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 http://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 http://bogofilter.sourceforge.net/.
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 http://sourceforge.jp/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 http://www.clamav.net/.
125 Uses the Dillo browser (http://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 http://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 http://www.etpan.org/.
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 http://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 http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/.
195 The Poppler library is available from http://poppler.freedesktop.org/.
198 Handles core PGP functions and is required by the PGP/Inline
199 and PGP/MIME plugins.
200 Uses GnuPG/GPGME, ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/.
203 Handles inline PGP signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
204 decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt your
205 own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME, ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/.
208 Handles PGP/MIME signed and/or encrypted mails. You can
209 decrypt mails, verify signatures or sign and encrypt your
210 own mails. Uses GnuPG/GPGME, ftp://ftp.gnupg.org/gcrypt/gpgme/.
213 Provides Python scripting access to Claws Mail functions. A testing
214 console is also featured. Scripts can be saved to specific folders
215 for automatic loading on startup or being available as new menu items
216 under the '/Tools/Python scripts' menu.
217 Python is available from http://python.org/.
220 Creates mailboxes where newsfeeds in RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0 or Atom format
221 can be added. Each newsfeed will create a folder with the appropriate
222 entries, fetched from the web. You can read them, and delete or keep
226 Handles S/MIME signed and/or encrypted mails. You can decrypt mails,
227 verify signatures or sign and encrypt your own mails.
230 Scans incoming mail received from a POP, IMAP or LOCAL account using
231 SpamAssassin. It can optionally delete mail identified as spam or save
232 it to a designated folder.
233 SpamAssassin is available from http://spamassassin.apache.org/.
236 Reports spam messages to online spam harvesting sites. Sites suported
237 are http://www.signal-spam.fr/ and http://www.spamcop.net/. The Debian
238 mailing list spam nomination system is also supported.
241 Decodes attachments with 'application/ms-tnef' MIME type (also known
242 as "winmail.dat" files) in Claws Mail, using the ytnef library.
243 Decoded parts can be saved to files.
244 The ytnef library is available from http://ytnef.sourceforge.net/.
247 Displays vCalendar messages. Only the meeting subset of the vCalendar
248 format is currently supported, which includes planning, sendding and
249 receiving invitations and answering them. Public calendar (WebCal)
250 subscriptions, free/busy information export/import and reminding of
251 events is also supported.
254 Additonal plugins can be found here:
255 https://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php
260 The "actions" feature is a convenient way for the user to launch external
261 commands to process a complete message file including headers and body or
262 just one of its parts. It allows also the use of an external command to
263 filter the whole text or just a selected part in the message window or in
264 the compose window. This is a generic tool that allows to do any uncommon
265 actions on the messages, and thus extends the possibilities of Claws Mail.
266 For example, Claws Mail does not include the rot13 cyphering algorithm
267 popular in some newsgroups. It does not support uuencoded messages. As
268 all these features can be handled by external programs, the actions
269 provide a convenient way to use them from the menu bar.
274 To create a new action, go to Configuration -> Actions.... The "Action
275 Creation" dialog offers to enter the Menu name that will trigger the
276 command. The created menu will be found in the Tools -> Actions submenu.
277 By inserting a slash / in the menu name, you create a submenu.
279 The command is entered in the Command line entry. Note that Claws Mail
280 stores every single email in a separate file. This allows to use the
281 following syntax for the command:
283 * %f denotes the file name of the selected message. If you selected more
284 than one, then the command will be launched for each message with
285 the appropriate file name
286 * %F denotes the list of the file names of the selected message. If only
287 one message is selected, this amounts to %f, but if more messages
288 are selected, then the command will be launched only once with the
289 list of the file names. (You can use both %f and %F in one command:
290 then the command will be launched for each selected message with
291 the name of this message and with the list of all selected
292 messages. I did not find a practical example for this.)
293 * %p denotes the current selected message part of a multipart message.
294 The part is decoded accordingly. If the message is not a multipart
295 message, it denotes the message body.
