, delay, to be notified of message delays, success, to be notified of successful transmission.

Example:

set dsn_notify="failure,delay"

Note: when using $sendmail for delivery, you should not enable this unless you are either using Sendmail 8.8.x or greater or a MTA providing a sendmail(1)-compatible interface supporting the -N option for DSN. For SMTP delivery, DSN support is auto-detected so that it depends on the server whether DSN will be used or not.

This variable controls how much of your message is returned in DSN messages. It may be set to either hdrs to return just the message header, or full to return the full message.

Example:

set dsn_return=hdrs

Note: when using $sendmail for delivery, you should not enable this unless you are either using Sendmail 8.8.x or greater or a MTA providing a sendmail(1)-compatible interface supporting the -R option for DSN. For SMTP delivery, DSN support is auto-detected so that it depends on the server whether DSN will be used or not.

This variable controls whether mutt, when $sort is set to threads, threads messages with the same Message-Id together. If it is set, it will indicate that it thinks they are duplicates of each other with an equals sign in the thread tree.

This option allows you to edit the header of your outgoing messages along with the body of your message.

Note that changes made to the References: and Date: headers are ignored for interoperability reasons.

This variable specifies which editor is used by mutt. It defaults to the value of the $VISUAL, or $EDITOR, environment variable, or to the string “/usr/bin/editor” if neither of those are set.

The $editor string may contain a %s escape, which will be replaced by the name of the file to be edited. If the %s escape does not appear in $editor, a space and the name to be edited are appended.

The resulting string is then executed by running

sh -c 'string'

where string is the expansion of $editor described above.

When set, mutt will quoted-printable encode messages when they contain the string “From ” (note the trailing space) in the beginning of a line. This is useful to avoid the tampering certain mail delivery and transport agents tend to do with messages (in order to prevent tools from misinterpreting the line as a mbox message separator).

Manually sets the envelope sender for outgoing messages. This value is ignored if $use_envelope_from is unset.

Escape character to use for functions in the built-in editor.

When set, the initial prompt for recipients and subject are skipped when replying to messages, and the initial prompt for subject is skipped when forwarding messages.

Note: this variable has no effect when the $autoedit variable is set.

This variable controls whether or not attachments on outgoing messages are saved along with the main body of your message.

When this variable is set, FCCs will be stored unencrypted and unsigned, even when the actual message is encrypted and/or signed. (PGP only)

Specifies the default location of your mailboxes. A “+” or “=” at the beginning of a pathname will be expanded to the value of this variable. Note that if you change this variable (from the default) value you need to make sure that the assignment occurs before you use “+” or “=” for any other variables since expansion takes place when handling the “mailboxes” command.

This variable allows you to customize the file browser display to your personal taste. This string is similar to $index_format, but has its own set of printf(3)-like sequences:

For an explanation of “soft-fill”, see the $index_format documentation.

Controls whether or not the “Mail-Followup-To:” header field is generated when sending mail. When set, Mutt will generate this field when you are replying to a known mailing list, specified with the “subscribe” or “lists” commands.

This field has two purposes. First, preventing you from receiving duplicate copies of replies to messages which you send to mailing lists, and second, ensuring that you do get a reply separately for any messages sent to known lists to which you are not subscribed.

The header will contain only the list's address for subscribed lists, and both the list address and your own email address for unsubscribed lists. Without this header, a group reply to your message sent to a subscribed list will be sent to both the list and your address, resulting in two copies of the same email for you.

If this variable is set and the keyword "poster" is present in Followup-To header, follow-up to newsgroup function is not permitted. The message will be mailed to the submitter of the message via mail.

This variable is similar to $save_name, except that Mutt will store a copy of your outgoing message by the username of the address you are sending to even if that mailbox does not exist.

Also see the $record variable.

Controls the decoding of complex MIME messages into text/plain when forwarding a message. The message header is also RFC2047 decoded. This variable is only used, if $mime_forward is unset, otherwise $mime_forward_decode is used instead.

