1 Claws Mail - a GTK lightweight and fast e-mail client
3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
5 Copyright (C) 1999-2022 The Claws Mail Team and Hiroyuki Yamamoto
7 This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
8 it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
9 the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
10 (at your option) any later version.
12 This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
13 but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
14 MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
15 GNU General Public License for more details.
17 You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
18 along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
20 For more details see the file COPYING.
22 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
26 1. What is Claws Mail?
32 7. Partial downloading of POP3 mails
36 11. How to request features
37 12. Installing Claws from Git
42 1. What is Claws Mail?
43 --------------------------
45 Claws Mail is a lightweight and highly configurable email client
46 and news reader based on the GTK GUI toolkit, it runs on the X
49 Claws Mail is free software distributed under the GNU GPL.
51 To run Claws Mail use 'claws-mail' on the command line.
53 When claws-mail is executed for the first time a configuration
54 'Wizard' will appear prompting you for the minimum information
55 necessary to create a new account.
61 Claws Mail' capabilities are extended by plugins. It comes with
62 the following plugins included, all of which are built automatically
63 if the required libraries are present.
65 Plugins are installed in $PREFIX/lib/claws-mail/plugins/
66 and have a suffix of '.so'
67 To load a plugin go to '/Configuration/Plugins' and click
68 the 'Load Plugin' button.
69 Select the plugin that you want and click 'OK'
71 All plugin preferences can be found under
72 '/Configuration/Preferences/Plugins/'.
75 Notifies of new mail via the mail LED available on some laptops. The
76 LED can be set to blinking or on states when new mail is received.
77 Appropriate kernel modules have to be loaded first for this plugin to
78 work. Laptops supported are from ACER (acerhk and acer_acpi modules),
79 ASUS (asus_laptop and asus_acpi), IBM (ibm_acpi), Lenovo (tm_smapi)
80 and Fujitsu (apanel) manufacturers.
83 Saves mail addresses typed in the 'To', 'Cc' or 'Bcc' fields of
84 outgoing messages to a designated folder in the address book.
85 Addresses are saved only if not already present in the address book.
88 Archives mail folders using libarchive library. Folders can be archived
89 with or without compression (ZIP, GZIP or BZIP2) and also in several
90 formats (TAR, SHAR, PAX or CPIO).
91 Libarchive is available from https://www.libarchive.org/.
94 Selectively removes attachments from messages. Messages are permanently
95 modified by using this feature, so be careful!
98 Warns the user of possibly forgotten attachments when some keywords
99 are found in the outgoing messages. False positives (being warned when
100 no attachment is realy needed) exist, but some configuration options
101 can help to reduce their probability.
104 Enables the scanning of incoming mail received from a POP,
105 IMAP, or LOCAL account using Bogofilter. It can optionally
106 delete mail identified as spam or save it to a designated folder.
107 Bogofilter is a pure Bayesian filter, therefore it has better
108 speed performance than SpamAssassin but might catch less spam.
109 Bogofilter is available from https://bogofilter.sourceforge.io/.
112 Checks all messages received from IMAP, POP or local accounts using
113 BSFilter, a bayesian spam filter program, which has to be installed
114 locally. Messages identified as spam can be deleted or saved to a
116 Bsfilter is available from https://osdn.net/projects/bsfilter/.
119 Uses the Clam AntiVirus in daemon mode to scan received messages from
120 IMAP, POP or local accounts. Scanning is done through a socket to the
121 daemon, so it has to be previously configured to allow this.
122 Clam AntiVirus is available from https://www.clamav.net/.
125 Uses the Dillo browser (https://www.dillo.org/) to render HTML mails
126 and HTML parts of multipart messages. Dillo is started with
127 special options to embed its window inside Claws Mail's message
128 view and to render the HTML safely. If required, remote content
129 can be also retrieved.
132 Renders HTML mails and HTML parts of multipart messages using the
133 GTK port of the WebKit library. External content is blocked by
134 default (including images) to avoid remote tracking, but can be
135 enabled either globally or just on the displayed message. The GTK
136 WebKit is available from https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/WebKitGTK.
139 Modifies downloaded messages and inserts special headers containing
140 some download information: UIDL, Claws Mail account name, POP server,
141 user ID and retrieval time. These headers can be used later for more
142 elaborate filtering or processing rules.
