If set to yes, when composing messages and no subject is given at the subject prompt, composition will be aborted. If set to no, composing messages with no subject given at the subject prompt will never be aborted.

If set to yes, composition will automatically abort after editing the message body if no changes are made to the file (this check only happens after the first edit of the file). When set to no, composition will never be aborted.

The default file in which to save aliases created by the ``create-alias'' function.

Note: Mutt will not automatically source this file; you must explicitly use the ``source'' command for it to be executed.

The default for this option is the currently used muttrc file, or ``˜/.muttrc'' if no user muttrc was found.

Specifies the format of the data displayed for the `alias' menu. The following printf(3)-style sequences are available:

Controls whether 8-bit data is converted to 7-bit using either Quoted- Printable or Base64 encoding when sending mail.

Controls whether ANSI color codes in messages (and color tags in rich text messages) are to be interpreted. Messages containing these codes are rare, but if this option is set, their text will be colored accordingly. Note that this may override your color choices, and even present a security problem, since a message could include a line like "[-- PGP output follows ..." and give it the same color as your attachment color.

When set, an arrow (``->'') will be used to indicate the current entry in menus instead of highlighting the whole line. On slow network or modem links this will make response faster because there is less that has to be redrawn on the screen when moving to the next or previous entries in the menu.

If set, Mutt will use plain ASCII characters when displaying thread and attachment trees, instead of the default ACS characters.

If set, Mutt will prompt you for blind-carbon-copy (Bcc) recipients before editing an outgoing message.

If set, Mutt will prompt you for carbon-copy (Cc) recipients before editing the body of an outgoing message.

This variable is a colon-separated list of character encoding schemes for messages without character encoding indication. Header field values and message body content without character encoding indication would be assumed that they are written in one of this list. By default, all the header fields and message body without any charset indication are assumed to be in "us-ascii".

For example, Japanese users might prefer this:

set assumed_charset="iso-2022-jp:euc-jp:shift_jis:utf-8"

However, only the first content is valid for the message body.

This variable is a colon-separated list of character encoding schemes for text file attachments. If unset, $charset value will be used instead. For example, the following configuration would work for Japanese text handling:

set attach_charset="iso-2022-jp:euc-jp:shift_jis:utf-8"

Note: "iso-2022-*" must be put at the head of the value as shown above if included.

This variable describes the format of the `attachment' menu. The following printf-style sequences are understood:

For an explanation of `soft-fill', see the ``$index_format'' documentation.

The separator to add between attachments when operating (saving, printing, piping, etc) on a list of tagged attachments.

If this variable is unset, when operating (saving, printing, piping, etc) on a list of tagged attachments, Mutt will concatenate the attachments and will operate on them as a single attachment. The ``$attach_sep'' separator is added after each attachment. When set, Mutt will operate on the attachments one by one.

This is the string that will precede a message which has been included in a reply. For a full listing of defined printf()-like sequences see the section on ``$index_format''.

When set along with ``$edit_headers'', Mutt will skip the initial send-menu and allow you to immediately begin editing the body of your message. The send-menu may still be accessed once you have finished editing the body of your message.

Also see ``$fast_reply''.

When set, functions in the index menu which affect a message will be applied to all tagged messages (if there are any). When unset, you must first use the tag-prefix function (default: ";") to make the next function apply to all tagged messages.

When this variable is set, mutt will beep when an error occurs.

When this variable is set, mutt will beep whenever it prints a message notifying you of new mail. This is independent of the setting of the ``$beep'' variable.

Controls whether you will be asked to confirm bouncing messages. If set to yes you don't get asked if you want to bounce a message. Setting this variable to no is not generally useful, and thus not recommended, because you are unable to bounce messages.

When this variable is set, mutt will include Delivered-To headers when bouncing messages. Postfix users may wish to unset this variable.

When this variable is set, mutt will place the cursor at the beginning of the current line in menus, even when the arrow_cursor variable is unset, making it easier for blind persons using Braille displays to follow these menus. The option is disabled by default because many visual terminals don't permit making the cursor invisible.