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.
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. But in
300 contrast to prepending >, the entered text is hidden (useful when
302 * Appending an ampersand &: this will run the command asynchronously.
303 That means "fire and forget". Claws Mail won't wait for the
304 command to finish, nor will it catch its output or its error
306 * Prepending the vertical bar | (pipe-in): this will send the current
307 displayed text or the current selected text from the message view
308 or the compose window to the command standard input. The command
309 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
310 * Appending the vertical bar | (pipe-out): this will replace the current
311 displayed text or the current selected text from the message window
312 or the compose window by the command standard output. The command
313 will silently fail if more than one message is selected.
315 Note: It is not possible to use actions containing %f, %F or %p from the
318 When a command is run, and unless it is run asynchronously, Claws Mail
319 will be insensitive to any interaction and it will wait for the command to
320 finish. If the command takes too long (5 seconds), it will popup a dialog
321 window allowing to stop it. This dialog will also be displayed as soon as
322 the command has some output: error messages or even its standard output
323 when the command is not a "pipe-out" command. When multiple commands are
324 being run, they are run in parallel and each command output is separated
325 from the outputs of the others.
330 Here are some examples that are listed in the same syntax as used for
331 storing the actions list. You can copy and past the definition in your
332 ~/.claws-mail/actionsrc file (exit Claws Mail before). The syntax
333 is very simple: one line per action, each action contains the menu name
334 and the command line separated by a colon and a space ": "
336 Purpose: rot13 cyphering
337 Definition: Rot13: |tr a-zA-Z n-za-mN-ZA-M|
338 Details: This will apply the rot13 cyphering algorithm to the
339 (selected) text in the message/compose view.
341 Purpose: Decoding uuencoded messages
342 Definition: UUdeview: xdeview %F&
343 Details: xdeview comes with uudeview. If an encoded file is split in
344 multiple messages, just select them all and run the command.
346 Purpose: Display uuencoded image
347 Definition: Display uuencoded: uudec %f&
348 Details: Displays uuencoded files. The uudec[1] script can be found in
349 the 'tools' directory of the distribution package.
351 Purpose: Alter messages
352 Definition: Edit message: gvim -f %F
353 Details: Allows editing of any received message. Can be used to remove
354 unneeded message parts, etc.
356 Purpose: Pretty format
357 Definition: Par: |par 72Tbgjqw74bEe B=._A_a 72bg|
358 Details: par is a utility that can pretty format any text. It does a
359 very good job in indenting quoted messages, and justifying
360 text. Used when composing a message
363 Definition: Part/Dillo: dillo %p&
364 Details: Browse the selected message part in Dillo.
367 [1] The uudec script can be found in the 'tools' directory of the
368 distribution package. It needs uudecode and ImageMagick's display. The
369 latter can be replaced by any image viewer that can get input from
370 standard input. The script could also be modified to use temporary files
371 instead of standard input.
376 Claws has support for different icon sets. Several icon sets can be
377 downloaded from https://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php
378 You will need to create a directory called 'themes' in your config
379 directory, unpack them into this directory, and then use the interface
380 to select them, /Configuration/Preferences/Display/Themes
382 This interface can also be used to install new themes.
385 5. Quick Search with extended search
386 ------------------------------------
387 Quick Search, with its powerful Extended search function,
388 enables searching through folder's messages.
390 Extended Search allows one to define criteria that messages must
391 have in order to match and be displayed in the summary view pane.