Controls the handling of encrypted messages when forwarding a message. When set, the outer layer of encryption is stripped off. This variable is only used if $mime_forward is set and $mime_forward_decode is unset. (PGP only)

This quadoption controls whether or not the user is automatically placed in the editor when forwarding messages. For those who always want to forward with no modification, use a setting of “no”.

This variable controls the default subject when forwarding a message. It uses the same format sequences as the $index_format variable.

When set, forwarded messages included in the main body of the message (when $mime_forward is unset) will be quoted using $indent_string.

When set, this variable contains a default from address. It can be overridden using “my_hdr” (including from a “send-hook”) and $reverse_name. This variable is ignored if $use_from is unset.

This setting defaults to the contents of the environment variable $EMAIL.

A regular expression used by mutt to parse the GECOS field of a password entry when expanding the alias. The default value will return the string up to the first “,” encountered. If the GECOS field contains a string like “lastname, firstname” then you should set it to “.*”.

This can be useful if you see the following behavior: you address an e-mail to user ID “stevef” whose full name is “Steve Franklin”. If mutt expands “stevef” to “"Franklin" stevef@foo.bar” then you should set the $gecos_mask to a regular expression that will match the whole name so mutt will expand “Franklin” to “Franklin, Steve”.

This variable allows you to customize the newsgroup browser display to your personal taste. This string is similar to “index_format”, but has its own set of printf()-like sequences:

When unset, the header fields normally added by the “my_hdr” command are not created. This variable must be unset before composing a new message or replying in order to take effect. If set, the user defined header fields are added to every new message.

When set, this variable causes Mutt to include the header of the message you are replying to into the edit buffer. The $weed setting applies.

This variable points to the header cache database. If pointing to a directory Mutt will contain a header cache database file per folder, if pointing to a file that file will be a single global header cache. By default it is unset so no header caching will be used.

Header caching can greatly improve speed when opening POP, IMAP MH or Maildir folders, see “caching” for details.

When mutt is compiled with qdbm or tokyocabinet as header cache backend, this option determines whether the database will be compressed. Compression results in database files roughly being one fifth of the usual diskspace, but the decompression can result in a slower opening of cached folder(s) which in general is still much faster than opening non header cached folders.

When set, help lines describing the bindings for the major functions provided by each menu are displayed on the first line of the screen.

Note: The binding will not be displayed correctly if the function is bound to a sequence rather than a single keystroke. Also, the help line may not be updated if a binding is changed while Mutt is running. Since this variable is primarily aimed at new users, neither of these should present a major problem.

When set, mutt will skip the host name part of $hostname variable when adding the domain part to addresses. This variable does not affect the generation of Message-IDs, and it will not lead to the cut-off of first-level domains.

When set, mutt will not show the presence of messages that are hidden by limiting, in the thread tree.

When set, mutt will not show the presence of missing messages in the thread tree.

When set, mutt will not show the subject of messages in the thread tree that have the same subject as their parent or closest previously displayed sibling.

When set, mutt will not show the presence of messages that are hidden by limiting, at the top of threads in the thread tree. Note that when $hide_limited is set, this option will have no effect.

When set, mutt will not show the presence of missing messages at the top of threads in the thread tree. Note that when $hide_missing is set, this option will have no effect.

This variable controls the size (in number of strings remembered) of the string history buffer per category. The buffer is cleared each time the variable is set.

The file in which Mutt will save its history.

When set, Mutt will not display attachments with a disposition of “attachment” inline even if it could render the part to plain text. These MIME parts can only be viewed from the attachment menu.

If unset, Mutt will render all MIME parts it can properly transform to plain text.

This variable controls whether or not a Mail-Followup-To header is honored when group-replying to a message.

Specifies the fully-qualified hostname of the system mutt is running on containing the host's name and the DNS domain it belongs to. It is used as the domain part (after “@”) for local email addresses as well as Message-Id headers.

