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. With an optional
44 command name, show the man page for that subcommand.
47 Print the installed version of notmuch, and exit.
50 Specify the configuration file to use. This overrides any
51 configuration file specified by ${NOTMUCH\_CONFIG}.
54 Enforce that the database UUID (a unique identifier which persists
55 until e.g. the database is compacted) is HEX; exit with an error
56 if it is not. This is useful to detect rollover in modification
57 counts on messages. You can find this UUID using e.g. ``notmuch
60 All global options except ``--config`` can also be specified after the
61 command. For example, ``notmuch subcommand --uuid=HEX`` is equivalent
62 to ``notmuch --uuid=HEX subcommand``.
70 The **notmuch setup** command is used to configure Notmuch for first
71 use, (or to reconfigure it later).
73 The setup command will prompt for your full name, your primary email
74 address, any alternate email addresses you use, and the directory
75 containing your email archives. Your answers will be written to a
76 configuration file in ${NOTMUCH\_CONFIG} (if set) or
77 ${HOME}/.notmuch-config . This configuration file will be created with
78 descriptive comments, making it easy to edit by hand later to change the
79 configuration. Or you can run **notmuch setup** again to change the
82 The mail directory you specify can contain any number of sub-directories
83 and should primarily contain only files with individual email messages
84 (eg. maildir or mh archives are perfect). If there are other, non-email
85 files (such as indexes maintained by other email programs) then notmuch
86 will do its best to detect those and ignore them.
88 Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many
89 messages), will not work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is
90 currently stored, it is recommended you first convert it to maildir
91 format with a utility such as mb2md before running **notmuch setup .**
93 Invoking ``notmuch`` with no command argument will run **setup** if the
94 setup command has not previously been completed.
99 Several of the notmuch commands accept search terms with a common
100 syntax. See **notmuch-search-terms**\ (7) for more details on the
103 The **search**, **show**, **address** and **count** commands are used
104 to query the email database.
106 The **reply** command is useful for preparing a template for an email
109 The **tag** command is the only command available for manipulating
112 The **dump** and **restore** commands can be used to create a textual
113 dump of email tags for backup purposes, and to restore from that dump.
115 The **config** command can be used to get or set settings in the notmuch
121 If the given command is not known to notmuch, notmuch tries to execute
122 the external **notmuch-<subcommand>** in ${PATH} instead. This allows
123 users to have their own notmuch related tools to be run via the
124 notmuch command. By design, this does not allow notmuch's own commands
125 to be overridden using external commands.
130 All options accepting an argument can be used with '=' or ':' as a
131 separator. For the cases where it's not ambiguous (in particular
132 excluding boolean options), a space can also be used. The following
137 notmuch --config=alt-config config get user.name
138 notmuch --config:alt-config config get user.name
139 notmuch --config alt-config config get user.name
144 The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior
148 Specifies the location of the notmuch configuration file. Notmuch
149 will use ${HOME}/.notmuch-config if this variable is not set.
151 **NOTMUCH\_TALLOC\_REPORT**
152 Location to write a talloc memory usage report. See
153 **talloc\_enable\_leak\_report\_full** in **talloc(3)** for more
156 **NOTMUCH\_DEBUG\_QUERY**
157 If set to a non-empty value, the notmuch library will print (to
158 stderr) Xapian queries it constructs.
163 **notmuch-address(1)**,
164 **notmuch-compact(1)**,
165 **notmuch-config(1)**,
166 **notmuch-count(1)**,
168 **notmuch-hooks(5)**,
169 **notmuch-insert(1)**,
171 **notmuch-properties(7)**,
172 **notmuch-reindex(1)**,
173 **notmuch-reply(1)**,
174 **notmuch-restore(1)**,
175 **notmuch-search(1)**,
176 **notmuch-search-terms(7)**,
180 The notmuch website: **https://notmuchmail.org**
185 Feel free to send questions, comments, or kudos to the notmuch mailing
186 list <notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before
187 posting, but is available from the notmuchmail.org website.
189 Real-time interaction with the Notmuch community is available via IRC
190 (server: irc.freenode.net, channel: #notmuch).