1 Claws Mail - a GTK+ lightweight and fast e-mail client
3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
5 Copyright (C) 1999-2020 The Claws Mail Team and Hiroyuki Yamamoto
9 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
10 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
11 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
12 (at your option) any later version.
14 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
15 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
16 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
17 GNU General Public License for more details.
19 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
20 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
22 For more details see the file COPYING.
24 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
28 1. What is Claws Mail?
34 7. Partial downloading of POP3 mails
38 11. How to request features
39 12. Installing Claws from Git
44 1. What is Claws Mail?
45 --------------------------
47 Claws Mail is a lightweight and highly configurable email client
48 and news reader based on the GTK+ GUI toolkit, it runs on the X
51 Claws Mail is free software distributed under the GNU GPL.
53 To run Claws Mail use 'claws-mail' on the command line.
55 When claws-mail is executed for the first time a configuration
56 'Wizard' will appear prompting you for the minimum information
57 necessary to create a new account.
63 Claws Mail' capabilities are extended by plugins. It comes with
64 the following plugins included, all of which are built automatically
65 if the required libraries are present.
67 Plugins are installed in $PREFIX/lib/claws-mail/plugins/
68 and have a suffix of '.so'
69 To load a plugin go to '/Configuration/Plugins' and click
70 the 'Load Plugin' button.
71 Select the plugin that you want and click 'OK'
73 All plugin preferences can be found under
74 '/Configuration/Preferences/Plugins/'.
77 Notifies of new mail via the mail LED available on some laptops. The
78 LED can be set to blinking or on states when new mail is received.
79 Appropriate kernel modules have to be loaded first for this plugin to
80 work. Laptops supported are from ACER (acerhk and acer_acpi modules),
81 ASUS (asus_laptop and asus_acpi), IBM (ibm_acpi), Lenovo (tm_smapi)
82 and Fujitsu (apanel) manufacturers.
85 Saves mail addresses typed in the 'To', 'Cc' or 'Bcc' fields of
86 outgoing messages to a designated folder in the address book.
87 Addresses are saved only if not already present in the address book.
90 Archives mail folders using libarchive library. Folders can be archived
91 with or without compression (ZIP, GZIP or BZIP2) and also in several
92 formats (TAR, SHAR, PAX or CPIO).
93 Libarchive is available from http://www.libarchive.org/.
96 Selectively removes attachments from messages. Messages are permanently
97 modified by using this feature, so be careful!
100 Warns the user of possibly forgotten attachments when some keywords
101 are found in the outgoing messages. False positives (being warned when
102 no attachment is realy needed) exist, but some configuration options
103 can help to reduce their probability.
106 Enables the scanning of incoming mail received from a POP,
107 IMAP, or LOCAL account using Bogofilter. It can optionally
108 delete mail identified as spam or save it to a designated folder.
109 Bogofilter is a pure Bayesian filter, therefore it has better
110 speed performance than SpamAssassin but might catch less spam.
111 Bogofilter is available from http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/.
114 Checks all messages received from IMAP, POP or local accounts using
115 BSFilter, a bayesian spam filter program, which has to be installed
116 locally. Messages identified as spam can be deleted or saved to a
118 Bsfilter is available from http://sourceforge.jp/projects/bsfilter/.
121 Uses the Clam AntiVirus in daemon mode to scan received messages from
122 IMAP, POP or local accounts. Scanning is done through a socket to the
123 daemon, so it has to be previously configured to allow this.
124 Clam AntiVirus is available from http://www.clamav.net/.
127 Uses the Dillo browser (http://www.dillo.org) to render HTML mails
128 and HTML parts of multipart messages. Dillo is started with
129 special options to embed its window inside Claws Mail's message
130 view and to render the HTML safely. If required, remote content
131 can be also retrieved.
134 Renders HTML mails and HTML parts of multipart messages using the
135 GTK+ port of the WebKit library. External content is blocked by
136 default (including images) to avoid remote tracking, but can be
137 enabled either globally or just on the displayed message. The GTK+
138 WebKit is available from http://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKitGTK/.
141 Modifies downloaded messages and inserts special headers containing
142 some download information: UIDL, Claws Mail account name, POP server,
143 user ID and retrieval time. These headers can be used later for more
144 elaborate filtering or processing rules.
