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Mutt Cheatsheet

Both index and pager allow you to perform common mail operations - delete, forward, reply, save - and use standard keys for navigation. Here's a quick list of the default navigation keys (you can change these if they don't work for you, keep reading for details):

Key What it does Where it does it
---------------------------------------------------------
j Move one line up Index
k Move one line down Index
z Move one page up Index
Z Move one page down Index
Open message Index
- Move one page up Pager
Move one page down Pager
q Close message Pager

In addition to these navigation keys, Mutt also allows you to perform commonly-used functions just by tapping the appropriate key. Here's what you need to get started:

Key What it does Where it does it
---------------------------------------------------------
m Compose new message Index, pager
r Reply to current message Index, pager
f Forward current message Index, pager
d Delete current message Index, pager
b Bounce current message Index, pager
c View different mailbox Index, pager
v View attachment Index, pager
a Create alias Index, pager
q Quit Index, pager

You can obtain a complete list from the Mutt manual, or by tapping the

You already know that the

a

key is used to capture email addresses and create aliases for them. You can specify the location of the file which stores these aliases:

Note, however, that I can still view the complete headers of any message by hitting

h

in the pager.

You can customize the message display in the index with the "index_format" variable, which allows you to specify which elements to display in each message index line. The default setting is

set index_format="%4C %Z %{%b %d} %-15.15L (%4l) %s" # format index

which translates to

set index_format="number status date sender lines subject"

Want a no-frills version? This one only displays the date, sender and subject:

set index_format="%{%b %d} %F (%s)" # format index