When this variable is set, mutt will use file size attribute instead of access time when checking for new mail.

Character set your terminal uses to display and enter textual data. It is also the fallback for $send_charset.

Note: this option only affects maildir and MH style mailboxes.

When set, Mutt will check for new mail delivered while the mailbox is open. Especially with MH mailboxes, this operation can take quite some time since it involves scanning the directory and checking each file to see if it has already been looked at. If check_new is unset, no check for new mail is performed while the mailbox is open.

When unset, Mutt will not collapse a thread if it contains any unread messages.

When set, Mutt will jump to the next unread message, if any, when the current thread is uncollapsed.

Controls the format of the status line displayed in the Compose menu. This string is similar to ``$status_format'', but has its own set of printf()-like sequences:

See the text describing the ``$status_format'' option for more information on how to set ``$compose_format''.

When defined, Mutt will recode commands in rc files from this encoding.

When set, Mutt will prompt for confirmation when appending messages to an existing mailbox.

When set, Mutt will prompt for confirmation when saving messages to a mailbox which does not yet exist before creating it.

Causes Mutt to timeout a network connection (for IMAP or POP) after this many seconds if the connection is not able to be established. A negative value causes Mutt to wait indefinitely for the connection to succeed.

Sets the default Content-Type for the body of newly composed messages.

This variable controls whether or not copies of your outgoing messages will be saved for later references. Also see ``$record'', ``$save_name'', ``$force_name'' and ``fcc-hook''.

This variable controls the use of the GPGME-enabled crypto backends. If it is set and Mutt was built with gpgme support, the gpgme code for S/MIME and PGP will be used instead of the classic code. Note that you need to set this option in .muttrc; it won't have any effect when used interactively.

(http://www.g10code.de/docs/pka-intro.de.pdf) during signature verification (only supported by the GPGME backend).

This variable controls whether or not mutt may automatically enable PGP encryption/signing for messages. See also ``$crypt_autoencrypt'', ``$crypt_replyencrypt'', ``$crypt_autosign'', ``$crypt_replysign'' and ``$smime_is_default''.

This variable controls whether or not mutt may automatically enable S/MIME encryption/signing for messages. See also ``$crypt_autoencrypt'', ``$crypt_replyencrypt'', ``$crypt_autosign'', ``$crypt_replysign'' and ``$smime_is_default''.

This variable controls the format of the date printed by the ``%d'' sequence in ``$index_format''. This is passed to the strftime call to process the date. See the man page for strftime(3) for the proper syntax.

Unless the first character in the string is a bang (``!''), the month and week day names are expanded according to the locale specified in the variable ``$locale''. If the first character in the string is a bang, the bang is discarded, and the month and week day names in the rest of the string are expanded in the C locale (that is in US English).

This variable controls how message-hooks, reply-hooks, send-hooks, send2-hooks, save-hooks, and fcc-hooks will be interpreted if they are specified with only a simple regexp, instead of a matching pattern. The hooks are expanded when they are declared, so a hook will be interpreted according to the value of this variable at the time the hook is declared. The default value matches if the message is either from a user matching the regular expression given, or if it is from you (if the from address matches ``alternates'') and is to or cc'ed to a user matching the given regular expression.

Controls whether or not messages are really deleted when closing or synchronizing a mailbox. If set to yes, messages marked for deleting will automatically be purged without prompting. If set to no, messages marked for deletion will be kept in the mailbox.

If this option is set, mutt will untag messages when marking them for deletion. This applies when you either explicitly delete a message, or when you save it to another folder.

If this option is set, mutt's received-attachments menu will not show the subparts of individual messages in a multipart/digest. To see these subparts, press 'v' on that menu.

When set, specifies a command used to filter messages. When a message is viewed it is passed as standard input to $display_filter, and the filtered message is read from the standard output.

Contains the path of the mutt_dotlock (8) binary to be used by mutt.