392 Search types titled From, Subject and To are self explanatory.
393 Search type extended allows one to use Claws Mail's powerful
394 filtering engine to select messages. Examples:
395 from regexpcase "foo"
396 subject regexp "Bug" & to regexp "claws-mail"
398 Additionally, it is possible to use simpler yet equally
399 powerfull patterns for message selections. Mutt users will
400 immediately recognise most of the available patterns:
402 Pattern Parameter Selects
403 ----------------------------------------------------
405 ag # messages whose age is greater than #
406 al # messages whose age is lower than #
407 b S messages which contain S in the message body
408 B S messages which contain S in the whole message
409 c S messages carbon-copied to S
410 C S message is either to: or cc: to S
412 e S messages which contain S in the Sender field
413 E S true if execute "S" succeeds
414 f S messages originating from user S
416 h S messages which contain S in any header name or value
417 H S messages which contain S in the value of any header
418 i S messages which contain S in Message-Id header
419 I S messages which contain S in inreplyto header
420 k # messages which are marked with color #
422 n S messages which are in newsgroup S
425 r messages which have been replied to
427 s S messages which contain S in subject
428 se # messages whose score is equal to #
429 sg # messages whose score is greater than #
430 sl # messages whose score is lower than #
431 Se # messages whose size is equal to #
432 Sg # messages whose size is greater than #
433 Ss # messages whose size is smaller than #
434 t S messages which have been sent to S
435 tg S messages with tags containing S
436 tagged messages which are tagged
439 x S messages which contain S in References header
440 x "cmd args" messages returning 0 when passed to command
442 y S messages which contain S in X-Label header
444 & logical AND operator
445 | logical OR operator
446 ! or ~ logical NOT operator
447 % case sensitive search
449 all filtering expressions are allowed
452 S means regexp string
454 It is possible to use logical operators AND (&), OR (|) and
455 NOT (! or ~). Case sensitive search is achieved with %.
459 f "john beavis" messages from john beavis
460 %f "John Beavis" messages from John Beavis (case sensitive)
461 ~s foo messages which do not have foo in the subject
462 f foo & ~s bar messages from foo that do not have bar in thesubject
468 /Configuration/Preferences/Customize Toolbars lets you define the
469 toolbar you want. The configuration dialog enables you to set an icon,
470 an appropriate text, and map an action to it. Actions to choose
471 from are predefined. You can also have your "Claws Mail Actions"
472 (refer to "Actions" above) on your toolbar.
475 * Configuration->Actions
476 - add an entry "Dillo: dillo %p&"
477 * Configuration->Custom toolbar
478 - select Claws Mail Actions Feature
479 - select "Dillo: dillo %p&" from drop down list
480 - choose an icon and click ok
484 7. Partial downloading of POP3 mails
485 ------------------------------------
486 Messages over the configured size limit, (/[Account preferences]/
487 Receive/Message size limit), will be partially retrieved. These
488 messages will have a Notice View displayed (above the Message View),
489 informing of the partially retrieved state and the total size of the
490 message. The Notice View will also contain two buttons, 'Mark for
491 download' and 'Mark for deletion'. If the user clicks 'Mark for
492 download', the message will be downloaded in full at the next message
493 retrieval, (and the partial one deleted); if the user checks 'Mark for
494 deletion' it will be removed from the server after the normal delay
495 as specified in the POP3 account's 'Receive' preferences.
496 If a user moves a partially retrieved message to the Trash folder
497 it will be deleted on the server at the next retrieval after the
498 Trash folder has been emptied.
504 There's several options which are not widely used and were not
505 added to the configuration interface to avoid excesive bloat.
507 The complete and up to date list of hidden options can be found
508 on Hidden preferences section of Claws Mail Manual:
510 https://www.claws-mail.org/manual/claws-mail-manual.html#adv_hidden
515 Tools are small scripts which can help integrate Claws Mail with
516 other programs; perform format conversions between different kinds
517 of mailboxes, address books, etc.; be used in Claws Mail Actions for
518 a variety of purposes; or used in other programs to ease their
519 interoperability with Claws Mail.
521 You will find all the tools in the 'tools' directory and a detailed
522 description of the available scripts in 'tools/README.'