145 Includes your Gmail account contacts in the list generated for
146 Tab-address completion on compose window, using the GData library.
147 Gdata library is available from https://live.gnome.org/libgdata/.
150 Shows a warning when sending or queueing a message and a reference
151 to one or more keywords is found in the message text.
154 Displays sender avatars from https://www.libravatar.org/, from own
155 sender's domain if enabled or even an automatically generated one.
158 Renders HTML mails and HTML parts of multipart messages using the
159 using the litehtml library (http://www.litehtml.com/). External content
160 is blocked by default (including images) to avoid remote tracking.
163 Handles mailboxes in Mbox format using the libEtPan! library. Mbox
164 files can be added to the folder tree and used like regular mailboxes.
165 LibEtPan! is available from https://www.etpan.org/libetpan.html.
168 Manage sieve filters on a server using the ManageSieve protocol.
171 Writes a header summary to a log file for each mail received after
172 sorting. The file for the summary is ~/Mail/NewLog.
175 Provides various ways of notifying the user of new and unread email.
176 Current methods include: a banner, a popup window, a user command,
177 a message to a LCD daemon, a system tray icon and an indicator icon.
178 Sound notifications are also possible through libcanberra. Each method
179 can be customized in detail through the plugin preferences.
180 Indicator library is available from https://launchpad.net/libindicator/
181 and libcanberra from https://0pointer.de/lennart/projects/libcanberra/.
184 Extends the filtering possibilities of Claws Mail. Provides a Perl 5
185 interface to Claws Mail's filtering mechanism, allowing the use of full
186 Perl power in email filters. A conversion script is provided to
187 translate user rules into perl rules suitable for this plugin.
188 Perl is available from http://www.perl.org/.
191 Displays Portable Document Format (PDF) and PostScript attachments
192 within the message view using Poppler. PostScript attachments are
193 converted to PDF on the fly by the 'gs' tool, which has to be installed
194 first. The 'gs' tool is available from https://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/.
195 The Poppler library is available from https://poppler.freedesktop.org/.
198 Handles core PGP functions and is required by the PGP/Inline
199 and PGP/MIME plugins.
200 Uses GnuPG/GPGME, https://www.gnupg.org/software/gpgme/index.html.
203 Handles inline PGP signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
204 decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt your
206 Uses GnuPG/GPGME, https://www.gnupg.org/software/gpgme/index.html.
209 Handles PGP/MIME signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
210 decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt your
212 Uses GnuPG/GPGME, https://www.gnupg.org/software/gpgme/index.html.
215 Provides Python scripting access to Claws Mail functions. A testing
216 console is also featured. Scripts can be saved to specific folders
217 for automatic loading on startup or being available as new menu items
218 under the '/Tools/Python scripts' menu.
219 Python is available from https://python.org/.
222 Creates mailboxes where newsfeeds in RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 or Atom format
223 can be added. Each newsfeed will create a folder with the appropriate
224 entries, fetched from the web. You can read them, and delete or keep
228 Handles S/MIME signed and/or encrypted mails. You can decrypt mails,
229 verify signatures or sign and encrypt your own mails.
232 Scans incoming mail received from a POP, IMAP or LOCAL account using
233 SpamAssassin. It can optionally delete mail identified as spam or save
234 it to a designated folder.
235 SpamAssassin is available from https://spamassassin.apache.org/.
238 Reports spam messages to online spam harvesting sites. Sites suported
239 are https://www.signal-spam.fr/ and https://www.spamcop.net/. The Debian
240 mailing list spam nomination system is also supported.
243 Decodes attachments with 'application/ms-tnef' MIME type (also known
244 as "winmail.dat" files) in Claws Mail, using the ytnef library.
245 Decoded parts can be saved to files.
246 The ytnef library is available from https://github.com/Yeraze/ytnef.
249 Displays vCalendar messages. Only the meeting subset of the vCalendar
250 format is currently supported, which includes planning, sendding and
251 receiving invitations and answering them. Public calendar (WebCal)
252 subscriptions, free/busy information export/import and reminding of
253 events is also supported.
256 Additonal plugins can be found here:
257 https://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php
262 The "actions" feature is a convenient way for the user to launch external
263 commands to process a complete message file including headers and body or
264 just one of its parts. It allows also the use of an external command to
265 filter the whole text or just a selected part in the message window or in
266 the compose window. This is a generic tool that allows to do any uncommon
267 actions on the messages, and thus extends the possibilities of Claws Mail.
