MAILCATCHER(1)

📦 version 0.10.0, in ubuntu stonking

💌 MAILCATCHER(1) 💌

okay bestie, welcome to the mailcatcher page — it lives in section 1 of the manual (User Commands) and it's genuinely one of the most useful little gremlins on your whole system. buckle up 💅

✨ NAME ✨

mailcatcher — catches mail and serves it through a dream 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

mailcatcher [options]

that's it. that's the whole vibe. no subcommands, no chaos, just options. 🌸

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So here's the tea, fr fr: MailCatcher runs a super simple SMTP server that catches any message sent to it and displays it in a web interface. iconic behaviour, honestly.

The flow is literally this:

  1. run mailcatcher
  2. point your fave app at smtp://127.0.0.1:1025 instead of your default SMTP server
  3. go peek at http://127.0.0.1:1080 to see the mail that's arrived so far 👑

no more accidentally emailing real humans during dev. we love a safe little sandbox. 💖

✨ OPTIONS ✨

  • -b, --browse — opens a web browser for you. main character energy, it just does it. 🌈
  • -f, --foreground — run in the foreground, so it stays right there in your terminal like a loyal bestie instead of wandering off.
  • -h, --help — displays help information. when in doubt, ask for help, it's giving self-care. 🫶
  • --http-ip IP — sets the ip address of the http server.
  • --http-path PATH — adds a prefix to all HTTP paths. handy if you're hosting it somewhere fancy.
  • --http-port PORT — sets the port address of the http server.
  • --ip IP — sets the ip address of both servers at once. two birds, one slay. 🦋
  • --messages-limit COUNT — only keeps up to COUNT most recent messages. everything older gets yeeted, so don't treat this as an archive, bestie. 💀
  • --no-quit — don't allow quitting the process. it's giving clingy (affectionate) 😭
  • --smtp-ip IP — sets the ip address of the smtp server.
  • --smtp-port PORT — sets the port of the smtp server.
  • -v, --verbose — be more verbose. more words, more insight, more yapping. we love her. 🎀
  • --version — displays the current version. know your queen's number. 👑

✨ FILES ✨

  • /etc/default/mailcatcher — mailcatcher service configuration file for Debian.

✨ NOTES ✨

On Debian systems, when mailcatcher is run as a service via init/systemd, most of these options can be configured in the /etc/default/mailcatcher configuration file.

so like. if you're the Debian girlie running this as a service, you probably don't need to pass all these flags on the command line — go edit the config file instead. much cuter. 💜

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

and that's the whole page, bestie!! this was mailcatcher 0.10.0, dated September 2025 — go catch some mail, you got this 💖✨🎀

📦 where this page comes from