NAME

       notmuch - thread-based email index, search, and tagging

SYNOPSIS

       notmuch [option ...] command [arg ...]

DESCRIPTION

       Notmuch  is  a  command-line  based  program for indexing, searching, reading, and tagging
       large collections of email messages.

       This page describes how to get started using notmuch from the command line,  and  gives  a
       brief  overview  of  the  commands  available.  For  more information on e.g. notmuch show
       consult the notmuch-show(1) man page, also accessible via notmuch help show

       The quickest way to get started with Notmuch is to simply invoke the notmuch command  with
       no  arguments,  which  will  interactively  guide you through the process of indexing your
       mail.

NOTE

       While the command-line program  notmuch  provides  powerful  functionality,  it  does  not
       provide   the  most  convenient  interface  for  that  functionality.  More  sophisticated
       interfaces are expected to be built on top of either the command-line interface,  or  more
       likely,  on  top  of  the  notmuch library interface. See https://notmuchmail.org for more
       about alternate interfaces to notmuch. The emacs-based  interface  to  notmuch  (available
       under  emacs/ in the Notmuch source distribution) is probably the most widely used at this
       time.

OPTIONS

       Supported global options for notmuch include

       --help [command-name]
              Print a synopsis of available commands and exit. With  an  optional  command  name,
              show the man page for that subcommand.

       --version
              Print the installed version of notmuch, and exit.

       --config=FILE
              Specify  the  configuration  file  to  use.  This  overrides any configuration file
              specified by NOTMUCH_CONFIG. The empty string is a permitted and  sometimes  useful
              value  of  FILE,  which  tells  notmuch to use only configuration metadata from the
              database.

       --uuid=HEX
              Enforce that the database UUID (a unique identifier which persists until  e.g.  the
              database  is  compacted) is HEX; exit with an error if it is not. This is useful to
              detect rollover in modification counts on messages. You can find  this  UUID  using
              e.g. notmuch count --lastmod

       All  global  options except --config can also be specified after the command. For example,
       notmuch subcommand --uuid=HEX is equivalent to notmuch --uuid=HEX subcommand.

COMMANDS

   SETUP
       The notmuch setup command is used to configure Notmuch for first use, (or  to  reconfigure
       it later).

       The  setup  command  will  prompt  for  your  full  name,  your primary email address, any
       alternate email addresses you use, and the directory containing your email archives.  Your
       answers   will  be  written  to  a  configuration  file  in  NOTMUCH_CONFIG  (if  set)  or
       ${HOME}/.notmuch-config .  This  configuration  file  will  be  created  with  descriptive
       comments, making it easy to edit by hand later to change the configuration. Or you can run
       notmuch setup again to change the configuration.

       The mail directory you specify can  contain  any  number  of  sub-directories  and  should
       primarily  contain  only  files with individual email messages (eg. maildir or mh archives
       are perfect). If there are other, non-email files (such as  indexes  maintained  by  other
       email programs) then notmuch will do its best to detect those and ignore them.

       Mail storage that uses mbox format, (where one mbox file contains many messages), will not
       work with notmuch. If that's how your mail is currently  stored,  it  is  recommended  you
       first  convert it to maildir format with a utility such as mb2md(1) before running notmuch
       setup.

       Invoking notmuch with no command argument will run setup if  the  setup  command  has  not
       previously been completed.

   OTHER COMMANDS
       Several   of  the  notmuch  commands  accept  search  terms  with  a  common  syntax.  See
       notmuch-search-terms(7) for more details on the supported syntax.

       The notmuch-search(1), notmuch-show(1), notmuch-address(1) and  notmuch-count(1)  commands
       are used to query the email database.

       The notmuch-reply(1) command is useful for preparing a template for an email reply.

       The  notmuch-tag(1)  command  is  the  only  command  available  for manipulating database
       contents.

       The notmuch-dump(1) and notmuch-restore(1) commands can be used to create a  textual  dump
       of email tags for backup purposes, and to restore from that dump.

       The  notmuch-config(1)  command  can  be  used  to  get  or  set  settings  in the notmuch
       configuration file.

   CUSTOM COMMANDS
       If the given command is not known to  notmuch,  notmuch  tries  to  execute  the  external
       notmuch-<subcommand>  in PATH instead. This allows users to have their own notmuch related
       tools to be run via the notmuch command. By design, this  does  not  allow  notmuch's  own
       commands to be overridden using external commands.

   OPTION SYNTAX
       All  options  accepting an argument can be used with '=' or ':' as a separator. Except for
       boolean options (which would be ambiguous), a space can also be used as a  separator.  The
       following are all equivalent:

          notmuch --config=alt-config config get user.name
          notmuch --config:alt-config config get user.name
          notmuch --config alt-config config get user.name

ENVIRONMENT

       The following environment variables can be used to control the behavior of notmuch.

       NOTMUCH_CONFIG
              Specifies the location of the notmuch configuration file. See notmuch-config(1) for
              details.

       NOTMUCH_DATABASE
              Specifies the location of the notmuch database. See notmuch-config(1) for details.

       NOTMUCH_PROFILE
              Selects among notmuch configurations. See notmuch-config(1) for details.

       NOTMUCH_TALLOC_REPORT
              Location to write a talloc memory usage report. See  talloc_enable_leak_report_full
              in talloc(3) for more information.

       NOTMUCH_DEBUG_QUERY
              If  set  to  a  non-empty  value, the notmuch library will print (to stderr) Xapian
              queries it constructs.

SEE ALSO

       notmuch-address(1),     notmuch-compact(1),      notmuch-config(1),      notmuch-count(1),
       notmuch-dump(1),        notmuch-hooks(5),        notmuch-insert(1),        notmuch-new(1),
       notmuch-properties(7),    notmuch-reindex(1),    notmuch-reply(1),     notmuch-restore(1),
       notmuch-search(1), notmuch-search-terms(7), notmuch-show(1), notmuch-tag(1)

       The notmuch website: https://notmuchmail.org

CONTACT

       Feel  free  to  send  questions,  comments,  or  kudos  to  the  notmuch  mailing  list <‐
       notmuch@notmuchmail.org> . Subscription is not required before posting, but  is  available
       from the notmuchmail.org website.

       Real-time   interaction   with  the  Notmuch  community  is  available  via  IRC  (server:
       irc.libera.chat, channel: #notmuch).

AUTHOR

       Carl Worth and many others

COPYRIGHT

       2009-2022, Carl Worth and many others