268 For example, Claws Mail does not include the rot13 cyphering algorithm
269 popular in some newsgroups. It does not support uuencoded messages. As
270 all these features can be handled by external programs, the actions
271 provide a convenient way to use them from the menu bar.
276 To create a new action, go to Configuration -> Actions.... The "Action
277 Creation" dialog offers to enter the Menu name that will trigger the
278 command. The created menu will be found in the Tools -> Actions submenu.
279 By inserting a slash / in the menu name, you create a submenu.
281 The command is entered in the Command line entry. Note that Claws Mail
282 stores every single email in a separate file. This allows to use the
283 following syntax for the command:
285 * %f denotes the file name of the selected message. If you selected more
286 than one, then the command will be launched for each message with
287 the appropriate file name
288 * %F denotes the list of the file names of the selected message. If only
289 one message is selected, this amounts to %f, but if more messages
290 are selected, then the command will be launched only once with the
291 list of the file names. (You can use both %f and %F in one command:
292 then the command will be launched for each selected message with
293 the name of this message and with the list of all selected
294 messages. I did not find a practical example for this.)
295 * %p denotes the current selected message part of a multipart message.
296 The part is decoded accordingly. If the message is not a multipart
297 message, it denotes the message body.
298 * Prepending >: this will allow you to send to the command's standard
299 input a text that you will enter in a dialog window.
300 * Prepending *: this will allow you to send to the command's standard
301 input a text that you will enter in a dialog window. But in
302 contrast to prepending >, the entered text is hidden (useful when
304 * Appending an ampersand &: this will run the command asynchronously.
305 That means "fire and forget". Claws Mail won't wait for the
306 command to finish, nor will it catch its output or its error
308 * Prepending the vertical bar | (pipe-in): this will send the current
309 displayed text or the current selected text from the message view
310 or the compose window to the command standard input. The command
311 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
312 * Appending the vertical bar | (pipe-out): this will replace the current
313 displayed text or the current selected text from the message window
314 or the compose window by the command standard output. The command
315 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
317 Note: It is not possible to use actions containing %f, %F or %p from the
320 When a command is run, and unless it is run asynchronously, Claws Mail
321 will be insensitive to any interaction and it will wait for the command to
322 finish. If the command takes too long (5 seconds), it will popup a dialog
323 window allowing to stop it. This dialog will also be displayed as soon as
324 the command has some output: error messages or even its standard output
325 when the command is not a "pipe-out" command. When multiple commands are
326 being run, they are run in parallel and each command output is separated
327 from the outputs of the others.
332 Here are some examples that are listed in the same syntax as used for
333 storing the actions list. You can copy and past the definition in your
334 ~/.claws-mail/actionsrc file (exit Claws Mail before). The syntax
335 is very simple: one line per action, each action contains the menu name
336 and the command line separated by a colon and a space ": "
338 Purpose: rot13 cyphering
339 Definition: Rot13: |tr a-zA-Z n-za-mN-ZA-M|
340 Details: This will apply the rot13 cyphering algorithm to the
341 (selected) text in the message/compose view.
343 Purpose: Decoding uuencoded messages
344 Definition: UUdeview: xdeview %F&
345 Details: xdeview comes with uudeview. If an encoded file is split in
346 multiple messages, just select them all and run the command.
348 Purpose: Display uuencoded image
349 Definition: Display uuencoded: uudec %f&
350 Details: Displays uuencoded files. The uudec[1] script can be found in
351 the 'tools' directory of the distribution package.
353 Purpose: Alter messages
354 Definition: Edit message: gvim -f %F
355 Details: Allows editing of any received message. Can be used to remove
356 unneeded message parts, etc.
358 Purpose: Pretty format
359 Definition: Par: |par 72Tbgjqw74bEe B=._A_a 72bg|
360 Details: par is a utility that can pretty format any text. It does a
361 very good job in indenting quoted messages, and justifying
362 text. Used when composing a message
365 Definition: Part/Dillo: dillo %p&
366 Details: Browse the selected message part in Dillo.
369 [1] The uudec script can be found in the 'tools' directory of the
370 distribution package. It needs uudecode and ImageMagick's display. The
371 latter can be replaced by any image viewer that can get input from
372 standard input. The script could also be modified to use temporary files
373 instead of standard input.
