Reading Emails

Emails are rendered as styled Markdown in the terminal using glamour. The reader supports vim-style navigation.

Navigation

Key	Action
`j` / `k`	scroll line by line
`space` / `d`	page down / up
`gg`	jump to top of email
`G`	jump to bottom of email
`h` / `q` / `esc`	back to inbox

Opening Emails Externally

Key	Action
`e`	open in `$EDITOR` (read-only) — search, copy, vim motions
`o`	open in w3m (terminal browser, clickable links)
`O`	open in `$BROWSER` (GUI browser, images rendered)
`ctrl+o`	open newsletter web version in `$BROWSER` (from `List-Post` header)

Images

Remote images appear as [Image: alt] placeholders, keeping the reading experience clean and fast. To see images, press O to open in your browser.

Inline / attached images (e.g. screenshots pasted into an email) are listed in the reader header: Attach: [1] screenshot.png [2] report.pdf. Press 1–9 to download to ~/Downloads/ and open with xdg-open. Inline images also show [Image: filename.png] placeholders at their position in the body text.

When you press O to open in the browser, inline images are extracted from the email and saved to temp files. The HTML cid: references are rewritten to file:// paths so the browser renders them — including images sent by other people (not just your own).

Attachments

Attachments are listed in the reader header:

Attach:  [1] report.pdf  [2] photo.png

Press 1–9 to download attachment N to ~/Downloads/ and open it with xdg-open. Filenames are deduplicated automatically if a file already exists.

Threaded Inbox

Related emails are automatically grouped together in the inbox list. Threads are detected using a hybrid approach:

Message-ID / In-Reply-To headers — proper RFC 2822 threading chain
Subject + participant fallback — emails with the same normalized subject (stripped of Re:, Fwd:, etc.) and overlapping participants (From/To) are grouped together

Threads display with a Twitter-style vertical connector line:

  1  ·17:43  │ rafaelxxxxxxxxxxx@g…  Re: Re: AUR Neomd              (12K)
  2  ·16:30 ·╰  rafaelxxxxxxxxxxx@g…  Re: AUR Neomd                  (10K)
  3 N 19:50  │ Bla blabla   via Li…  Jenna just messaged you        (38K)
  4 N 18:53  │ Bla blabla   via Li…  Jenna just messaged you        (38K)
  5 N 17:59  ╰ Bla blabla   via Li…  Jenna just messaged you        (38K)
  6   18:46    LinkedIn              tom Weller replied to ...      (45K)
  7  ·14:22  · Simon Späti           Data pipeline question          (5K)

· reply indicator — you’ve replied to this email (IMAP \Answered flag, works across clients)
·╰ reply indicator within a thread
│ connects thread members (newest on top)
╰ marks the root/oldest email at the bottom of each thread
Non-threaded emails show no connector (clean, no visual noise)
Threads are sorted by their most recent email, so active conversations float to the top

Or as image: neomd

Replying, Forwarding, and Drafts

Key	Action
`r`	reply to sender
`ctrl+r`	reply-all (sender + all CC recipients)
`f`	forward email
`T`	show full conversation thread across folders
`E`	continue draft (only in Drafts folder) — re-opens as editable compose

Conversation View

Press T from the inbox list or while reading an email to see the full conversation across folders. neomd searches Inbox, Sent, Archive, Waiting, and other configured folders for related emails — matching by normalized subject and participant overlap.

Results display in a temporary “Thread” tab:

Each email shows [Folder] prefix (e.g. [Sent], [Inbox], [Archive])
Threading connectors (│/╰) show the conversation structure
Press Enter to read any email, Esc to return to previous view

Also available as :thread (alias :t) from the command line.

Reply Indicator

Emails you’ve replied to show a · dot in the inbox list. This uses the standard IMAP \Answered flag, so it works across clients — if you reply from webmail, neomd shows it too.

Screener Workflow Sending Emails