- mu4e alert
mu4e-alert is an Emacs extension providing desktop notifications for mu4e, additionally it can display the number of unread emails in the mode-line.
This package requires Emacs v24.3 or above and Mu version v0.9.9.6 or above. It assumes that you have a working mu/mu4e setup.
mu4e-alert is available on MELPA and MELPA Stable. Please follow the instructions on
MELPA website to enable it, if you haven’t already.
You can then install mu4e-alert from the package menu. Alternatively
install it by doing the following
Refresh the package index
M-x package-refresh-contents RET
And then install it by doing
M-x package-install RET mu4e-alert
mu4e-alert can also be installed using el-get. Assuming you have latest
version of el-get installing it by doing something similar to
M-x el-get-install RET mu4e-alert
To enable desktop notifications manually, use the command
mu4e-alert-enable-notifications. To enable notification automatically on
Emacs startup add something like the following to your init file
;; Choose the style you prefer for desktop notifications
;; If you are on Linux you can use
;; 1. notifications - Emacs lisp implementation of the Desktop Notifications API
;; 2. libnotify - Notifications using the `notify-send' program, requires `notify-send' to be in PATH
;;
;; On Mac OSX you can set style to
;; 1. notifier - Notifications using the `terminal-notifier' program, requires `terminal-notifier' to be in PATH
;; 1. growl - Notifications using the `growl' program, requires `growlnotify' to be in PATH
(mu4e-alert-set-default-style 'libnotify)
(add-hook 'after-init-hook #'mu4e-alert-enable-notifications)mu4e-alert uses the value of alert-default-style as the default
notification style, which defaults to message, if you want to use different
style please add a rule for category “mu4e-alert” using alert’s API or use
the function mu4e-alert-set-default-style to customize the value of
mu4e-alert-style.
You can disable notifications using the command mu4e-alert-disable-notifications
Display of the unread email count in the mode-line can be enabled using the
command mu4e-alert-enable-mode-line-display or adding something like the
following to your init file
(add-hook 'after-init-hook #'mu4e-alert-enable-mode-line-display)After enabling mode-line display the unread emails can be viewed by clicking the mode-line indicator.
Use the command mu4e-alert-disable-mode-line-display to disable mode-line
indication of unread emails
mu4e-alert should work with default options, nevertheless it offers the
following customizations. Please see the mu4e-alert.el file or do M-x
customize-group RET mu4e-alert RET to for documentation of customizable
options.
The query used to find unread (read ‘interesting’) emails can be customized
using the variable mu4e-alert-interesting-mail-query. So, for example, if
you want mu4e-alert to ignore a certain maildir you can customize it to do
so. In this example, we ignore a maildir that is located at /[Gmail].All
Mail by adding this to the init.el file:
(setq mu4e-alert-interesting-mail-query
(concat
"flag:unread"
" AND NOT flag:trashed"
" AND NOT maildir:"
"\"/[Gmail].All Mail\""))mu4e-alert can display both the count as well subject of unread emails in
the desktop notifications. Use the variable
mu4e-alert-email-notification-types to customize the type of notifications
displayed. It should be set to a list of types of notification you want to
receive. Following are the notification types supported for now
- count - Display the count of unread emails
- subjects - Display the subject of unread emails
For example, adding the following snippet to your init file, will instruct
mu4e-alert to only display the number of unread emails.
(setq mu4e-alert-email-notification-types '(count))mu4e-alert allows you to customize the notifications for emails count by
setting the following values
| Variable | Aspect customized |
|---|---|
| mu4e-alert-email-count-title | Title used for email count notifications |
| mu4e-alert-email-count-notification-formatter | Formatting the message body of the email notification |
For displaying subjects of unread emails, mu4e-alert groups unread emails
according some criteria. Then subjects of the emails in each of the groups
are displayed in separate desktop notifications.
The following variables can be used to customize the notifications for subjects
| Variable | Aspect customized |
|---|---|
| mu4e-alert-mail-grouper | Function used to group unread emails |
| mu4e-alert-group-by | Field used to group emails (this is applicable only if mu4e-alert-mail-grouper is set to the default value) |
| mu4e-alert-grouped-mail-sorter | Function used to sort the groups of unread emails |
| mu4e-alert-grouped-mail-notification-formatter | Function used to get notification for group of unread emails |
| mu4e-alert-notify-repeated-mails | If set to non-nil, mu4e-alert displays notifications for all emails irrespective of whether user has been |
| notified about the email earlier. By default user is not notified about such repeated emails |
By default mu4e-alert sets the urgency hint for current Emacs frame (or
the any mu4e frame if available), you can disable it by setting the
variable mu4e-alert-set-window-urgency to nil.
The mode-line indicator for unread emails can be customized by setting the
value of the variable mu4e-alert-modeline-formatter
By default the user is notified of unread messages using Emacs’ message
function. To get desktop notifications you can instruct mu4e-alert to use
an appropriate style provided by the alert library that works on your system.
The easiest way to do this is use the function
mu4e-alert-set-default-style, calling it with the style to be used for
notifications
The styles available vary according to the OS
The following styles for desktop notifications, are available on Linux
This style uses notifications.el an implementation of the Desktop
Notifications API, which ships with Emacs. It requires that Emacs is
compiled with DBus support
This style uses the command-line program notify-send to notify the user.
The program should be in PATH
The following styles for desktop notifications, are available on Mac OSX. Also see the discussion on the issue Does it works with MacOS X?
This style uses the command-line program growlnotify to notify the user
using Growl. The program should be in PATH
This style uses the command-line program terminal-notifier to notify the
user. The program should be in PATH
mu4e-alert uses the excellent alert library for desktop notifications, more
fine-grained customizations to the notifications can be done by using the
alert’s API.
As an example the following customization will color the fringe (along with
the usual desktop notification) if there are unread messages and the user is
visiting one of mu4e-main-view, mu4e-headers-view or viewing an email in
mu4e.
(mu4e-alert-set-default-style 'libnotify)
(alert-add-rule :category "mu4e-alert" :style 'fringe :predicate (lambda (_) (string-match-p "^mu4e-" (symbol-name major-mode))) :continue t)
(mu4e-alert-enable-notifications)