147 Includes your Gmail account contacts in the list generated for
148 Tab-address completion on compose window, using the GData library.
149 Gdata library is available from https://live.gnome.org/libgdata/.
152 Displays sender avatars from https://www.libravatar.org/, from own
153 sender's domain if enabled or even an automatically generated one.
156 Renders HTML mails and HTML parts of multipart messages using the
157 using the litehtml library (http://www.litehtml.com/). External content
158 is blocked by default (including images) to avoid remote tracking.
161 Handles mailboxes in Mbox format using the libEtPan! library. Mbox
162 files can be added to the folder tree and used like regular mailboxes.
163 LibEtPan! is available from http://www.etpan.org/.
166 Manage sieve filters on a server using the ManageSieve protocol.
169 Writes a header summary to a log file for each mail received after
170 sorting. The file for the summary is ~/Mail/NewLog.
173 Provides various ways of notifying the user of new and unread email.
174 Current methods include: a banner, a popup window, a user command,
175 a message to a LCD daemon, a system tray icon and an indicator icon.
176 Sound notifications are also possible through libcanberra. Each method
177 can be customized in detail through the plugin preferences.
178 Indicator library is available from https://launchpad.net/libindicator/
179 and libcanberra from http://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libcanberra/.
182 Extends the filtering possibilities of Claws Mail. Provides a Perl 5
183 interface to Claws Mail's filtering mechanism, allowing the use of full
184 Perl power in email filters. A conversion script is provided to
185 translate user rules into perl rules suitable for this plugin.
186 Perl is available from http://www.perl.org/.
189 Displays Portable Document Format (PDF) and PostScript attachments
190 within the message view using Poppler. PostScript attachments are
191 converted to PDF on the fly by the 'gs' tool, which has to be installed
192 first. The 'gs' tool is available from http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/.
193 The Poppler library is available from http://poppler.freedesktop.org/.
196 Handles core PGP functions and is required by the PGP/Inline
197 and PGP/MIME plugins.
198 Uses GnuPG/GPGME, ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/.
201 Handles inline PGP signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
202 decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt your
203 own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME, ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/.
206 Handles PGP/MIME signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
207 decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt your
208 own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME, ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/.
211 Provides Python scripting access to Claws Mail functions. A testing
212 console is also featured. Scripts can be saved to specific folders
213 for automatic loading on startup or being available as new menu items
214 under the '/Tools/Python scripts' menu.
215 Python is available from http://python.org/.
218 Creates mailboxes where newsfeeds in RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 or Atom format
219 can be added. Each newsfeed will create a folder with the appropriate
220 entries, fetched from the web. You can read them, and delete or keep
224 Handles S/MIME signed and/or encrypted mails. You can decrypt mails,
225 verify signatures or sign and encrypt your own mails.
228 Scans incoming mail received from a POP, IMAP or LOCAL account using
229 SpamAssassin. It can optionally delete mail identified as spam or save
230 it to a designated folder.
231 SpamAssassin is available from http://spamassassin.apache.org/.
234 Reports spam messages to online spam harvesting sites. Sites suported
235 are http://www.signal-spam.fr/ and http://www.spamcop.net/. The Debian
236 mailing list spam nomination system is also supported.
239 Decodes attachments with 'application/ms-tnef' MIME type (also known
240 as "winmail.dat" files) in Claws Mail, using the ytnef library.
241 Decoded parts can be saved to files.
242 The ytnef library is available from http://ytnef.sourceforge.net/.
245 Displays vCalendar messages. Only the meeting subset of the vCalendar
246 format is currently supported, which includes planning, sendding and
247 receiving invitations and answering them. Public calendar (WebCal)
248 subscriptions, free/busy information export/import and reminding of
249 events is also supported.
252 Additonal plugins can be found here:
253 https://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php
258 The "actions" feature is a convenient way for the user to launch external
259 commands to process a complete message file including headers and body or
260 just one of its parts. It allows also the use of an external command to
261 filter the whole text or just a selected part in the message window or in
262 the compose window. This is a generic tool that allows to do any uncommon
263 actions on the messages, and thus extends the possibilities of Claws Mail.
264 For example, Claws Mail does not include the rot13 cyphering algorithm
265 popular in some newsgroups. It does not support uuencoded messages. As
266 all these features can be handled by external programs, the actions
267 provide a convenient way to use them from the menu bar.
