NAME

       aerc - the world's best email client

INTRODUCTION

       Welcome to aerc! This tutorial will guide you through your first steps in using the client. This tutorial
       is a man page - you can read it again later with :help tutorial from aerc, or man aerc-tutorial from your
       terminal.

       First, let's introduce some basic keybindings. For convention, we'll use <C-p> to represent Ctrl+p, which
       matches the convention used for writing keybindings for aerc.

       <C-p>, <C-n>
           Cycles to the previous or next tab

       Try using these now to switch between your message list and the tutorial. In your message list, we use
       vim-style keys to get around.

       k, j
           Scrolls up and down between messages

       <C-u>, <C-d>
           Scrolls half a page up or down

       g, G
           Selects the first or last message, respectively

       K, J
           Switches between folders in the sidebar

       <Enter>
           Opens the selected message

       You can also search the selected folder with /, or filter with \. When searching you can use n and p to
       jump to the next and previous result. Filtering hides any non-matching message.

THE MESSAGE VIEWER

       Press <Enter> to open a message. By default, the message viewer will display your message using less(1).
       This should also have familiar, vim-like keybindings for scrolling around in your message.

       Multipart messages (messages with attachments, or messages with several alternative formats) show a part
       selector on the bottom of the message viewer.

       <C-k>, <C-j>
           Cycle between parts of a multipart message

       q
           Close the message viewer

       To show HTML messages, uncomment the text/html filter in your aerc.conf file (which is probably in
       ~/.config/aerc/) and install its dependencies: w3m and dante-utils.

       You can also do many tasks you could do in the message list from here, like replying to emails, deleting
       the email, or view the next and previous message (J and K).

COMPOSING MESSAGES

       Return to the message list by pressing q to dismiss the message viewer. Once there, let's compose a
       message.

       C
           Compose a new message

       rr
           Reply-all to a message

       rq
           Reply-all to a message, and pre-fill the editor with a quoted version of the message being replied to

       Rr
           Reply to a message

       Rq
           Reply to a message, and pre-fill the editor with a quoted version of the message being replied to

       For now, let's use C to compose a new message. The message composer will appear. You should see To, From,
       and Subject lines, as well as your $EDITOR. You can use <Tab> or <C-j> and <C-k> to cycle between these
       fields (tab won't cycle between fields once you enter the editor, but <C-j> and <C-k> will).

       Let's send an email to yourself. Note that the To and From headers expect RFC 5322 addresses, e.g. John
       Doe <john@example.org>, or simply <john@example.org>. Separate multiple recipients with commas. Go ahead
       and fill out an email, then close the editor.

       The message review screen is shown next. You have a chance now to revise the email before it's sent.
       Press y to send the email if it looks good.

       Note: when using the terminal in the message view, you can summon aerc's ex command line by using <C-x>.
       ':' is sent to the editor.

USING THE TERMINAL

       aerc comes with an embedded terminal, which you've already used to view and edit emails. We can also use
       this for other purposes, such as referencing a git repository while reviewing a patch. From the message
       list, we can use the following keybindings to open a terminal:

       <C-t>
           Opens a new terminal tab, running your shell

       $, !
           Prompts for a command to run, then opens a new terminal tab running that command

       |
           Prompts for a command to run, then pipes the selected email into that command and displays the result
           on a new terminal tab

       Try pressing $ and entering "top". You can also use the :cd command to change aerc's working directory,
       and the directory in which new terminals run. Use :pwd to see it again if you're not sure where you are.

ADDITIONAL NOTES

   COMMANDS
       Every keybinding is ultimately bound to an aerc command. You can also summon the command line by pressing
       ':', then entering one of these commands. See aerc(1) or :help for a full list of commands.

   MESSAGE FILTERS
       When displaying messages in the message viewer, aerc will pipe them through a message filter first. This
       allows you to decode messages in non-plaintext formats, add syntax highlighting, etc. aerc ships with a
       few default filters:

       •   Emails which begin with "[PATCH" will be piped into a filter for rendering git-format-patch and hg
           export emails.
       •   text/html is rendered with w3m in a network sandbox
       •   text/* is rendered with a simple filter for coloring quoted text

   CUSTOMIZING AERC
       Aerc is highly customizable. Review aerc-config(5) (or use :help config) to learn more about how to add
       custom keybindings, install new message filters, change its appearance and behavior, and so on.

AUTHORS

       Originally created by Drew DeVault <sir@cmpwn.com> and maintained by Robin Jarry <robin@jarry.cc> who is
       assisted by other open source contributors. For more information about aerc development, see
       https://sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc/.

                                                   2024-11-15                                   aerc-tutorial(7)