8 **notmuch** **count** [option ...] <*search-term*> ...
10 **notmuch** **dump** [--format=(batch-tag|sup)] [--] [--output=<*file*>] [--] [<*search-term*> ...]
12 **notmuch** **reindex** [option ...] <*search-term*> ...
14 **notmuch** **search** [option ...] <*search-term*> ...
16 **notmuch** **show** [option ...] <*search-term*> ...
18 **notmuch** **tag** +<*tag*> ... -<*tag*> [--] <*search-term*> ...
23 Several notmuch commands accept a common syntax for search terms.
25 The search terms can consist of free-form text (and quoted phrases)
26 which will match all messages that contain all of the given
27 terms/phrases in the body, the subject, or any of the sender or
30 As a special case, a search string consisting of exactly a single
31 asterisk ("\*") will match all messages.
36 In addition to free text, the following prefixes can be used to force
37 terms to match against specific portions of an email, (where <brackets>
38 indicate user-supplied values).
40 If notmuch is built with **Xapian Field Processors** (see below) some
41 of the prefixes with <regex> forms can be also used to restrict the
42 results to those whose value matches a regular expression (see
43 **regex(7)**) delimited with //, for example::
45 notmuch search 'from:"/bob@.*[.]example[.]com/"'
47 from:<name-or-address> or from:/<regex>/
48 The **from:** prefix is used to match the name or address of
49 the sender of an email message.
52 The **to:** prefix is used to match the names or addresses of any
53 recipient of an email message, (whether To, Cc, or Bcc).
55 subject:<word-or-quoted-phrase> or subject:/<regex>/
56 Any term prefixed with **subject:** will match only text from the
57 subject of an email. Searching for a phrase in the subject is
58 supported by including quotation marks around the phrase,
59 immediately following **subject:**.
62 The **attachment:** prefix can be used to search for specific
63 filenames (or extensions) of attachments to email messages.
66 The **mimetype:** prefix will be used to match text from the
67 content-types of MIME parts within email messages (as specified by
70 tag:<tag> or tag:/<regex>/ or is:<tag> or is:/<regex>/
71 For **tag:** and **is:** valid tag values include **inbox** and
72 **unread** by default for new messages added by **notmuch new** as
73 well as any other tag values added manually with **notmuch tag**.
75 id:<message-id> or mid:<message-id> or mid:/<regex>/
76 For **id:** and **mid:**, message ID values are the literal
77 contents of the Message-ID: header of email messages, but without
78 the '<', '>' delimiters.
81 The **thread:** prefix can be used with the thread ID values that
82 are generated internally by notmuch (and do not appear in email
83 messages). These thread ID values can be seen in the first column
84 of output from **notmuch search**
86 thread:{<notmuch query>}
87 If notmuch is built with **Xapian Field Processors** (see below),
88 threads may be searched for indirectly by providing an arbitrary
89 notmuch query in **{}**. For example, the following returns
90 threads containing a message from mallory and one (not necessarily
91 the same message) with Subject containing the word "crypto".
95 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory}" and thread:"{subject:crypto}"'
97 The performance of such queries can vary wildly. To understand
98 this, the user should think of the query **thread:{<something>}**
99 as expanding to all of the thread IDs which match **<something>**;
100 notmuch then performs a second search using the expanded query.
102 path:<directory-path> or path:<directory-path>/** or path:/<regex>/
103 The **path:** prefix searches for email messages that are in
104 particular directories within the mail store. The directory must
105 be specified relative to the top-level maildir (and without the
106 leading slash). By default, **path:** matches messages in the
107 specified directory only. The "/\*\*" suffix can be used to match
108 messages in the specified directory and all its subdirectories
109 recursively. **path:""** matches messages in the root of the mail
110 store and, likewise, **path:\*\*** matches all messages.
112 **path:** will find a message if *any* copy of that message is in
113 the specific directory.
115 folder:<maildir-folder> or folder:/<regex>/
116 The **folder:** prefix searches for email messages by maildir or
117 MH folder. For MH-style folders, this is equivalent to
118 **path:**. For maildir, this includes messages in the "new" and
119 "cur" subdirectories. The exact syntax for maildir folders depends
120 on your mail configuration. For maildir++, **folder:""** matches
121 the inbox folder (which is the root in maildir++), other folder
122 names always start with ".", and nested folders are separated by
123 "."s, such as **folder:.classes.topology**. For "file system"
124 maildir, the inbox is typically **folder:INBOX** and nested
125 folders are separated by slashes, such as
126 **folder:classes/topology**.