Its value is determined at startup as follows: If the node's name as returned by the uname(3) function contains the hostname and the domain, these are used to construct $hostname. If there is no domain part returned, Mutt will look for a “domain” or “search” line in /etc/resolv.conf to determine the domain. Optionally, Mutt can be compiled with a fixed domain name in which case a detected one is not used.

Also see $use_domain and $hidden_host.

Note: On Debian systems, the default for this variable is obtained from /etc/mailname when Mutt starts.

This option replaces linear-white-space between encoded-word and text to a single space to prevent the display of MIME-encoded “Subject:” field from being divided into multiple lines.

Affects the behavior of the <reply> function when replying to messages from mailing lists (as defined by the “subscribe” or “lists” commands). When set, if the “Reply-To:” field is set to the same value as the “To:” field, Mutt assumes that the “Reply-To:” field was set by the mailing list to automate responses to the list, and will ignore this field. To direct a response to the mailing list when this option is set, use the <list-reply> function; <group-reply> will reply to both the sender and the list.

This is a colon-delimited list of authentication methods mutt may attempt to use to log in to an IMAP server, in the order mutt should try them. Authentication methods are either “login” or the right side of an IMAP “AUTH=xxx” capability string, e.g. “digest-md5”, “gssapi” or “cram-md5”. This option is case-insensitive. If it's unset (the default) mutt will try all available methods, in order from most-secure to least-secure.

Example:

set imap_authenticators="gssapi:cram-md5:login"

Note: Mutt will only fall back to other authentication methods if the previous methods are unavailable. If a method is available but authentication fails, mutt will not connect to the IMAP server.

When set, mutt will fetch the set of subscribed folders from your server on connection, and add them to the set of mailboxes it polls for new mail just as if you had issued individual “mailboxes” commands.

This contains the list of characters which you would like to treat as folder separators for displaying IMAP paths. In particular it helps in using the “=” shortcut for your folder variable.

Mutt requests these header fields in addition to the default headers (“Date:”, “From:”, “Subject:”, “To:”, “Cc:”, “Message-Id:”, “References:”, “Content-Type:”, “Content-Description:”, “In-Reply-To:”, “Reply-To:”, “Lines:”, “List-Post:”, “X-Label:”) from IMAP servers before displaying the index menu. You may want to add more headers for spam detection.

Note: This is a space separated list, items should be uppercase and not contain the colon, e.g. “X-BOGOSITY X-SPAM-STATUS” for the “X-Bogosity:” and “X-Spam-Status:” header fields.

When set, mutt will attempt to use the IMAP IDLE extension to check for new mail in the current mailbox. Some servers (dovecot was the inspiration for this option) react badly to mutt's implementation. If your connection seems to freeze up periodically, try unsetting this.

This variable specifies the maximum amount of time in seconds that mutt will wait before polling open IMAP connections, to prevent the server from closing them before mutt has finished with them. The default is well within the RFC-specified minimum amount of time (30 minutes) before a server is allowed to do this, but in practice the RFC does get violated every now and then. Reduce this number if you find yourself getting disconnected from your IMAP server due to inactivity.

This variable configures whether IMAP folder browsing will look for only subscribed folders or all folders. This can be toggled in the IMAP browser with the <toggle-subscribed> function.

Your login name on the IMAP server.

This variable defaults to the value of $imap_user.

Specifies the password for your IMAP account. If unset, Mutt will prompt you for your password when you invoke the <imap-fetch-mail> function or try to open an IMAP folder.

Warning: you should only use this option when you are on a fairly secure machine, because the superuser can read your muttrc even if you are the only one who can read the file.

When set, mutt will not open new IMAP connections to check for new mail. Mutt will only check for new mail over existing IMAP connections. This is useful if you don't want to be prompted to user/password pairs on mutt invocation, or if opening the connection is slow.

When set, mutt will avoid implicitly marking your mail as read whenever you fetch a message from the server. This is generally a good thing, but can make closing an IMAP folder somewhat slower. This option exists to appease speed freaks.

