Text-based email client

A text-based email client is an email client with its user interface being text-based, occupying a whole terminal screen. Other kind of email clients are GUI-based (cf. email client) or Web-based, see Webmail.

Text-based email clients may be useful for users with visual impairment or partial blindness allowing speech synthesis or text-to-speech software to read content to users. Text-based email clients also allow to manage communication via simple remote sessions, e. g. per SSH, for instance when it is not possible to install a local GUI-client and/or access mail via Web interface. Also users may prefer text-based user interfaces in general.

Typical features include:^[1]

Editing various emails via tab support
Configurable rendering of various MIME types, for instance OpenPGP encryption or HTML email
Vim-style keybindings
Support for multiple accounts and protocols, e. g. IMAP, Maildir, SMTP, and sendmail
UTF-8 support

List of text-based email clients

Notable clients include:^[2]^[3]

aerc^[4]^[5]^[1]
Cone
Elm
Emacs: Gnus, mu4e, rmail, Wanderlust
Lumail
mblaze
meli
Mutt
- NeoMutt
pine
- alpine
sup
vim (using a plugin^[6] for himalaya)

Email software for the command line that does not occupy the whole screen (cf. TUI) include e. g. Cleancode eMail, CURL,^[7] himalaya, mail (Unix), mailx, MH, procmail, sendmail, and many others.

References

^ ^a ^b "Aerc – An email client that runs in the terminal". 2019-06-05.
^ Ravi Saive (2020-02-13). "7 Best Command-Line Email Clients for Linux in 2020". TecMint. sometimes, users prefer to deal with email directly from the command-line
^ "Use plaintext email". 2021-03-19. There are two main types of emails on the internet: plaintext and HTML. The former is strongly preferred, but often isn't set up by default. We'll get you set up right.
^ "aerc 0.1.0". June 3, 2019. Retrieved June 9, 2019.
^ "Contributions to ~sircmpwn/aerc". Archived from the original on 2019-06-08. Retrieved 2021-06-12.
^ "Himalaya/Vim at master · soywod/Himalaya". GitHub.
^ "Reading email - everything curl". everything.curl.dev.

This article related to a type of software is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

[aerc-ycombinator-1] "Aerc – An email client that runs in the terminal". 2019-06-05.

[tecmint2020-2] Ravi Saive (2020-02-13). "7 Best Command-Line Email Clients for Linux in 2020". TecMint. sometimes, users prefer to deal with email directly from the command-line

[useplaintext-3] "Use plaintext email". 2021-03-19. There are two main types of emails on the internet: plaintext and HTML. The former is strongly preferred, but often isn't set up by default. We'll get you set up right.

[aerc-initial-4] "aerc 0.1.0". June 3, 2019. Retrieved June 9, 2019.

[aerc-contributors-5] "Contributions to ~sircmpwn/aerc". Archived from the original on 2019-06-08. Retrieved 2021-06-12.

[6] "Himalaya/Vim at master · soywod/Himalaya". GitHub.

[7] "Reading email - everything curl". everything.curl.dev.

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

Text-based email client

List of text-based email clients

See also

References