378 Claws has support for different icon sets. Several icon sets can be
379 downloaded from https://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php
380 You will need to create a directory called 'themes' in your config
381 directory, unpack them into this directory, and then use the interface
382 to select them, /Configuration/Preferences/Display/Themes
384 This interface can also be used to install new themes.
387 5. Quick Search with extended search
388 ------------------------------------
389 Quick Search, with its powerful Extended search function,
390 enables searching through folder's messages.
392 Extended Search allows one to define criteria that messages must
393 have in order to match and be displayed in the summary view pane.
394 Search types titled From, Subject and To are self explanatory.
395 Search type extended allows one to use Claws Mail's powerful
396 filtering engine to select messages. Examples:
397 from regexpcase "foo"
398 subject regexp "Bug" & to regexp "claws-mail"
400 Additionally, it is possible to use simpler yet equally
401 powerfull patterns for message selections. Mutt users will
402 immediately recognise most of the available patterns:
404 Pattern Parameter Selects
405 ----------------------------------------------------
407 ag # messages whose age is greater than #
408 al # messages whose age is lower than #
409 b S messages which contain S in the message body
410 B S messages which contain S in the whole message
411 c S messages carbon-copied to S
412 C S message is either to: or cc: to S
414 e S messages which contain S in the Sender field
415 E S true if execute "S" succeeds
416 f S messages originating from user S
418 h S messages which contain S in any header name or value
419 H S messages which contain S in the value of any header
420 i S messages which contain S in Message-Id header
421 I S messages which contain S in inreplyto header
422 k # messages which are marked with color #
424 n S messages which are in newsgroup S
427 r messages which have been replied to
429 s S messages which contain S in subject
430 se # messages whose score is equal to #
431 sg # messages whose score is greater than #
432 sl # messages whose score is lower than #
433 Se # messages whose size is equal to #
434 Sg # messages whose size is greater than #
435 Ss # messages whose size is smaller than #
436 t S messages which have been sent to S
437 tg S messages with tags containing S
438 tagged messages which are tagged
441 x S messages which contain S in References header
442 x "cmd args" messages returning 0 when passed to command
444 y S messages which contain S in X-Label header
446 & logical AND operator
447 | logical OR operator
448 ! or ~ logical NOT operator
449 % case sensitive search
451 all filtering expressions are allowed
454 S means regexp string
456 It is possible to use logical operators AND (&), OR (|) and
457 NOT (! or ~). Case sensitive search is achieved with %.
461 f "john beavis" messages from john beavis
462 %f "John Beavis" messages from John Beavis (case sensitive)
463 ~s foo messages which do not have foo in the subject
464 f foo & ~s bar messages from foo that do not have bar in thesubject
470 /Configuration/Preferences/Customize Toolbars lets you define the
471 toolbar you want. The configuration dialog enables you to set an icon,
472 an appropriate text, and map an action to it. Actions to choose
473 from are predefined. You can also have your "Claws Mail Actions"
474 (refer to "Actions" above) on your toolbar.
477 * Configuration->Actions
478 - add an entry "Dillo: dillo %p&"
479 * Configuration->Custom toolbar
480 - select Claws Mail Actions Feature
481 - select "Dillo: dillo %p&" from drop down list
482 - choose an icon and click ok
486 7. Partial downloading of POP3 mails
487 ------------------------------------
488 Messages over the configured size limit, (/[Account preferences]/
489 Receive/Message size limit), will be partially retrieved. These
490 messages will have a Notice View displayed (above the Message View),
491 informing of the partially retrieved state and the total size of the
492 message. The Notice View will also contain two buttons, 'Mark for
493 download' and 'Mark for deletion'. If the user clicks 'Mark for
494 download', the message will be downloaded in full at the next message
495 retrieval, (and the partial one deleted); if the user checks 'Mark for
496 deletion' it will be removed from the server after the normal delay
497 as specified in the POP3 account's 'Receive' preferences.
498 If a user moves a partially retrieved message to the Trash folder
499 it will be deleted on the server at the next retrieval after the
500 Trash folder has been emptied.
506 There's several options which are not widely used and were not
507 added to the configuration interface to avoid excesive bloat.
509 The complete and up to date list of hidden options can be found
510 on Hidden preferences section of Claws Mail Manual:
512 https://www.claws-mail.org/manual/claws-mail-manual.html#adv_hidden
517 Tools are small scripts which can help integrate Claws Mail with
518 other programs; perform format conversions between different kinds
519 of mailboxes, address books, etc.; be used in Claws Mail Actions for
520 a variety of purposes; or used in other programs to ease their
521 interoperability with Claws Mail.