Controls the number of IMAP commands that may be queued up before they are sent to the server. A deeper pipeline reduces the amount of time mutt must wait for the server, and can make IMAP servers feel much more responsive. But not all servers correctly handle pipelined commands, so if you have problems you might want to try setting this variable to 0.

Note: Changes to this variable have no effect on open connections.

When set, mutt will display warning messages from the IMAP server as error messages. Since these messages are often harmless, or generated due to configuration problems on the server which are out of the users' hands, you may wish to suppress them at some point.

The name of the user whose mail you intend to access on the IMAP server.

This variable defaults to your user name on the local machine.

If set to “yes”, mutt will look for a mailcap entry with the “copiousoutput” flag set for every MIME attachment it doesn't have an internal viewer defined for. If such an entry is found, mutt will use the viewer defined in that entry to convert the body part to text form. MIME attachments with 'text' types, with the only exception of text/html, are excluded: they will be shown as they are unless auto_view is specified.

Controls whether or not a copy of the message(s) you are replying to is included in your reply.

Controls whether or not Mutt includes only the first attachment of the message you are replying.

Specifies the string to prepend to each line of text quoted in a message to which you are replying. You are strongly encouraged not to change this value, as it tends to agitate the more fanatical netizens.

The value of this option is ignored if $text_flowed is set, too because the quoting mechanism is strictly defined for format=flowed.

This option is a format string, please see the description of $index_format for supported printf(3)-style sequences.

This variable allows you to customize the message index display to your personal taste.

“Format strings” are similar to the strings used in the C function printf(3) to format output (see the man page for more details). The following sequences are defined in Mutt:

“Soft-fill” deserves some explanation: Normal right-justification will print everything to the left of the “%>”, displaying padding and whatever lies to the right only if there's room. By contrast, soft-fill gives priority to the right-hand side, guaranteeing space to display it and showing padding only if there's still room. If necessary, soft-fill will eat text leftwards to make room for rightward text.

Note that these expandos are supported in “save-hook”, “fcc-hook” and “fcc-save-hook”, too.

If set, specifies the program and arguments used to deliver news posted by Mutt. Otherwise, mutt posts article using current connection to news server. The following printf-style sequence is understood:

Example: set inews="/usr/local/bin/inews -hS"

How to invoke ispell (GNU's spell-checking software).

If set, read messages marked as flagged will not be moved from your spool mailbox to your $mbox mailbox, or as a result of a “mbox-hook” command.

The locale used by strftime(3) to format dates. Legal values are the strings your system accepts for the locale environment variable $LC_TIME.

This variable configures how often (in seconds) mutt should look for new mail. Also see the $timeout variable.

When set, Mutt will only notify you about new mail that has been received since the last time you opened the mailbox. When unset, Mutt will notify you if any new mail exists in the mailbox, regardless of whether you have visited it recently.

When $mark_old is set, Mutt does not consider the mailbox to contain new mail if only old messages exist.

This variable specifies which files to consult when attempting to display MIME bodies not directly supported by Mutt.

If set, mutt will restrict possible characters in mailcap % expandos to a well-defined set of safe characters. This is the safe setting, but we are not sure it doesn't break some more advanced MIME stuff.

DON'T CHANGE THIS SETTING UNLESS YOU ARE REALLY SURE WHAT YOU ARE DOING!

Check for Maildir unaware programs other than mutt having modified maildir files when the header cache is in use. This incurs one stat(2) per message every time the folder is opened (which can be very slow for NFS folders).

If set, messages marked as deleted will be saved with the maildir trashed flag instead of unlinked. Note: this only applies to maildir-style mailboxes. Setting it will have no effect on other mailbox types.

Controls whether or not mutt marks new unread messages as old if you exit a mailbox without reading them. With this option set, the next time you start mutt, the messages will show up with an “O” next to them in the index menu, indicating that they are old.

Controls the display of wrapped lines in the internal pager. If set, a “+” marker is displayed at the beginning of wrapped lines.

Also see the $smart_wrap variable.

A regular expression used in the file browser, optionally preceded by the not operator “!”. Only files whose names match this mask will be shown. The match is always case-sensitive.

