The S-nail mail client

And how to achieve a usable configuration for IMAP/SMTP

TL;DR: Here’s my .mailrc.

As I’d mentioned in my blog post about mael, I’ve been on the lookout for a good, usable mail client. As it happens, I found S-nail just as I was about to give up on mael. Turns out writing an MUA isn’t all too easy after all. S-nail turned out to be the perfect client for me, but I had to invest quite some time in reading the very thorough manual and exchanging emails with its very friendly author. I did it so you don’t have to¹, and I present to you this guide.

basic settings

These settings below should guarantee some sane defaults to get started with. Comments added for context.

# enable upward compatibility with S-nail v15.0
set v15-compat

# charsets we send mail in
set sendcharsets=utf-8,iso-8859-1

# reply back in sender's charset
set reply-in-same-charset

# prevent stripping of full names in replies
set fullnames

# adds a 'Mail-Followup-To' header; useful in mailing lists
set followup-to followup-to-honour-ask-yes

# asks for an attachment after composing
set askattach

# marks a replied message as answered
set markanswered

# honors the 'Reply-To' header
set reply-to-honour

# automatically launches the editor while composing mail interactively
set editalong

# I didn't fully understand this :) 
set history-gabby=all

# command history storage
set history-file=~/.s-nailhist

# sort mail by date (try 'thread' for threaded view)
set autosort=date

authentication

With these out of the way, we can move on to configuring our account—authenticating IMAP and SMTP. Before that, however, we’ll have to create a ~/.netrc file to store our account credentials.

(This of course, assumes that your SMTP and IMAP credentials are the same. I don’t know what to do otherwise. )

machine *.domain.tld login user@domain.tld password hunter2

Once done, encrypt this file using gpg / gpg2. This is optional, but recommended.

$ gpg2 --symmetric --cipher-algo AES256 -o .netrc.gpg .netrc

You can now delete the plaintext .netrc file. Now add these lines to your .mailrc:

set netrc-lookup
set netrc-pipe='gpg2 -qd ~/.netrc.gpg'

Before we define our account block, add these two lines for a nicer IMAP experience:

set imap-cache=~/.cache/nail
set imap-keepalive=240

Defining an account is dead simple.

account "personal" {
    localopts yes
    set from="Your Name <user@domain.tld>"
    set folder=imaps://imap.domain.tld:993

    # copy sent messages to Sent; '+' indicates subdir of 'folder' 
    set record=+Sent
    set inbox=+INBOX
    
    # optionally, set this to 'smtps' and change the port accordingly
    # remove 'smtp-use-starttls'
    set mta=smtp://smtp.domain.tld:587 smtp-use-starttls

    # couple of shortcuts to useful folders
    shortcut sent +Sent \
        inbox +INBOX \
        drafts +Drafts \
        trash +Trash \
        archives +Archives
}

# enable account on startup
account personal

You might also want to trash mail, instead of perma-deleting them (delete does that). To achieve this, we define an alias:

define trash {
    move "$@" +Trash
}

commandalias del call trash

Replace +Trash with the relative path to your trash folder.

aesthetics

The fun stuff. I don’t feel like explaining what these do (hint: I don’t fully understand it either), so just copy-paste it and mess around with the colors:

# use whatever symbol you fancy
set prompt='> '

colour 256 sum-dotmark ft=bold,fg=13 dot
colour 256 sum-header fg=007 older
colour 256 sum-header bg=008 dot
colour 256 sum-header fg=white
colour 256 sum-thread bg=008 dot
colour 256 sum-thread fg=cyan

The prompt can be configured more extensively, but I don’t need it. Read the man page if you do.

essential commands

Eh, you can just read the man page, I guess. But here’s a quick list off the top of my head:

• headers: Lists all messages, with the date, subject etc.
• mail: Compose mail.
• <number>: Read mail by specifiying its number on the message list.
• delete <number>: Delete mail.
• new <number>: Mark as new (unread).
• file <shortcut or path to folder>: Change folders. For example: file sent

That’s all there is to it.

This is day 2 of the #100DaysToOffload challenge. I didn’t think I’d participate, until today. So yesterday’s post is day 1. Will I keep at it? I dunno. We’ll see.

Questions or comments? Send an email.