Mutt Home Page

The Mongrel of Mail User Agents

Features

Curses interface
Xterm mouse support! (with ncurses)
Supports mbox and MMDF style folders.
MIME support, including nice attachment menus.
Supports RFC1522 encoding/decoding of (8-bit) message headers.
Allows inclusion of multiple messages in a single reply or forward.
.mailrc-style configuration file
User-configurable key bindings.
Customizable attribution and prefix strings.

There is also a US-only version which also contains the following:

PGP/MIME support
Mixmaster remailer support
The best way to describe this mail user agent is to say that it's a hybrid, or "mutt", consisting of features from various other curses-based e-mail clients. It is largely based on Elm, but hints of Pine and Mush are also present.

I've often been heard to say: "All mail clients suck. This one just sucks less."

Availibility

ftp://muddcs.cs.hmc.edu/pub/me/
ftp://ftp.prz.tu-berlin.de/pub/unix/network/mail/reader/mutt/
For US-only version, read README.US-only
The US-Only dist has been exported against my wishes, but can also be found at ftp://ftp.teuto.de/pub/user/lmb/.

Platforms

I've had reports that Mutt compiles and runs under the following operating systems:

Solaris
SunOS
Linux
AIX
FreeBSD 2.1-RELEASE
HP-UX
OSF 3.1 (DEC Alpha)
Convex

Requirements

In order to compile Mutt, the following are required:
ANSI C compiler (like gcc)
System-V compliant curses library (ncurses is required for mouse support)

Documentation

The documentation is also availible with the Mutt distribution, located in the htmldoc subdirectory for easy reference.
Installation guide
User configuration
Searching in Mutt
Manual for random signature code
Help on the main menu

Mailing List

To be notified of news and events about Mutt, send mail to mutt-request@cs.hmc.edu with a subject of "subscribe" (without quotes).

NOTE: Do NOT send subscription requests to the main list, only to mutt-request@cs.hmc.edu.

DISCLAIMER

This is ALPHA software. Make backup copies of your important mail or don't blame me if your mailbox is trashed. I've been using Mutt solely for a few months now, and the actual folder manipulation code seems quite stable. I've not had any reports of trashed mailboxes, but better safe than sorry.
Last updated on May 21, 1996.
URL: http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~me/mutt/index.html
© 1996 Michael R. Elkins