This specifies the folder into which read mail in your $spoolfile folder will be appended.

Also see the $move variable.

The default mailbox type used when creating new folders. May be any of “mbox”, “MMDF”, “MH” and “Maildir”. This is overridden by the -m command-line option.

This variable controls the number of lines of context that are given when scrolling through menus. (Similar to $pager_context.)

When unset, the bottom entry of menus will never scroll up past the bottom of the screen, unless there are less entries than lines. When set, the bottom entry may move off the bottom.

When set, menus will be scrolled up or down one line when you attempt to move across a screen boundary. If unset, the screen is cleared and the next or previous page of the menu is displayed (useful for slow links to avoid many redraws).

If set, mutt will clean out obsolete entries from the message cache when the mailbox is synchronized. You probably only want to set it every once in a while, since it can be a little slow (especially for large folders).

Set this to a directory and mutt will cache copies of messages from your IMAP and POP servers here. You are free to remove entries at any time.

When setting this variable to a directory, mutt needs to fetch every remote message only once and can perform regular expression searches as fast as for local folders.

Also see the $message_cache_clean variable.

This is the string displayed in the “attachment” menu for attachments of type message/rfc822. For a full listing of defined printf(3)-like sequences see the section on $index_format.

If set, forces Mutt to interpret keystrokes with the high bit (bit 8) set as if the user had pressed the Esc key and whatever key remains after having the high bit removed. For example, if the key pressed has an ASCII value of 0xf8, then this is treated as if the user had pressed Esc then “x”. This is because the result of removing the high bit from 0xf8 is 0x78, which is the ASCII character “x”.

If unset, Mutt will remove your address (see the “alternates” command) from the list of recipients when replying to a message.

When unset, mutt will mimic mh's behavior and rename deleted messages to ,<old file name> in mh folders instead of really deleting them. This leaves the message on disk but makes programs reading the folder ignore it. If the variable is set, the message files will simply be deleted.

This option is similar to $maildir_trash for Maildir folders.

The name of the MH sequence used for flagged messages.

The name of the MH sequence used to tag replied messages.

The name of the MH sequence used for unseen messages.

When set, the message you are forwarding will be attached as a separate message/rfc822 MIME part instead of included in the main body of the message. This is useful for forwarding MIME messages so the receiver can properly view the message as it was delivered to you. If you like to switch between MIME and not MIME from mail to mail, set this variable to “ask-no” or “ask-yes”.

Also see $forward_decode and $mime_forward_decode.

Controls the decoding of complex MIME messages into text/plain when forwarding a message while $mime_forward is set. Otherwise $forward_decode is used instead.

When forwarding multiple attachments of a MIME message from the attachment menu, attachments which cannot be decoded in a reasonable manner will be attached to the newly composed message if this option is set.

If unset, 8-bit “subject:” line in article header will not be encoded according to RFC2047 to base64. This is useful when message is Usenet article, because MIME for news is nonstandard feature.

This variable describes the format of a remailer line on the mixmaster chain selection screen. The following printf(3)-like sequences are supported:

This variable contains the path to the Mixmaster binary on your system. It is used with various sets of parameters to gather the list of known remailers, and to finally send a message through the mixmaster chain.

Note: On Debian systems, this option is set by default to “mixmaster-filter” in /etc/Muttrc.

Controls whether or not Mutt will move read messages from your spool mailbox to your $mbox mailbox, or as a result of a “mbox-hook” command.

This variable, when set, makes the thread tree narrower, allowing deeper threads to fit on the screen.

Operations that expect to transfer a large amount of data over the network will update their progress every $net_inc kilobytes. If set to 0, no progress messages will be displayed.

See also $read_inc, $write_inc and $net_inc.

This variable pointing to directory where Mutt will save cached news articles and headers in. If unset, articles and headers will not be saved at all and will be reloaded from the server each time.

This variable specifies domain name or address of NNTP server. It defaults to the news server specified in the environment variable $NNTPSERVER or contained in the file /etc/nntpserver. You can also specify username and an alternative port for each news server, ie:

[[s]news://][username[:password]@]server[:port]

Character set of newsgroups descriptions.