This variable sets the request for when notification is returned. The string consists of a comma separated list (no spaces!) of one or more of the following: never, to never request notification, failure, to request notification on transmission failure, delay, to be notified of message delays, success, to be notified of successful transmission.

Example: set dsn_notify="failure,delay"

Note: when using $sendmail for delivery, you should not enable this unless you are either using Sendmail 8.8.x or greater or a MTA providing a sendmail(1)-compatible interface supporting the -N option for DSN. For SMTP delivery, it depends on the server whether DSN is supported or not.

This variable controls how much of your message is returned in DSN messages. It may be set to either hdrs to return just the message header, or full to return the full message.

Example: set dsn_return=hdrs

Note: when using $sendmail for delivery, you should not enable this unless you are either using Sendmail 8.8.x or greater or a MTA providing a sendmail(1)-compatible interface supporting the -R option for DSN. For SMTP delivery, it depends on the server whether DSN is supported or not.

This variable controls whether mutt, when sorting by threads, threads messages with the same message-id together. If it is set, it will indicate that it thinks they are duplicates of each other with an equals sign in the thread diagram.

This option allows you to edit the header of your outgoing messages along with the body of your message.

Note that changes made to the References: and Date: headers are ignored for interoperability reasons.

This variable specifies which editor is used by mutt. It defaults to the value of the VISUAL, or EDITOR, environment variable, or to the string "vi" if neither of those are set.

When set, mutt will quoted-printable encode messages when they contain the string "From " in the beginning of a line. Useful to avoid the tampering certain mail delivery and transport agents tend to do with messages.

Manually sets the envelope sender for outgoing messages. This value is ignored if ``$use_envelope_from'' is unset.

Escape character to use for functions in the builtin editor.

When set, the initial prompt for recipients and subject are skipped when replying to messages, and the initial prompt for subject is skipped when forwarding messages.

Note: this variable has no effect when the ``$autoedit'' variable is set.

This variable controls whether or not attachments on outgoing messages are saved along with the main body of your message.

When this variable is set, FCCs will be stored unencrypted and unsigned, even when the actual message is encrypted and/or signed. (PGP only)

Specifies the default location of your mailboxes. A `+' or `=' at the beginning of a pathname will be expanded to the value of this variable. Note that if you change this variable from the default value you need to make sure that the assignment occurs before you use `+' or `=' for any other variables since expansion takes place during the `set' command.

This variable allows you to customize the file browser display to your personal taste. This string is similar to ``$index_format'', but has its own set of printf()-like sequences:

For an explanation of `soft-fill', see the ``$index_format'' documentation.

Controls whether or not the Mail-Followup-To header field is generated when sending mail. When set, Mutt will generate this field when you are replying to a known mailing list, specified with the ``subscribe'' or ``lists'' commands.

This field has two purposes. First, preventing you from receiving duplicate copies of replies to messages which you send to mailing lists, and second, ensuring that you do get a reply separately for any messages sent to known lists to which you are not subscribed. The header will contain only the list's address for subscribed lists, and both the list address and your own email address for unsubscribed lists. Without this header, a group reply to your message sent to a subscribed list will be sent to both the list and your address, resulting in two copies of the same email for you.

This variable is similar to ``$save_name'', except that Mutt will store a copy of your outgoing message by the username of the address you are sending to even if that mailbox does not exist.

Also see the ``$record'' variable.

Controls the decoding of complex MIME messages into text/plain when forwarding a message. The message header is also RFC2047 decoded. This variable is only used, if ``$mime_forward'' is unset, otherwise ``$mime_forward_decode'' is used instead.

This quadoption controls whether or not the user is automatically placed in the editor when forwarding messages. For those who always want to forward with no modification, use a setting of ``no''.

This variable controls the default subject when forwarding a message. It uses the same format sequences as the ``$index_format'' variable.

When set forwarded messages included in the main body of the message (when ``$mime_forward'' is unset) will be quoted using ``$indent_string''.