524 10. How to contribute
525 ---------------------
527 You are encourged to send patches via the Claws Mail bugzilla at
528 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
529 But please first read the patch guidelines here:
530 https://www.claws-mail.org/devel.php
532 If that's too troublesome, either contact Paul Mangan
533 <paul@claws-mail.org> or consider posting to the
534 Claws Mail-users mailing list.
535 https://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php
537 Bugs can be reported with Claws' bugzilla at:
538 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
540 Of course, you can also post to the Claws Mail-users mailing list.
542 Also, we really try to incorporate good contributions, but sometimes we
543 don't have enough time. If the contribution is really big, or requires
544 a long time to stabilise, send a mail to Paul Mangan
545 <paul@claws-mail.org>. We can probably arrange access to the
546 Claws Mail Git repository.
550 11. How to request features
551 ---------------------------
553 Ask around in Claws Mail-users ML. Note that some developers may
554 have already thought about your feature and may, perhaps, be implementing
555 it, or the feature was already discussed and rejected for whatever reason.
556 You might want to go ahead and hack a patch for it. (That would be very
557 cool!) Another possibility is to add a request to our bugzilla, (severity:
559 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
562 12. Installing Claws Mail from Git
563 --------------------------------------
568 To download the latest Git, cd to the directory where you wish to download
569 to and type the following information:
571 git clone https://git.claws-mail.org/readonly/claws.git
573 Later, when you want to update your local repository, you'll just have to
574 go back to the 'claws' directory, and type:
581 To compile and install use the following commands:
583 ./autogen.sh [add configure options as required]
585 make install [as root]
587 You will need a full set of development tools installed to be able to run
588 autogen.sh. See also ac/README.
661 2006-12-04 2.6.1 [first release as Claws Mail]
702 2004-05-31 0.9.11claws
703 2004-03-08 0.9.10claws
704 2004-02-06 0.9.9claws
705 2003-12-19 0.9.8claws
706 2003-11-26 0.9.7claws
707 2003-10-02 0.9.6claws
708 2003-09-10 0.9.5claws
709 2003-08-04 0.9.4claws
710 2003-07-12 0.9.3claws
711 2003-05-24 0.9.0claws
712 2003-03-12 0.8.11claws
713 2003-02-12 0.8.10claws
714 2003-01-24 0.8.9claws
715 2002-12-26 0.8.8claws
716 2002-12-23 0.8.7claws
717 2002-11-25 0.8.6claws
718 2002-10-07 0.8.5claws
719 2002-09-22 0.8.3claws
720 2002-08-28 0.8.2claws
721 2002-07-30 0.8.1claws
722 2002-07-23 0.8.0claws
723 2002-06-15 0.7.8claws
724 2002-05-18 0.7.6claws
725 2002-04-28 0.7.5claws
726 2002-03-11 0.7.4claws
727 2002-02-19 0.7.2claws
728 2002-02-14 0.7.1claws
729 2002-01-14 0.7.0claws
730 2001-12-16 0.6.6claws
731 2001-10-16 0.6.5claws8
732 2001-09-30 0.6.2claws
733 2001-08-14 0.6.1claws
734 2001-07-13 0.5.1claws
735 2001-07-01 0.5.0claws3
736 2001-06-16 0.4.99claws
737 2001-05-29 0.4.99claws3
738 2001-05-11 0.4.67claws1
745 https://www.claws-mail.org/
747 https://www.claws-mail.org/faq/
749 https://www.claws-mail.org/releases.php
750 Release Announcement Feed
751 https://www.claws-mail.org/releases.rss
753 https://www.claws-mail.org/news.php
755 https://www.claws-mail.org/downloads.php
757 https://www.claws-mail.org/plugins.php
759 https://www.claws-mail.org/themes.php
761 https://www.claws-mail.org/MLs.php
762 Users Mailing List archive
763 https://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/users/index.html
764 Commits Announcement List archive
765 https://lists.claws-mail.org/pipermail/commits/index.html
766 Bug/Patch/Feature Request Tracker
767 https://www.thewildbeast.co.uk/claws-mail/bugzilla/index.cgi
768 Internationalisation Status
769 https://www.claws-mail.org/i18n.php
771 https://www.claws-mail.org/sponsors.php
772 Claws Mail for Windows homepage
773 https://www.claws-mail.org/win32/