128 **folder:** will find a message if *any* copy of that message is
129 in the specific folder.
131 date:<since>..<until> or date:<date>
132 The **date:** prefix can be used to restrict the results to only
133 messages within a particular time range (based on the Date:
136 See **DATE AND TIME SEARCH** below for details on the range
137 expression, and supported syntax for <since> and <until> date and
140 The time range can also be specified using timestamps without
141 including the date prefix using a syntax of:
143 <initial-timestamp>..<final-timestamp>
145 Each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
146 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. Specifying a time range this way
147 is considered legacy and predates the date prefix.
149 lastmod:<initial-revision>..<final-revision>
150 The **lastmod:** prefix can be used to restrict the result by the
151 database revision number of when messages were last modified (tags
152 were added/removed or filenames changed). This is usually used in
153 conjunction with the **--uuid** argument to **notmuch search** to
154 find messages that have changed since an earlier query.
157 The **query:** prefix allows queries to refer to previously saved
158 queries added with **notmuch-config(1)**. Named queries are only
159 available if notmuch is built with **Xapian Field Processors**
162 property:<key>=<value>
163 The **property:** prefix searches for messages with a particular
164 <key>=<value> property pair. Properties are used internally by
165 notmuch (and extensions) to add metadata to messages. A given key
166 can be present on a given message with several different values.
167 See **notmuch-properties(7)** for more details.
172 In addition to individual terms, multiple terms can be combined with
173 Boolean operators (**and**, **or**, **not**, and **xor**). Each term
174 in the query will be implicitly connected by a logical AND if no
175 explicit operator is provided (except that terms with a common prefix
176 will be implicitly combined with OR). The shorthand '-<term>' can be
177 used for 'not <term>' but unfortunately this does not work at the
178 start of an expression. Parentheses can also be used to control the
179 combination of the Boolean operators, but will have to be protected
180 from interpretation by the shell, (such as by putting quotation marks
181 around any parenthesized expression).
183 In addition to the standard boolean operators, Xapian provides several
184 operators specific to text searching.
188 notmuch search term1 NEAR term2
190 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2. The
191 threshold can be set like this:
195 notmuch search term1 NEAR/2 term2
201 notmuch search term1 ADJ term2
203 will return results where term1 is within 10 words of term2, but in the
204 same order as in the query. The threshold can be set the same as with
209 notmuch search term1 ADJ/7 term2
215 **Stemming** in notmuch means that these searches
219 notmuch search detailed
220 notmuch search details
221 notmuch search detail
223 will all return identical results, because Xapian first "reduces" the
224 term to the common stem (here 'detail') and then performs the search.
226 There are two ways to turn this off: a search for a capitalized word
227 will be performed unstemmed, so that one can search for "John" and not
228 get results for "Johnson"; phrase searches are also unstemmed (see
229 below for details). Stemming is currently only supported for
230 English. Searches for words in other languages will be performed unstemmed.
235 It is possible to use a trailing '\*' as a wildcard. A search for
236 'wildc\*' will match 'wildcard', 'wildcat', etc.
239 Boolean and Probabilistic Prefixes
240 ----------------------------------
242 Xapian (and hence notmuch) prefixes are either **boolean**, supporting
243 exact matches like "tag:inbox" or **probabilistic**, supporting a more
244 flexible **term** based searching. Certain **special** prefixes are
245 processed by notmuch in a way not strictly fitting either of Xapian's
246 built in styles. The prefixes currently supported by notmuch are as
250 **tag:**, **id:**, **thread:**, **folder:**, **path:**, **property:**
252 **to:**, **attachment:**, **mimetype:**
254 **from:**, **query:**, **subject:**
259 In general Xapian distinguishes between lists of terms and
260 **phrases**. Phrases are indicated by double quotes (but beware you
261 probably need to protect those from your shell) and insist that those
262 unstemmed words occur in that order. One useful, but initially
263 surprising feature is that the following are equivalent ways to write
271 Both parenthesised lists of terms and quoted phrases are ok with
272 probabilistic prefixes such as **to:**, **from:**, and **subject:**. In particular
282 subject:pizza and subject:free
284 Both of these will match a subject "Free Delicious Pizza" while
295 Double quotes are also used by the notmuch query parser to protect
296 boolean terms, regular expressions, or subqueries containing spaces or
297 other special characters, e.g.
