aerc: the World's Best Email Client

Pronounced 'ark', this programme lets you send email from the terminal.

I wrestled with neomutt (another CLI email client) to send emails in the terminal, but the documentation presumed that everyone in the world already knew how to set up notmuch and understood basic email nonsense, and went straight into telling you how to configure the colours. It was quite useless.

From the beginning, aerc requires very little configuration - tell it your email account, a password-command (or just give it your password), then an IMAP port (look it up with your email provider). It'll even write the config file for you. With that in, you can just start using email from the terminal, which has been fantastic.

The New Amaze-balls Workflow

I hated email.

Click, load, click...unsubscribe...

A CLI email program means everything gets hot-keys, so it's all instant and streamlined now. I see an email come in, and it gets a button:

• 'rr' to reply
  • This starts an editor in vim
• 'D' to delete
• 'P' to keep
• 'A' to Archive

Writing takes advantage of khard, the contacts program, which syncs across to my phone via Next Cloud.

Scripting Emails

It'll download emails locally with isync, so you can make rules using bash, like deleting things, or removing trash more than 3 months old.

It doesn't sort downloading emails, so you'll need to set up your own sending config. It also doesn't have any CLI to send emails, you can write a bash-loop to send out what you want.