How to set up mail in emacs with mu4e

I was considering for a while to use mail in emacs, I didn't have the time to work on that, and I didn't find a tutorial up to date to just copy and paste, there are some good sources and documentation, but the implementation was not that straightforward, it took me a couple of days to find why It didn't work out my implementations.

But here is the step by step. I have been using Migadu for a while, and It works quite well

Software Installation

1. It will require to install:

• mu4e

• isync/mbsync

• msmtp

sudo apt install isync

Create a new file ~/.mbsyncrc

IMAPAccount migadu
Host imap.migadu.com
User mail@mymail.xyz
PassCmd "pass mail/my_mail_password"
TLSType IMAPS
CertificateFile /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
#AuthMechs Login
Port 993

IMAPStore migadu-remote
Account migadu

MaildirStore migadu-local
Path ~/Mail/migadu/
Inbox ~/Mail/migadu/INBOX/
Trash ~/Mail/migadu/Trash/
SubFolders Verbatim

Channel migadu
Far :migadu-remote:
Near :migadu-local:
Patterns *
CopyArrivalDate yes
Create Both
Sync All

SyncState *

Then, make sure to run in the terminal the following statement:

mu init --maildir=DIR --my-address=ADDRESS

then run:

mu index

Set up Emacs

Go to your init.el and write this snippet

(use-package mu4e
  :ensure nil
  ;; :load-path "/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/mu4e/"
  :defer 20 ; Wait until 20 seconds after startup
  :config

  ;; This is set to 't' to avoid mail syncing issues when using mbsync
  (setq mu4e-change-filenames-when-moving t)
  (setq mail-user-agent 'mu4e-user-agent)

  ;; Refresh mail using isync every 10 minutes
  ;;(setq mu4e-update-interval (* 10 60))
  ;;(setq mu4e-get-mail-command "mbsync -a")
  (setq mu4e-get-mail-command (concat (executable-find "mbsync") " -a"))
  ;; how often to call it in seconds:
  (setq mu4e-update-interval 300)

  (setq mu4e-maildir "~/Mail/migadu")

  (setq mu4e-drafts-folder "/Drafts")
  (setq mu4e-sent-folder   "/Sent")
  (setq mu4e-refile-folder "/All")
  (setq mu4e-trash-folder  "/Trash")
  (setq mu4e-junk-folder  "/Junk")
  (setq mu4e-others-folder  "/Others")
  (setq mu4e-maildir-shortcuts
	'(("/INBOX" . ?i)
        ("/Sent" . ?s)
        ("/Trash" . ?t)
        ("/Drafts" . ?d)
        ("/Junk" . ?a)
	("/Others" . ?o)
	))
  (mu4e t))

With this you can run mu4e inside emacs and you should see how your system is pulling up your emails. But notice is not ready to send emails yet, we need to consider an extra customization.

Sending emails with msmtp

Make sure to install msmtp (sudo apt install ) and create a file ~/.msmtprc, and write the following

defaults

auth on

tls on
 
port 587
tls_trust_file /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt
logfile        ~/.msmtp.log


account personal
host smtp.migadu.com
from mail@mymail.xyz
user mail@mymail.xyz
passwordeval pass mail/mail@my_mail_password | head -1


account default : personal

Finally write in your emacs 'init.el' this.

(setq
   message-send-mail-function   'smtpmail-send-it
   smtpmail-default-smtp-server "smtp.migadu.com"
   smtpmail-smtp-server         "smtp.migadu.com"
   smtpmail-local-domain        "migadu.com"
   )

(setq sendmail-program "/usr/bin/msmtp")
(setq message-sendmail-extra-arguments '("--read-envelope-from"))
(setq message-sendmail-f-is-evil t)
(setq message-send-mail-function 'message-send-mail-with-sendmail)

Then you should ready to go, enjoy the spam...

Resources

• https://thanosapollo.org/posts/mu4e-guide/

• https://www.youtube.com/embed/yZRyEhi4y44

• https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qq6s3PwSwjo

• https://djcbsoftware.nl/code/mu/mu4e/

• https://www.reddit.com/r/emacs/comments/bfsck6/mu4efordummies/