himalaya

himalaya [options] command [arguments]

himalaya is a command-line interface for managing emails. Unlike TUI email clients like mutt or aerc, himalaya is a pure CLI with no event loop — you interact with your emails using shell commands in a stateless way. This makes it composable with pipes and scripts, and freely integrable with other CLI tools.
It supports multiple backends including IMAP, SMTP, Maildir, and Notmuch, with features like multi-account support, PGP encryption, and OAuth 2.0 authentication. Himalaya is designed to extract email logic into a simple CLI API that can be used directly from the terminal, from scripts, and from UIs.

list

List emails in the current folder

Read a specific email

Compose a new email

Reply to an email

Forward an email

Search emails

List mail folders

Download attachments

Configuration is stored in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/himalaya/config.toml and defines accounts with backend settings for IMAP, SMTP, Maildir, or Notmuch.

Initial configuration requires manual setup of mail accounts. OAuth 2.0 setup may require additional steps depending on the provider. PGP encryption requires GPG to be installed and configured.

himalaya was created by Clément DOUIN as part of the Pimalaya project and is written in Rust. It was designed as a Unix-philosophy approach to email, providing simple composable commands rather than a monolithic TUI application.

mutt(1), aerc(1), neomutt(1), mail(1)