When set, this variable contains a default from address. It can be overridden using my_hdr (including from send-hooks) and ``$reverse_name''. This variable is ignored if ``$use_from'' is unset.

Defaults to the contents of the environment variable EMAIL.

A regular expression used by mutt to parse the GECOS field of a password entry when expanding the alias. By default the regular expression is set to "^[^,]*" which will return the string up to the first "," encountered. If the GECOS field contains a string like "lastname, firstname" then you should set the gecos_mask=".*".

This can be useful if you see the following behavior: you address a e-mail to user ID stevef whose full name is Steve Franklin. If mutt expands stevef to "Franklin" stevef@foo.bar then you should set the gecos_mask to a regular expression that will match the whole name so mutt will expand "Franklin" to "Franklin, Steve".

When unset, the header fields normally added by the ``my_hdr'' command are not created. This variable must be unset before composing a new message or replying in order to take effect. If set, the user defined header fields are added to every new message.

When set, this variable causes Mutt to include the header of the message you are replying to into the edit buffer. The ``$weed'' setting applies.

When set, help lines describing the bindings for the major functions provided by each menu are displayed on the first line of the screen.

Note: The binding will not be displayed correctly if the function is bound to a sequence rather than a single keystroke. Also, the help line may not be updated if a binding is changed while Mutt is running. Since this variable is primarily aimed at new users, neither of these should present a major problem.

When set, mutt will skip the host name part of ``$hostname'' variable when adding the domain part to addresses. This variable does not affect the generation of Message-IDs, and it will not lead to the cut-off of first-level domains.

When set, mutt will not show the presence of messages that are hidden by limiting, in the thread tree.

When set, mutt will not show the presence of missing messages in the thread tree.

When set, mutt will not show the subject of messages in the thread tree that have the same subject as their parent or closest previously displayed sibling.

When set, mutt will not show the presence of messages that are hidden by limiting, at the top of threads in the thread tree. Note that when $hide_limited is set, this option will have no effect.

When set, mutt will not show the presence of missing messages at the top of threads in the thread tree. Note that when $hide_missing is set, this option will have no effect.

This variable controls the size (in number of strings remembered) of the string history buffer. The buffer is cleared each time the variable is set.

The file in which Mutt will save its history.

This variable controls whether or not a Mail-Followup-To header is honored when group-replying to a message.

Specifies the fully-qualified hostname of the system mutt is running on containing the host's name and the DNS domain it belongs to. It is used as the domain part (after ``@'') for local email addresses as well as Message-Id headers.

Its value is determined at startup as follows: If the node's name as returned by the uname(3) function contains the hostname and the domain, these are used to construct $hostname. If there is no domain part returned, Mutt will look for a ``domain'' or ``search'' line in /etc/resolv.conf to determine the domain. Optionally, Mutt can be compiled with a fixed domain name in which case a detected one is not used.

Also see ``$use_domain'' and ``$hidden_host''.

This option replaces linear-white-space between encoded-word and *text to a single space to prevent the display of MIME-encoded ``Subject'' field from being divided into multiple lines.

Affects the behaviour of the reply function when replying to messages from mailing lists (as defined by the ``subscribe'' or ``lists'' commands). When set, if the ``Reply-To:'' field is set to the same value as the ``To:'' field, Mutt assumes that the ``Reply-To:'' field was set by the mailing list to automate responses to the list, and will ignore this field. To direct a response to the mailing list when this option is set, use the list-reply function; group-reply will reply to both the sender and the list.

This is a colon-delimited list of authentication methods mutt may attempt to use to log in to an IMAP server, in the order mutt should try them. Authentication methods are either 'login' or the right side of an IMAP 'AUTH=xxx' capability string, eg 'digest-md5', 'gssapi' or 'cram-md5'. This parameter is case-insensitive. If this parameter is unset (the default) mutt will try all available methods, in order from most-secure to least-secure.