305 folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"
309 thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}"
311 As with phrases, you need to protect the double quotes from the shell
316 % notmuch search 'folder:"/^.*/(Junk|Spam)$/"'
317 % notmuch search 'thread:"{from:mallory and date:2009}" and thread:{to:mallory}'
322 notmuch understands a variety of standard and natural ways of expressing
323 dates and times, both in absolute terms ("2012-10-24") and in relative
324 terms ("yesterday"). Any number of relative terms can be combined ("1
325 hour 25 minutes") and an absolute date/time can be combined with
326 relative terms to further adjust it. A non-exhaustive description of the
327 syntax supported for absolute and relative terms is given below.
332 date:<since>..<until>
334 The above expression restricts the results to only messages from <since>
335 to <until>, based on the Date: header.
337 <since> and <until> can describe imprecise times, such as "yesterday".
338 In this case, <since> is taken as the earliest time it could describe
339 (the beginning of yesterday) and <until> is taken as the latest time it
340 could describe (the end of yesterday). Similarly, date:january..february
341 matches from the beginning of January to the end of February.
343 If specifying a time range using timestamps in conjunction with the
344 date prefix, each timestamp must be preceded by @ (ASCII hex 40). As
345 above, each timestamp is a number representing the number of seconds
346 since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC. For example:
348 date:@<initial-timestamp>..@<final-timestamp>
350 date:<expr>..! can be used as a shorthand for date:<expr>..<expr>. The
351 expansion takes place before interpretation, and thus, for example,
352 date:monday..! matches from the beginning of Monday until the end of
354 With **Xapian Field Processor** support (see below), non-range
355 date queries such as date:yesterday will work, but otherwise
356 will give unexpected results; if in doubt use date:yesterday..!
358 Currently, we do not support spaces in range expressions. You can
359 replace the spaces with '\_', or (in most cases) '-', or (in some cases)
360 leave the spaces out altogether. Examples in this man page use spaces
363 Open-ended ranges are supported (since Xapian 1.2.1), i.e. it's possible
364 to specify date:..<until> or date:<since>.. to not limit the start or
365 end time, respectively. Pre-1.2.1 Xapian does not report an error on
366 open ended ranges, but it does not work as expected either.
368 Relative date and time
369 ----------------------
372 (years\|months\|weeks\|days\|hours\|hrs\|minutes\|mins\|seconds\|secs)
375 All refer to past, can be repeated and will be accumulated.
377 Units can be abbreviated to any length, with the otherwise ambiguous
378 single m being m for minutes and M for months.
380 Number can also be written out one, two, ..., ten, dozen, hundred.
381 Additionally, the unit may be preceded by "last" or "this" (e.g., "last
382 week" or "this month").
384 When combined with absolute date and time, the relative date and time
385 specification will be relative from the specified absolute date and
388 Examples: 5M2d, two weeks
390 Supported absolute time formats
391 -------------------------------
393 - H[H]:MM[:SS] [(am\|a.m.\|pm\|p.m.)]
395 - H[H] (am\|a.m.\|pm\|p.m.)
405 - Examples: 17:05, 5pm
407 Supported absolute date formats
408 -------------------------------
422 - D[D][(st\|nd\|rd\|th)] Mon[thname] [YYYY]
424 - Mon[thname] D[D][(st\|nd\|rd\|th)] [YYYY]
428 Month names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
430 Weekday names can be abbreviated at three or more characters.
432 Examples: 2012-07-31, 31-07-2012, 7/31/2012, August 3
441 Some time zone codes, e.g. UTC, EET.
443 XAPIAN FIELD PROCESSORS
444 =======================
446 Certain optional features of the notmuch query processor rely on the
447 presence of the Xapian field processor API. You can determine if your
448 notmuch was built against a sufficiently recent version of Xapian by running
452 % notmuch config get built_with.field_processor
454 Currently the following features require field processor support:
456 - non-range date queries, e.g. "date:today"
457 - named queries e.g. "query:my_special_query"
458 - regular expression searches, e.g. "subject:/^\\[SPAM\\]/"
459 - thread subqueries, e.g. "thread:{from:bob}"
465 **notmuch-config(1)**,
466 **notmuch-count(1)**,
468 **notmuch-hooks(5)**,
469 **notmuch-insert(1)**,
471 **notmuch-reindex(1)**,
472 **notmuch-properties(1)**,
473 ***notmuch-reply(1)**,
474 **notmuch-restore(1)**,
475 **notmuch-search(1)**,
476 ***notmuch-show(1)**,