272 To create a new action, go to Configuration -> Actions.... The "Action
273 Creation" dialog offers to enter the Menu name that will trigger the
274 command. The created menu will be found in the Tools -> Actions submenu.
275 By inserting a slash / in the menu name, you create a submenu.
277 The command is entered in the Command line entry. Note that Claws Mail
278 stores every single email in a separate file. This allows to use the
279 following syntax for the command:
281 * %f denotes the file name of the selected message. If you selected more
282 than one, then the command will be launched for each message with
283 the appropriate file name
284 * %F denotes the list of the file names of the selected message. If only
285 one message is selected, this amounts to %f, but if more messages
286 are selected, then the command will be launched only once with the
287 list of the file names. (You can use both %f and %F in one command:
288 then the command will be launched for each selected message with
289 the name of this message and with the list of all selected
290 messages. I did not find a practical example for this.)
291 * %p denotes the current selected message part of a multipart message.
292 The part is decoded accordingly. If the message is not a multipart
293 message, it denotes the message body.
294 * Prepending >: this will allow you to send to the command's standard
295 input a text that you will enter in a dialog window.
296 * Prepending *: this will allow you to send to the command's standard
297 input a text that you will enter in a dialog window. But in
298 contrast to prepending >, the entered text is hidden (useful when
300 * Appending an ampersand &: this will run the command asynchronously.
301 That means "fire and forget". Claws Mail won't wait for the
302 command to finish, nor will it catch its output or its error
304 * Prepending the vertical bar | (pipe-in): this will send the current
305 displayed text or the current selected text from the message view
306 or the compose window to the command standard input. The command
307 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
308 * Appending the vertical bar | (pipe-out): this will replace the current
309 displayed text or the current selected text from the message window
310 or the compose window by the command standard output. The command
311 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
313 Note: It is not possible to use actions containing %f, %F or %p from the
316 When a command is run, and unless it is run asynchronously, Claws Mail
317 will be insensitive to any interaction and it will wait for the command to
318 finish. If the command takes too long (5 seconds), it will popup a dialog
319 window allowing to stop it. This dialog will also be displayed as soon as
320 the command has some output: error messages or even its standard output
321 when the command is not a "pipe-out" command. When multiple commands are
322 being run, they are run in parallel and each command output is separated
323 from the outputs of the others.
328 Here are some examples that are listed in the same syntax as used for
329 storing the actions list. You can copy and past the definition in your
330 ~/.claws-mail/actionsrc file (exit Claws Mail before). The syntax
331 is very simple: one line per action, each action contains the menu name
332 and the command line separated by a colon and a space ": "
334 Purpose: rot13 cyphering
335 Definition: Rot13: |tr a-zA-Z n-za-mN-ZA-M|
336 Details: This will apply the rot13 cyphering algorithm to the
337 (selected) text in the message/compose view.
339 Purpose: Decoding uuencoded messages
340 Definition: UUdeview: xdeview %F&
341 Details: xdeview comes with uudeview. If an encoded file is split in
342 multiple messages, just select them all and run the command.
344 Purpose: Display uuencoded image
345 Definition: Display uuencoded: uudec %f&
346 Details: Displays uuencoded files. The uudec[1] script can be found in
347 the 'tools' directory of the distribution package.
349 Purpose: Alter messages
350 Definition: Edit message: gvim -f %F
351 Details: Allows editing of any received message. Can be used to remove
352 unneeded message parts, etc.
354 Purpose: Pretty format
355 Definition: Par: |par 72Tbgjqw74bEe B=._A_a 72bg|
356 Details: par is a utility that can pretty format any text. It does a
357 very good job in indenting quoted messages, and justifying
358 text. Used when composing a message
361 Definition: Part/Dillo: dillo %p&
362 Details: Browse the selected message part in Dillo.
365 [1] The uudec script can be found in the 'tools' directory of the
366 distribution package. It needs uudecode and ImageMagick's display. The
367 latter can be replaced by any image viewer that can get input from
368 standard input. The script could also be modified to use temporary files
369 instead of standard input.
374 Claws has support for different icon sets. Several icon sets can be
375 downloaded from https://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php
376 You will need to create a directory called 'themes' in your config
377 directory, unpack them into this directory, and then use the interface
378 to select them, /Configuration/Preferences/Display/Themes
380 This interface can also be used to install new themes.
383 5. Quick Search with extended search
384 ------------------------------------
385 Quick Search, with its powerful Extended search function,
386 enables searching through folder's messages.
