NOTMUCH-EMACS-MUA(1)

💌 NOTMUCH-EMACS-MUA — bestie edition

okay so you found the manual page for notmuch-emacs-mua, which lives in the notmuch manual, section 1. it's giving "write an email without ever leaving your Emacs nest" energy and honestly? iconic. 🦋

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🎀 NAME

notmuch-emacs-mua — send mail with notmuch and emacs

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🌸 SYNOPSIS

notmuch emacs-mua [options ...] [<to-address> ... | <mailto-url>]

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✨ DESCRIPTION

It kicks off composing an email in the Notmuch Emacs UI, pre-loaded with the subject, recipients, and message body you asked for — or with a mailto: URL. literally just "start the email for me" 💅

Here's the full lineup of supported options for emacs-mua:

• -h, --help — show the help. the "wait what do i do" button 🫶
• -s, --subject=<subject> — set the subject line of the message.
• --to=<to-address> — add a recipient (To).
• -c, --cc=<cc-address> — add a carbon-copy (Cc) recipient.
• -b, --bcc=<bcc-address> — add a blind-carbon-copy (Bcc) recipient. sneaky but polite ✨
• -i, --body=<file> — point at a file to include into the body of the message.
• --hello — if you gave no message composition parameters at all, drop into the Notmuch hello screen instead of the message composition window. hi bestie 👋
• --no-window-system — even when a window system is available, stay in the current terminal. terminal girlies rise 🌈
• --client — use emacsclient(1) (https://manpages.debian.org/emacsclient.1.html) instead of emacs(1) (https://manpages.debian.org/emacs.1.html). heads up: for emacsclient(1) (https://manpages.debian.org/emacsclient.1.html) to actually work you need an Emacs already running with a server, or you can use --auto-daemon.
• --auto-daemon — automatically start Emacs in daemon mode if the Emacs server isn't running. only applicable with --client. it implies --create-frame. no cap, it does two things at once.
• --create-frame — make a brand-new frame instead of trying to reuse the current Emacs frame. applicable with --client. you will need this when Emacs is running in daemon mode (or got auto-started by --auto-daemon).
• --print — dump the resulting elisp to stdout instead of evaluating it. for the curious 👀

The supported positional parameters and short options are a compatible subset of the mutt(1) (https://manpages.debian.org/mutt.1.html) MUA command-line options. 🐦

watch out: the options and positional parameters that modify the message can't be combined with the mailto: URL. pick a lane, bestie 😭

Options may be specified multiple times. stack 'em, go off. 🔥

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🌿 ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

• EMACS — name of the emacs command to invoke. defaults to "emacs".
• EMACSCLIENT — name of the emacsclient command to invoke. defaults to "emacsclient".

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👑 SEE ALSO

• notmuch <#notmuch-1>
• emacsclient(1) (https://manpages.debian.org/emacsclient.1.html)
• mutt(1) (https://manpages.debian.org/mutt.1.html)

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💖 Author

Carl Worth and many others — legends, fr fr 🫶

📜 Copyright

2009-2026, Carl Worth and many others

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💅 this was notmuch-emacs-mua, version 0.40, dated Jan 31, 2026. go forth and compose, you've got this 🌸✨🎀