Example: set imap_authenticators="gssapi:cram-md5:login"

Note: Mutt will only fall back to other authentication methods if the previous methods are unavailable. If a method is available but authentication fails, mutt will not connect to the IMAP server.

When set, mutt will fetch the set of subscribed folders from your server on connection, and add them to the set of mailboxes it polls for new mail. See also the ``mailboxes'' command.

This contains the list of characters which you would like to treat as folder separators for displaying IMAP paths. In particular it helps in using the '=' shortcut for your folder variable.

Mutt requests these header fields in addition to the default headers ("DATE FROM SUBJECT TO CC MESSAGE-ID REFERENCES CONTENT-TYPE CONTENT-DESCRIPTION IN-REPLY-TO REPLY-TO LINES X-LABEL") from IMAP servers before displaying the index menu. You may want to add more headers for spam detection. Note: This is a space separated list.

When set, mutt will attempt to use the IMAP IDLE extension to check for new mail in the current mailbox. Some servers (dovecot was the inspiration for this option) react badly to mutt's implementation. If your connection seems to freeze up periodically, try unsetting this.

This variable specifies the maximum amount of time in seconds that mutt will wait before polling open IMAP connections, to prevent the server from closing them before mutt has finished with them. The default is well within the RFC-specified minimum amount of time (30 minutes) before a server is allowed to do this, but in practice the RFC does get violated every now and then. Reduce this number if you find yourself getting disconnected from your IMAP server due to inactivity.

This variable configures whether IMAP folder browsing will look for only subscribed folders or all folders. This can be toggled in the IMAP browser with the toggle-subscribed function.

Your login name on the IMAP server.

This variable defaults to the value of imap_user.

Specifies the password for your IMAP account. If unset, Mutt will prompt you for your password when you invoke the fetch-mail function. Warning: you should only use this option when you are on a fairly secure machine, because the superuser can read your muttrc even if you are the only one who can read the file.

When set, mutt will not open new IMAP connections to check for new mail. Mutt will only check for new mail over existing IMAP connections. This is useful if you don't want to be prompted to user/password pairs on mutt invocation, or if opening the connection is slow.

When set, mutt will avoid implicitly marking your mail as read whenever you fetch a message from the server. This is generally a good thing, but can make closing an IMAP folder somewhat slower. This option exists to appease speed freaks.

When set, mutt will display warning messages from the IMAP server as error messages. Since these messages are often harmless, or generated due to configuration problems on the server which are out of the users' hands, you may wish to suppress them at some point.

The name of the user whose mail you intend to access on the IMAP server.

This variable defaults to your user name on the local machine.

If set to ``yes'', mutt will look for a mailcap entry with the copiousoutput flag set for every MIME attachment it doesn't have an internal viewer defined for. If such an entry is found, mutt will use the viewer defined in that entry to convert the body part to text form.

Controls whether or not a copy of the message(s) you are replying to is included in your reply.

Controls whether or not Mutt includes only the first attachment of the message you are replying.

Specifies the string to prepend to each line of text quoted in a message to which you are replying. You are strongly encouraged not to change this value, as it tends to agitate the more fanatical netizens.

This option is a format string, please see the description of ``$index_format'' for supported printf()-style sequences.

This variable allows you to customize the message index display to your personal taste.

``Format strings'' are similar to the strings used in the ``C'' function printf to format output (see the man page for more detail). The following sequences are defined in Mutt:

`Soft-fill' deserves some explanation. Normal right-justification will print everything to the left of the %>, displaying padding and the whatever lies to the right only if there's room. By contrast, soft-fill gives priority to the right-hand side, guaranteeing space to display it and showing padding only if there's still room. If necessary, soft-fill will eat text leftwards to make room for rightward text.

Note that these expandos are supported in ``save-hook'', ``fcc-hook'' and ``fcc-save-hook'', too.

See also: ``$to_chars''.

How to invoke ispell (GNU's spell-checking software).

If set, read messages marked as flagged will not be moved from your spool mailbox to your ``$mbox'' mailbox, or as a result of a ``mbox-hook'' command.