388 Extended Search allows one to define criteria that messages must
389 have in order to match and be displayed in the summary view pane.
390 Search types titled From, Subject and To are self explanatory.
391 Search type extended allows one to use Claws Mail's powerful
392 filtering engine to select messages. Examples:
393 from regexpcase "foo"
394 subject regexp "Bug" & to regexp "claws-mail"
396 Additionally, it is possible to use simpler yet equally
397 powerfull patterns for message selections. Mutt users will
398 immediately recognise most of the available patterns:
400 Pattern Parameter Selects
401 ----------------------------------------------------
403 ag # messages whose age is greater than #
404 al # messages whose age is lower than #
405 b S messages which contain S in the message body
406 B S messages which contain S in the whole message
407 c S messages carbon-copied to S
408 C S message is either to: or cc: to S
410 e S messages which contain S in the Sender field
411 E S true if execute "S" succeeds
412 f S messages originating from user S
414 h S messages which contain S in any header name or value
415 H S messages which contain S in the value of any header
416 i S messages which contain S in Message-Id header
417 I S messages which contain S in inreplyto header
418 k # messages which are marked with color #
420 n S messages which are in newsgroup S
423 r messages which have been replied to
425 s S messages which contain S in subject
426 se # messages whose score is equal to #
427 sg # messages whose score is greater than #
428 sl # messages whose score is lower than #
429 Se # messages whose size is equal to #
430 Sg # messages whose size is greater than #
431 Ss # messages whose size is smaller than #
432 t S messages which have been sent to S
433 tg S messages with tags containing S
434 tagged messages which are tagged
437 x S messages which contain S in References header
438 x "cmd args" messages returning 0 when passed to command
440 y S messages which contain S in X-Label header
442 & logical AND operator
443 | logical OR operator
444 ! or ~ logical NOT operator
445 % case sensitive search
447 all filtering expressions are allowed
450 S means regexp string
452 It is possible to use logical operators AND (&), OR (|) and
453 NOT (! or ~). Case sensitive search is achieved with %.
457 f "john beavis" messages from john beavis
458 %f "John Beavis" messages from John Beavis (case sensitive)
459 ~s foo messages which do not have foo in the subject
460 f foo & ~s bar messages from foo that do not have bar in thesubject
466 /Configuration/Preferences/Customize Toolbars lets you define the
467 toolbar you want. The configuration dialog enables you to set an icon,
468 an appropriate text, and map an action to it. Actions to choose
469 from are predefined. You can also have your "Claws Mail Actions"
470 (refer to "Actions" above) on your toolbar.
473 * Configuration->Actions
474 - add an entry "Dillo: dillo %p&"
475 * Configuration->Custom toolbar
476 - select Claws Mail Actions Feature
477 - select "Dillo: dillo %p&" from drop down list
478 - choose an icon and click ok
482 7. Partial downloading of POP3 mails
483 ------------------------------------
484 Messages over the configured size limit, (/[Account preferences]/
485 Receive/Message size limit), will be partially retrieved. These
486 messages will have a Notice View displayed (above the Message View),
487 informing of the partially retrieved state and the total size of the
488 message. The Notice View will also contain two buttons, 'Mark for
489 download' and 'Mark for deletion'. If the user clicks 'Mark for
490 download', the message will be downloaded in full at the next message
491 retrieval, (and the partial one deleted); if the user checks 'Mark for
492 deletion' it will be removed from the server after the normal delay
493 as specified in the POP3 account's 'Receive' preferences.
494 If a user moves a partially retrieved message to the Trash folder
495 it will be deleted on the server at the next retrieval after the
496 Trash folder has been emptied.
502 There's several options which are not widely used and were not
503 added to the configuration interface to avoid excesive bloat.
505 The complete and up to date list of hidden options can be found
506 on Hidden preferences section of Claws Mail Manual:
508 https://www.claws-mail.org/manual/claws-mail-manual.html#adv_hidden
513 Tools are small scripts which can help integrate Claws Mail with
514 other programs; perform format conversions between different kinds
515 of mailboxes, address books, etc.; be used in Claws Mail Actions for
516 a variety of purposes; or used in other programs to ease their
517 interoperability with Claws Mail.
