8 **notmuch** [option ...] **command** [arg ...]
13 Notmuch is a command-line based program for indexing, searching,
14 reading, and tagging large collections of email messages.
16 This page describes how to get started using notmuch from the command
17 line, and gives a brief overview of the commands available. For more
18 information on e.g. **notmuch show** consult the **notmuch-show(1)** man
19 page, also accessible via **notmuch help show**
21 The quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the
22 ``notmuch`` command with no arguments, which will interactively guide
23 you through the process of indexing your mail.
28 While the command-line program ``notmuch`` provides powerful
29 functionality, it does not provide the most convenient interface for
30 that functionality. More sophisticated interfaces are expected to be
31 built on top of either the command-line interface, or more likely, on
32 top of the notmuch library interface. See https://notmuchmail.org for
33 more about alternate interfaces to notmuch. The emacs-based interface to
34 notmuch (available under **emacs/** in the Notmuch source distribution)
35 is probably the most widely used at this time.
40 Supported global options for ``notmuch`` include
42 ``--help`` [command-name]
43 Print a synopsis of available commands and exit.
44 With an optional command name, show the man page
48 Print the installed version of notmuch, and exit.
51 Specify the configuration file to use. This overrides any
52 configuration file specified by ${NOTMUCH\_CONFIG}.
55 Enforce that the database UUID (a unique identifier which
56 persists until e.g. the database is compacted)
57 is HEX; exit with an error if it is not. This is useful to
58 detect rollover in modification counts on messages. You can
59 find this UUID using e.g. ``notmuch count --lastmod``
61 All global options except ``--config`` can also be specified after the
62 command. For example, ``notmuch subcommand --uuid=HEX`` is
63 equivalent to ``notmuch --uuid=HEX subcommand``.
71 The **notmuch setup** command is used to configure Notmuch for first
72 use, (or to reconfigure it later).
74 The setup command will prompt for your full name, your primary email
75 address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory
76 containing your email archives. Your answers will be written to a
77 configuration file in ${NOTMUCH\_CONFIG} (if set) or
78 ${HOME}/.notmuch-config . This configuration file will be created with
79 descriptive comments, making it easy to edit by hand later to change the
80 configuration. Or you can run **notmuch setup** again to change the
83 The mail directory you specify can contain any number of sub-directories
84 and should primarily contain only files with individual email messages
85 (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If there are other, non-email
86 files (such as indexes maintained by other email programs) then notmuch
87 will do its best to detect those and ignore them.
89 Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
90 messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is
91 currently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir
92 format with a utility such as mb2md before running **notmuch setup .**
94 Invoking ``notmuch`` with no command argument will run **setup** if the
95 setup command has not previously been completed.
100 Several of the notmuch commands accept search terms with a common
101 syntax. See **notmuch-search-terms**\ (7) for more details on the
104 The **search**, **show**, **address** and **count** commands are used
105 to query the email database.
107 The **reply** command is useful for preparing a template for an email
110 The **tag** command is the only command available for manipulating
113 The **dump** and **restore** commands can be used to create a textual
114 dump of email tags for backup purposes, and to restore from that dump.
116 The **config** command can be used to get or set settings in the notmuch
122 If the given command is not known to notmuch, notmuch tries to execute
123 the external **notmuch-<subcommand>** in ${PATH} instead. This allows
124 users to have their own notmuch related tools to be run via the
125 notmuch command. By design, this does not allow notmuch's own commands
126 to be overridden using external commands.
131 All options accepting an argument can be used with '=' or ':' as a
132 separator. For the cases where it's not ambiguous (in particular
133 excluding boolean options), a space can also be used. The following
138 notmuch --config=alt-config config get user.name
139 notmuch --config:alt-config config get user.name
140 notmuch --config alt-config config get user.name
145 The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior
149 Specifies the location of the notmuch configuration file. Notmuch
150 will use ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this variable is not set.
152 **NOTMUCH\_TALLOC\_REPORT**
153 Location to write a talloc memory usage report. See
154 **talloc\_enable\_leak\_report\_full** in **talloc(3)** for more
157 **NOTMUCH\_DEBUG\_QUERY**
158 If set to a non-empty value, the notmuch library will print (to
159 stderr) Xapian queries it constructs.
164 **notmuch-address(1)**,
165 **notmuch-compact(1)**,
166 **notmuch-config(1)**,
167 **notmuch-count(1)**,
169 **notmuch-hooks(5)**,
170 **notmuch-insert(1)**,
172 **notmuch-properties(7)**,
173 **notmuch-reindex(1)**,
174 **notmuch-reply(1)**,
175 **notmuch-restore(1)**,
176 **notmuch-search(1)**,
177 **notmuch-search-terms(7)**,
181 The notmuch website: **https://notmuchmail.org**
186 Feel free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
187 list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before
188 posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
190 Real-time interaction with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
191 (server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).