523 You will find all the tools in the 'tools' directory and a detailed
524 description of the available scripts in 'tools/README.'
526 10. How to contribute
527 ---------------------
529 You are encourged to send patches via the Claws Mail bugzilla at
530 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
531 But please first read the patch guidelines here:
532 https://www.claws-mail.org/devel.php
534 If that's too troublesome, either contact Paul Mangan
535 <paul@claws-mail.org> or consider posting to the
536 Claws Mail-users mailing list.
537 https://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php
539 Bugs can be reported with Claws' bugzilla at:
540 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
542 Of course, you can also post to the Claws Mail-users mailing list.
544 Also, we really try to incorporate good contributions, but sometimes we
545 don't have enough time. If the contribution is really big, or requires
546 a long time to stabilise, send a mail to Paul Mangan
547 <paul@claws-mail.org>. We can probably arrange access to the
548 Claws Mail Git repository.
552 11. How to request features
553 ---------------------------
555 Ask around in Claws Mail-users ML. Note that some developers may
556 have already thought about your feature and may, perhaps, be implementing
557 it, or the feature was already discussed and rejected for whatever reason.
558 You might want to go ahead and hack a patch for it. (That would be very
559 cool!) Another possibility is to add a request to our bugzilla, (severity:
561 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
564 12. Installing Claws Mail from Git
565 --------------------------------------
570 To download the latest Git, cd to the directory where you wish to download
571 to and type the following information:
573 git clone https://git.claws-mail.org/readonly/claws.git
575 Later, when you want to update your local repository, you'll just have to
576 go back to the 'claws' directory, and type:
583 To compile and install use the following commands:
585 ./autogen.sh [add configure options as required]
587 make install [as root]
589 You will need a full set of development tools installed to be able to run
590 autogen.sh. See also ac/README.
665 2006-12-04 2.6.1 [first release as Claws Mail]
706 2004-05-31 0.9.11claws
707 2004-03-08 0.9.10claws
708 2004-02-06 0.9.9claws
709 2003-12-19 0.9.8claws
710 2003-11-26 0.9.7claws
711 2003-10-02 0.9.6claws
712 2003-09-10 0.9.5claws
713 2003-08-04 0.9.4claws
714 2003-07-12 0.9.3claws
715 2003-05-24 0.9.0claws
716 2003-03-12 0.8.11claws
717 2003-02-12 0.8.10claws
718 2003-01-24 0.8.9claws
719 2002-12-26 0.8.8claws
720 2002-12-23 0.8.7claws
721 2002-11-25 0.8.6claws
722 2002-10-07 0.8.5claws
723 2002-09-22 0.8.3claws
724 2002-08-28 0.8.2claws
725 2002-07-30 0.8.1claws
726 2002-07-23 0.8.0claws
727 2002-06-15 0.7.8claws
728 2002-05-18 0.7.6claws
729 2002-04-28 0.7.5claws
730 2002-03-11 0.7.4claws
731 2002-02-19 0.7.2claws
732 2002-02-14 0.7.1claws
733 2002-01-14 0.7.0claws
734 2001-12-16 0.6.6claws
735 2001-10-16 0.6.5claws8
736 2001-09-30 0.6.2claws
737 2001-08-14 0.6.1claws
738 2001-07-13 0.5.1claws
739 2001-07-01 0.5.0claws3
740 2001-06-16 0.4.99claws
741 2001-05-29 0.4.99claws3
742 2001-05-11 0.4.67claws1
749 https://www.claws-mail.org/
751 https://www.claws-mail.org/faq/
753 https://www.claws-mail.org/releases.php
754 Release Announcement Feed
755 https://www.claws-mail.org/releases.rss
757 https://www.claws-mail.org/news.php
759 https://www.claws-mail.org/downloads.php
761 https://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php
763 https://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php
765 https://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php
766 Users Mailing List archive
767 https://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/users/index.html
768 Commits Announcement List archive
769 https://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/commits/index.html
770 Bug/Patch/Feature Request Tracker
771 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
772 Internationalisation Status
773 https://www.claws-mail.org/i18n.php
775 https://www.claws-mail.org/sponsors.php
776 Claws Mail for Windows homepage
777 https://www.claws-mail.org/win32/