519 You will find all the tools in the 'tools' directory and a detailed
520 description of the available scripts in 'tools/README.'
522 10. How to contribute
523 ---------------------
525 You are encourged to send patches via the Claws Mail bugzilla at
526 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
527 But please first read the patch guidelines here:
528 https://www.claws-mail.org/devel.php
530 If that's too troublesome, either contact Paul Mangan
531 <paul@claws-mail.org> or consider posting to the
532 Claws Mail-users mailing list.
533 https://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php
535 Bugs can be reported with Claws' bugzilla at:
536 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
538 Of course, you can also post to the Claws Mail-users mailing list.
540 Also, we really try to incorporate good contributions, but sometimes we
541 don't have enough time. If the contribution is really big, or requires
542 a long time to stabilise, send a mail to Paul Mangan
543 <paul@claws-mail.org>. We can probably arrange access to the
544 Claws Mail Git repository.
548 11. How to request features
549 ---------------------------
551 Ask around in Claws Mail-users ML. Note that some developers may
552 have already thought about your feature and may, perhaps, be implementing
553 it, or the feature was already discussed and rejected for whatever reason.
554 You might want to go ahead and hack a patch for it. (That would be very
555 cool!) Another possibility is to add a request to our bugzilla, (severity:
557 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
560 12. Installing Claws Mail from Git
561 --------------------------------------
566 To download the latest Git, cd to the directory where you wish to download
567 to and type the following information:
569 git clone https://git.claws-mail.org/readonly/claws.git
571 Later, when you want to update your local repository, you'll just have to
572 go back to the 'claws' directory, and type:
579 To compile and install use the following commands:
581 ./autogen.sh [add configure options as required]
583 make install [as root]
585 You will need a full set of development tools installed to be able to run
586 autogen.sh. See also ac/README.
659 2006-12-04 2.6.1 [first release as Claws Mail]
700 2004-05-31 0.9.11claws
701 2004-03-08 0.9.10claws
702 2004-02-06 0.9.9claws
703 2003-12-19 0.9.8claws
704 2003-11-26 0.9.7claws
705 2003-10-02 0.9.6claws
706 2003-09-10 0.9.5claws
707 2003-08-04 0.9.4claws
708 2003-07-12 0.9.3claws
709 2003-05-24 0.9.0claws
710 2003-03-12 0.8.11claws
711 2003-02-12 0.8.10claws
712 2003-01-24 0.8.9claws
713 2002-12-26 0.8.8claws
714 2002-12-23 0.8.7claws
715 2002-11-25 0.8.6claws
716 2002-10-07 0.8.5claws
717 2002-09-22 0.8.3claws
718 2002-08-28 0.8.2claws
719 2002-07-30 0.8.1claws
720 2002-07-23 0.8.0claws
721 2002-06-15 0.7.8claws
722 2002-05-18 0.7.6claws
723 2002-04-28 0.7.5claws
724 2002-03-11 0.7.4claws
725 2002-02-19 0.7.2claws
726 2002-02-14 0.7.1claws
727 2002-01-14 0.7.0claws
728 2001-12-16 0.6.6claws
729 2001-10-16 0.6.5claws8
730 2001-09-30 0.6.2claws
731 2001-08-14 0.6.1claws
732 2001-07-13 0.5.1claws
733 2001-07-01 0.5.0claws3
734 2001-06-16 0.4.99claws
735 2001-05-29 0.4.99claws3
736 2001-05-11 0.4.67claws1
743 https://www.claws-mail.org/
745 https://www.claws-mail.org/faq/
747 https://www.claws-mail.org/releases.php
748 Release Announcement Feed
749 https://www.claws-mail.org/releases.rss
751 https://www.claws-mail.org/news.php
753 https://www.claws-mail.org/downloads.php
755 https://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php
757 https://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php
759 https://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php
760 Users Mailing List archive
761 https://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/users/index.html
762 Commits Announcement List archive
763 https://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/commits/index.html
764 Bug/Patch/Feature Request Tracker
765 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
766 Internationalisation Status
767 https://www.claws-mail.org/i18n.php
769 https://www.claws-mail.org/sponsors.php
770 Claws Mail for Windows homepage
771 https://www.claws-mail.org/win32/