The locale used by strftime(3) to format dates. Legal values are the strings your system accepts for the locale variable LC_TIME.

This variable configures how often (in seconds) mutt should look for new mail. Also see the ``$timeout'' variable.

This variable specifies which files to consult when attempting to display MIME bodies not directly supported by Mutt.

If set, mutt will restrict possible characters in mailcap % expandos to a well-defined set of safe characters. This is the safe setting, but we are not sure it doesn't break some more advanced MIME stuff.

DON'T CHANGE THIS SETTING UNLESS YOU ARE REALLY SURE WHAT YOU ARE DOING!

The header_cache variable points to the header cache database. If header_cache points to a directory it will contain a header cache database per folder. If header_cache points to a file that file will be a single global header cache. By default it is unset so no header caching will be used.

Check for Maildir unaware programs other than mutt having modified maildir files when the header cache is in use. This incurs one stat(2) per message every time the folder is opened.

When mutt is compiled with either gdbm or bdb4 as the header cache backend, this option changes the database page size. Too large or too small values can waste space, memory, or CPU time. The default should be more or less optimal for most use cases.

When mutt is compiled with qdbm as header cache backend, this option determines whether the database will be compressed. Compression results in database files roughly being one fifth of the usual diskspace, but the uncompression can result in a slower opening of cached folder(s).

If set, messages marked as deleted will be saved with the maildir (T)rashed flag instead of unlinked. NOTE: this only applies to maildir-style mailboxes. Setting it will have no effect on other mailbox types.

Controls whether or not mutt marks new unread messages as old if you exit a mailbox without reading them. With this option set, the next time you start mutt, the messages will show up with an "O" next to them in the index menu, indicating that they are old.

Controls the display of wrapped lines in the internal pager. If set, a ``+'' marker is displayed at the beginning of wrapped lines. Also see the ``$smart_wrap'' variable.

A regular expression used in the file browser, optionally preceded by the not operator ``!''. Only files whose names match this mask will be shown. The match is always case-sensitive.

This specifies the folder into which read mail in your ``$spoolfile'' folder will be appended.

The default mailbox type used when creating new folders. May be any of mbox, MMDF, MH and Maildir.

If unset, Mutt will remove your address (see the ``alternates'' command) from the list of recipients when replying to a message.

This variable controls the number of lines of context that are given when scrolling through menus. (Similar to ``$pager_context''.)

When unset, the bottom entry of menus will never scroll up past the bottom of the screen, unless there are less entries than lines. When set, the bottom entry may move off the bottom.

When set, menus will be scrolled up or down one line when you attempt to move across a screen boundary. If unset, the screen is cleared and the next or previous page of the menu is displayed (useful for slow links to avoid many redraws).

If set, forces Mutt to interpret keystrokes with the high bit (bit 8) set as if the user had pressed the ESC key and whatever key remains after having the high bit removed. For example, if the key pressed has an ASCII value of 0xf8, then this is treated as if the user had pressed ESC then ``x''. This is because the result of removing the high bit from ``0xf8'' is ``0x78'', which is the ASCII character ``x''.

When unset, mutt will mimic mh's behaviour and rename deleted messages to ,<old file name> in mh folders instead of really deleting them. If the variable is set, the message files will simply be deleted.

The name of the MH sequence used for flagged messages.

The name of the MH sequence used to tag replied messages.

The name of the MH sequence used for unseen messages.

When set, the message you are forwarding will be attached as a separate MIME part instead of included in the main body of the message. This is useful for forwarding MIME messages so the receiver can properly view the message as it was delivered to you. If you like to switch between MIME and not MIME from mail to mail, set this variable to ask-no or ask-yes.

Also see ``$forward_decode'' and ``$mime_forward_decode''.

Controls the decoding of complex MIME messages into text/plain when forwarding a message while ``$mime_forward'' is set. Otherwise ``$forward_decode'' is used instead.

When forwarding multiple attachments of a MIME message from the recvattach