Email in Emacs - Noob 😵‍💫

What is the easiest, simplest, way to set up my Gmail inside emacs? I am kind of lost with mu4e and not successful with notmuch. Any advice greatly appreciated.

Can you reproduce your setup steps?

Honestly good luck. It was very difficult for me, took probably 10-15 hours over a few sessions to get it mostly working for me (not gmail, another provider)

You should get isync/mu etc. set up, there's some places online (quite tricky to find) that have ready made configs, after that hooking mu4e or notmuch to it should be simpler. They are mostly just local database browsers, a database that you keep updated externally with the isync-tools. Imma set it up on my laptop and record the procedure here: - mu init --maildir=... --my-address=... - copy in ~/.mbsyncrc from my dotfiles (this is the config file i talked about) - create encrypted passphrase (emacs supports gpg wonderfully, just append .gpg to the password file) - enable insecure apps in gmail - mbsync --all - open mu4e all my mail is there Worked with gmail Afterwards you might want to put mbsync into your crontab Edit: found the place i sourced my config from: https://gist.github.com/MatthewZMD/39cc00260486d17450f7228a4f36891f enjoy, hope you manage to do what you need

Try GNUS. Here's what I have for GNUS with Yahoo. Change the values for Gmail. Add the `gnus-select-method` code below in ~/.gnus (setq gnus-select-method '(nnimap "yahoo" (nnimap-address "imap.mail.yahoo.com") (nnimap-server-port 993) (nnimap-stream ssl))) And this in your init.el (use-package oauth2 :ensure t) (setq message-send-mail-function 'smtpmail-send-it)

Easy and simple are not necessarily qualities of Emacs. But tremendous flexibility and freedom are.

Can I interest you in ProtonMail?

I am happy with Wanderlust for most things that do not require fancy HTML rendering, in which case I occasionally have to go to an external application. However, I did spend a zillion hours (or perhaps a little less) modifying everything to suit my needs. So, it is probably not the easiest, simplest, unless you are a happy go lucky person. If you have any level of O.C.D., like me, it is a rabbit hole with an end in sight, but not without some work.

Everything you need know about GNUS (the built in email client), https://github.com/redguardtoo/mastering-emacs-in-one-year-guide/blob/master/gnus-guide-en.org

It’s been years since I used emacs for mail and Usenet because of work requirements. Still use it every day for my coding and documentation. Question: back then I used gnus for Usenet but vm for mail. Is vm still around and used? I remember people we’re just starting to use gnus for mail but it was way more complicated than vm.

Can I interest you in [this](https://youtu.be/IeXaYR4ed9c) and [this](https://youtu.be/QCx_G_R0UmQ) video by Mental Outlaw showcasing and explaining how ProtonMail is just a government honeypot?

Gnus with imap is definitely the easiest to setup.

I just completed this myself, it was a head banging journey, but it works now! https://bryanparonto.com/configuring-doom-emacs-as-my-email-client The information is relevant for any eMacs, not just doom flavored

I'd say the easiest to setup is GNUS. However, that's where the easiness stops, as it is an absolute nightmare to actually *use*. For ease of use I recommend wanderlust combined with the msmtp sendmail replacement that you can probably find in your package manager as something like "msmtp-sendmail". I use wanderlust for my gmail account among others and it works flawlessly with a *reasonably* short config file. I can share the relevant lines if you are interested.

I find [this video ](https://youtu.be/yZRyEhi4y44) to be extremely helpful. Keep in mind that [mu index -- maildir=~/Mail --my-addreds=myaddress@gmail.com] didn't work for me. I was getting an error. I had to use [mu init -- maildir=~/Mail --my-addreds=myaddress@gmail.com] And then [mu index] (without any argument). But other than that everything worked fine l. Edit: I did this yesterday so I'm quite sure it will work for you.

I am wondering why Wanderlust is not more popular amongst Emacs users. IMO the best MUA. :-)

One thing that had me gnashing teeth for longer than I care to admit was some security setting with Gmail. Had to head to [https://myaccount.google.com/security](https://myaccount.google.com/security) and lower the default security level. Look under account `settings >> security >> Less secure app access` And my notes seem to indicate that I had issues with the 1.3.0 version of isync coming from `apt`. Apparently in the end I used the source from https://sourceforge.net/projects/isync/files/isync/1.3.1/isync-1.3.1.tar.gz

Do you have any suggestions for a better email if one doesn’t write it themselves?

Mental Outlaw has already made a video about [7 Best Secure Email Services](https://youtu.be/8Jd5GQ6oSZo) however he this made this prior to learning more about ProtonMail so it is also listed in the video as a secure option even though we now know it is not.

I'll pretend you didn't mention "easiest" and retweet https://github.com/dickmao/gnus-imap-walkthrough, which I've been hawking for years. So far no takers, but I'm not giving up.

That seems a bit disingenuous to say this is anything more than him sharing an opinion.

Do you want to explain why you’re believing some guy in the internet about this who posts on YouTube? It *is* true he also made a video about how ProtonMail handed information about some harmless “activist” over to that country’s government.

No not really. It was ages ago since I watched those videos but I admit sharing it without much knowledge on the matter myself is dumb. If you don't trust ppl who post on YT then why trust redditors? Or anyone on the internet? If you find the videos not good enough in any way then you should just do your own research. No better way to gather information anyway.

It‘s good to inform the bullshit detector every now and again. Blanket statements be damned.

And *not everyone* is full of shit. Which is usually easy to notice. Why people don‘t just say what they understand in truth is a frustrating mystery for me.

…..do you have any recommended providers?

Just rewatched the videos. The only thing disingenuous in the two videos is the way ProtonMail misrepresents itself and its services which is what Mental Outlaw is trying to showcase.

I found it useful to look through, for what it's worth.

From what I could gather, his argument boils down to: e2e encryption: The site clearly states that this is for secure emails. I been using ProtonMailfor years and I understood it was the case that e2e is contingent upon the other party being a ProtonMail or gpg user whose keys I've uploaded. Webmail Browser Vulnerabilities: This doesn't seem to be proton specific to me. Most, if not all software is more vulnerable through a browser than through a native application. Tor Onion Site & Sign up information: This has been a point of contention for myself actually. I did not like having to provide an email of phone number to sign up for a proton account, though i imagine there are options you can take to circumvent this. However, the specific onion->clearnet vulnerability that he highlights only applies to the signup process, not the actual webmail application which is fully an onion site. The second video and the issue with them sharing the IP address of a user was pretty overblown at the time. Their response [here](https://protonmail.com/blog/climate-activist-arrest/) would be good for you to read and their [threat model](https://protonmail.com/blog/protonmail-threat-model/) they published in 2014 was pretty clear about processes regarding working with Swiss Law. In total, I don't really see how one could say his videos explain how ProtonMail is a govt honeypot.

Thank everyone for your help. I will get to work.

I recommend Fastmail. Here’s my referral link https://ref.fm/u26310488 Others prefer Protonmail (or tutanota, etc) because it’s more secure than fastmail. The thing about email is it’s inherently insecure. If you want secure email, encrypt it before you send it. Fastmail has a lot of niceties, some that protonmail and others charge more money for. I’m also a 1Password user and they have a nice integration with Fastmail to generate and save masked emails, which is currently my favorite feature 🤩

Agree most forms of layer 7 communication are inherently insecure.

I wrote done some notes the last time I configured mu4e. Maybe they can help you. If something is unclear I happy to help! https://jherrlin.github.io/posts/emacs-mu4e/

Thank you!

The easiest and best way to setup E-mail in GNU Emacs is using the mu-wizard written by Cem Keylan. It is like a wizard which configures everything for you by asking questions. It is very straightforward and makes the configuration part of mu4e way easier. https://github.com/cemkeylan/mu-wizard](https://github.com/cemkeylan/mu-wizard

Will try it.