aerc-tutorial(7) # NAME aerc - the world's best email client # INTRODUCTION Welcome to aerc! This tutorial will guide you through your first steps in using the client. This tutorial is a man page - you can read it again later with *:help tutorial* from aerc, or *man aerc-tutorial* from your terminal. First, let's introduce some basic keybindings. For convention, we'll use ** to represent Ctrl+p, which matches the convention used for writing keybindings for aerc. **, ** Cycles to the previous or next tab Try using these now to switch between your message list and the tutorial. In your message list, we use vim-style keys to get around. *k*, *j* Scrolls up and down between messages **, ** Scrolls half a page up or down *g*, *G* Selects the first or last message, respectively *K*, *J* Switches between folders in the sidebar ** Opens the selected message You can also search the selected folder with */*, or filter with *\\*. When searching you can use n and p to jump to the next and previous result. Filtering hides any non-matching message. # THE MESSAGE VIEWER Press ** to open a message. By default, the message viewer will display your message using *less*(1). This should also have familiar, vim-like keybindings for scrolling around in your message. Multipart messages (messages with attachments, or messages with several alternative formats) show a part selector on the bottom of the message viewer. **, ** Cycle between parts of a multipart message *q* Close the message viewer To show HTML messages, uncomment the *text/html* filter in your aerc.conf file (which is probably in ~/.config/aerc/) and install its dependencies: w3m and dante-utils. You can also do many tasks you could do in the message list from here, like replying to emails, deleting the email, or view the next and previous message (*J* and *K*). # COMPOSING MESSAGES Return to the message list by pressing *q* to dismiss the message viewer. Once there, let's compose a message. *C* Compose a new message *rr* Reply-all to a message *rq* Reply-all to a message, and pre-fill the editor with a quoted version of the message being replied to *Rr* Reply to a message *Rq* Reply to a message, and pre-fill the editor with a quoted version of the message being replied to For now, let's use *C* to compose a new message. The message composer will appear. You should see To, From, and Subject lines, as well as your *$EDITOR*. You can use ** or ** and ** to cycle between these fields (tab won't cycle between fields once you enter the editor, but ** and ** will). Let's send an email to yourself. Note that the To and From headers expect RFC 5322 addresses, e.g. *John Doe *, or simply **. Separate multiple recipients with commas. Go ahead and fill out an email, then close the editor. The message review screen is shown next. You have a chance now to revise the email before it's sent. Press *y* to send the email if it looks good. *Note*: when using the terminal in the message view, you can summon aerc's ex command line by using **. ':' is sent to the editor. # USING THE TERMINAL aerc comes with an embedded terminal, which you've already used to view and edit emails. We can also use this for other purposes, such as referencing a git repository while reviewing a patch. From the message list, we can use the following keybindings to open a terminal: ** Opens a new terminal tab, running your shell *$*, *!* Prompts for a command to run, then opens a new terminal tab running that command *|* Prompts for a command to run, then pipes the selected email into that command and displays the result on a new terminal tab Try pressing *$* and entering "top". You can also use the *:cd* command to change aerc's working directory, and the directory in which new terminals run. Use *:pwd* to see it again if you're not sure where you are. # ADDITIONAL NOTES ## COMMANDS Every keybinding is ultimately bound to an aerc command. You can also summon the command line by pressing ':', then entering one of these commands. See *aerc*(1) or *:help* for a full list of commands. ## MESSAGE FILTERS When displaying messages in the message viewer, aerc will pipe them through a _message filter_ first. This allows you to decode messages in non-plaintext formats, add syntax highlighting, etc. aerc ships with a few default filters: - Emails which begin with "[PATCH" will be piped into a filter for rendering git-format-patch and hg export emails. - text/html is rendered with w3m in a network sandbox - text/\* is rendered with a simple filter for coloring quoted text ## CUSTOMIZING AERC Aerc is highly customizable. Review *aerc-config*(5) (or use *:help config*) to learn more about how to add custom keybindings, install new message filters, change its appearance and behavior, and so on. # AUTHORS Originally created by Drew DeVault and maintained by Robin Jarry who is assisted by other open source contributors. For more information about aerc development, see https://sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc/.