The file, containing info about subscribed newsgroups - names and indexes of read articles. The following printf-style sequence is understood:

This is a colon-delimited list of authentication methods mutt may attempt to use to log in to a news server, in the order mutt should try them. Authentication methods are either “user” or any SASL mechanism, e.g. “digest-md5”, “gssapi” or “cram-md5”. This option is case-insensitive. If it's unset (the default) mutt will try all available methods, in order from most-secure to least-secure.

Example:

set nntp_authenticators="digest-md5:user"

Note: Mutt will only fall back to other authentication methods if the previous methods are unavailable. If a method is available but authentication fails, mutt will not connect to the IMAP server.

This variable defines number of articles which will be in index when newsgroup entered. If active newsgroup have more articles than this number, oldest articles will be ignored. Also controls how many articles headers will be saved in cache when you quit newsgroup.

This variable controls whether or not descriptions for each newsgroup must be loaded when newsgroup is added to list (first time list loading or new newsgroup adding).

Your login name on the NNTP server. If unset and NNTP server requires authentification, Mutt will prompt you for your account name when you connect to news server.

Your password for NNTP account.

The time in seconds until any operations on newsgroup except post new article will cause recheck for new news. If set to 0, Mutt will recheck newsgroup on each operation in index (stepping, read article, etc.).

This variable specifies which pager you would like to use to view messages. The value “builtin” means to use the built-in pager, otherwise this variable should specify the pathname of the external pager you would like to use.

Using an external pager may have some disadvantages: Additional keystrokes are necessary because you can't call mutt functions directly from the pager, and screen resizes cause lines longer than the screen width to be badly formatted in the help menu.

This variable controls the number of lines of context that are given when displaying the next or previous page in the internal pager. By default, Mutt will display the line after the last one on the screen at the top of the next page (0 lines of context).

This variable also specifies the amount of context given for search results. If positive, this many lines will be given before a match, if 0, the match will be top-aligned.

This variable controls the format of the one-line message “status” displayed before each message in either the internal or an external pager. The valid sequences are listed in the $index_format section.

Determines the number of lines of a mini-index which is shown when in the pager. The current message, unless near the top or bottom of the folder, will be roughly one third of the way down this mini-index, giving the reader the context of a few messages before and after the message. This is useful, for example, to determine how many messages remain to be read in the current thread. One of the lines is reserved for the status bar from the index, so a setting of 6 will only show 5 lines of the actual index. A value of 0 results in no index being shown. If the number of messages in the current folder is less than $pager_index_lines, then the index will only use as many lines as it needs.

When set, the internal-pager will not move to the next message when you are at the end of a message and invoke the <next-page> function.

If set, mutt will automatically attempt to decrypt traditional PGP messages whenever the user performs an operation which ordinarily would result in the contents of the message being operated on. For example, if the user displays a pgp-traditional message which has not been manually checked with the <check-traditional-pgp> function, mutt will automatically check the message for traditional pgp.

This option controls whether Mutt generates old-style inline (traditional) PGP encrypted or signed messages under certain circumstances. This can be overridden by use of the pgp menu, when inline is not required.

Note that Mutt might automatically use PGP/MIME for messages which consist of more than a single MIME part. Mutt can be configured to ask before sending PGP/MIME messages when inline (traditional) would not work.

Also see the $pgp_mime_auto variable.

Also note that using the old-style PGP message format is strongly deprecated. (PGP only)

If set, mutt will check the exit code of the PGP subprocess when signing or encrypting. A non-zero exit code means that the subprocess failed. (PGP only)

This format is used to create an old-style “clearsigned” PGP message. Note that the use of this format is strongly deprecated.

This is a format string, see the $pgp_decode_command command for possible printf(3)-like sequences. (PGP only)

This format strings specifies a command which is used to decode application/pgp attachments.

The PGP command formats have their own set of printf(3)-like sequences: