Screener Workflow

The screener classifies senders into four buckets using plain-text allowlists. Unknown senders land in ToScreen until you make a decision.

How classification works

Auto-screen and background sync

By default neomd screens your inbox automatically so you never have to press S:

• On every inbox load — when you open neomd or switch to Inbox (or press R), the screener classifies all loaded emails in-memory and silently moves them. Your inbox is always clean.
• Background sync — while neomd is running, the inbox is re-fetched and re-screened every 5 minutes. New mail that arrived since you opened neomd is handled automatically.

Both behaviours are configurable in [ui]:

[ui]
auto_screen_on_load = true   # set false to disable auto-screen on inbox load
bg_sync_interval    = 5      # minutes between background syncs; 0 = disabled

S / :screen still works as a manual dry-run with y/n confirmation if you want to preview moves first.

Day-to-day: screen new arrivals

Press S (or run :screen) to dry-run the screener against the emails currently loaded in your Inbox. A preview shows what would move where — press y to apply, n to cancel.

For individual senders, use I / O / F / P from any folder or the ToScreen queue.

Bulk re-classification after updating your lists

When you add many senders to feed.txt or papertrail.txt at once (e.g. after importing from HEY), use this workflow:

1. Edit feed.txt / papertrail.txt / screened_in.txt with the new senders
2. Restart neomd  (lists are loaded at startup)
3. :reset-toscreen   →  shows "Move N emails from ToScreen → Inbox? y/n"
                         (moves everything back so it can be re-classified)
4. y to confirm
5. :screen-all       →  dry-run against ALL inbox emails (not just the loaded subset)
6. y to apply

:screen-all (alias :sa) scans every email in your Inbox — read and unread — and proposes moves for any sender that is now in a list. It does not touch emails already in Feed, PaperTrail, or other folders.

Screening happens once

Emails are only auto-screened while they are in the Inbox. Once moved to ToScreen (or any other folder), they are not re-classified automatically. This keeps the logic simple and predictable.

If emails end up in ToScreen incorrectly (e.g. screened by another device like Termux with Android with incomplete lists), use :reset-toscreen to move them back to Inbox where auto-screen will re-classify them.

Colon commands

Press : to open the command line. Tab cycles through completions; Enter runs the command.