BSD/Linux/macos terminal email client with support for multiple accounts and Maildir / mbox / notmuch / IMAP / JMAP / NNTP (Usenet).

Try an old, outdated but online and interactive web demo powered by WebAssembly!

• Say hello on #meli on OFTC IRC, or,
• #meli:matrix.org Matrix bridge (if operational)
• Mailing lists
• Main repository https://git.meli-email.org/meli/meli Report bugs and/or feature requests in meli's issue tracker
  Official git mirrors

  • https://codeberg.org/meli/meli
  • https://github.com/meli/meli
  • https://ayllu-forge.org/meli/meli
  • https://gitlab.com/meli-project/meli

Table of contents:

• Install
• Build
  • Cargo Compile-time Features
• Quick start
  • Supported E-mail backends
  • E-mail submission backends
  • Non-exhaustive list of features
  • HTML Rendering
• Documentation

• Crates.io with cargo on all supported systems and architectures https://crates.io/crates/meli

  

  cargo install meli

  Install latest development snapshot from git repository:

  cargo install --git https://git.meli-email.org/meli/meli.git meli

• Official Debian (and Debian derivatives) packages https://packages.debian.org/trixie/meli

  

  apt install meli

• AUR (archlinux) https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/meli

  

• OpenSUSE https://build.opensuse.org/package/show/openSUSE:Factory/meli

  

• Alpine Linux https://pkgs.alpinelinux.org/packages?name=meli

  

  apk install meli

• NetBSD with pkgsrc https://pkgsrc.se/mail/meli

  

• OpenBSD ports https://openports.pl/path/mail/meli

  

• macOS with

  • Homebrew https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/meli

    

    brew install meli

  • MacPorts https://ports.macports.org/port/meli/

    

    port install meli

• Nix with Nixpkgs https://search.nixos.org/packages?query=meli

  

• Pre-built debian package, static binaries for amd64, arm64 architectures

Run make or cargo build --release --bin meli.

See make help output for information on how to use the Makefile.

For detailed building instructions, see BUILD.md

meli supports opting in and out of features at compile time with cargo features.

The contents of the default feature are:

default = ["sqlite3", "notmuch", "smtp", "dbus-notifications", "gpgme", "cli-docs", "jmap", "static"]

A list of all the features and a description for each follows:

# Create configuration file in ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/meli/config.toml:
$ meli create-config
# Edit configuration in ${EDITOR} or ${VISUAL}:
$ meli edit-config
# Optionally, install manual pages if installed via cargo:
$ meli install-man
# Ready to go.
$ meli
# You can read any manual page with the CLI subcommand `man`:
$ meli man meli.7
# See help output for all options and subcommands.
$ meli --help

See a comprehensive tour of meli in the manual page meli(7).

See also the Quickstart tutorial online.

After installing meli, see meli(1), meli.conf(5), meli(7) and meli-themes(5) for documentation. Sample configuration and theme files can be found in the meli/docs/samples/ subdirectory. Examples for configuration file settings can be found in meli.conf.examples(5) Manual pages are also hosted online. meli by default looks for a configuration file in this location: ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/meli/config.toml.

You can run meli with arbitrary configuration files by setting the ${MELI_CONFIG} environment variable to their locations, i.e.:

MELI_CONFIG=./test_config cargo run

See meli(7) for an extensive tutorial and meli.conf(5) for all configuration values.

Main view	Compact main view	Compose with embed terminal editor

• SMTP
• Pipe to shell script
• Server-side submission when supported

• TLS
• email threading support
• multithreaded, async operation
• optionally run your editor of choice inside meli, with an embedded xterm-compatible terminal emulator
• plain text configuration in TOML
• ability to open emails in UI tabs and switch to them
• optional sqlite3 index search
• override almost any setting per mailbox, per account
• contact list (+read-only vCard and mutt alias file support)
• forced UTF-8 (other encodings are read-only)
• configurable shortcuts
• theming
• NO_COLOR support
• ascii-only drawing characters option
• view text/html attachments through an html filter command (w3m by default)
• pipe attachments/mail to stuff
• use external attachment file picker instead of typing in an attachment's full path
• GPG signing, encryption, signing + encryption
• GPG signature verification

HTML rendering is achieved using w3m by default. You can use the pager.html_filter setting to override this (for more details you can consult meli.conf(5)).

See a comprehensive tour of meli in the manual page meli(7).

See also the Quickstart tutorial online.

After installing meli, see meli(1), meli.conf(5), meli(7) and meli-themes(5) for documentation. Sample configuration and theme files can be found in the meli/docs/samples/ subdirectory. Manual pages are also hosted online.

meli by default looks for a configuration file in this location: ${XDG_CONFIG_HOME}/meli/config.toml

You can run meli with arbitrary configuration files by setting the ${MELI_CONFIG} environment variable to their locations, or use the [-c, --config] argument:

MELI_CONFIG=./test_config meli

or

meli -c ./test_config