title: Reading Emails weight: 4#

Emails are rendered as styled Markdown in the terminal using glamour. The reader supports vim-style navigation.

Navigation#

Opening Emails Externally#

Images#

Remote images appear as [Image: alt] placeholders, keeping the reading experience clean and fast. To see images, press O to open in your browser.

Inline / attached images (e.g. screenshots pasted into an email) are listed in the reader header: Attach: [1] screenshot.png [2] report.pdf. Press 1–9 to download to ~/Downloads/ and open with xdg-open. Inline images also show [Image: filename.png] placeholders at their position in the body text.

When you press O to open in the browser, inline images are extracted from the email and saved to temp files. The HTML cid: references are rewritten to file:// paths so the browser renders them — including images sent by other people (not just your own).

Spy Pixel Blocking#

neomd automatically detects and blocks tracking pixels, similar to HEY's spy pixel blocker. Since the TUI renders emails as styled Markdown via glamour, remote images are never fetched — senders cannot tell if you read their email.

Two-layer detection (same approach as HEY):

1. Curated denylist — 150+ tracking services with URL pattern matching, sourced from Simplify (BSD-3-Clause), LeaveMeAlone (CC-BY 3.0), and DHH's original HEY list (MIT). Covers Mailchimp, HubSpot, SendGrid, ConvertKit, Substack, Amazon, Facebook, LinkedIn, and many more. When matched, the service name is shown (e.g. "Mailchimp").
2. Generic 1×1 pixel heuristic — catches custom/branded tracking domains not on the list by detecting <img> tags with empty alt AND tiny dimensions (both width/height 0–1) or CSS hiding (display:none). Layout spacers (e.g. 1×50) are not flagged.

When tracking pixels are detected, neomd shows:

• ° indicator in the inbox list (orange, next to the attachment @ column)
• ° N spy pixel(s) blocked (ServiceName) in the reader header with tracker attribution

Scanning: Spy pixels are detected when you read an email. To scan all emails in the current folder at once, press <space>S or run :scan-spy-pixels (alias :ssp). The scan runs in the background, skips already-scanned emails, and uses IMAP PEEK (won't mark emails as read). Results are cached in ~/.cache/neomd/spy_pixels and persist across restarts.

When you press O to open in the browser, remote images load normally — you're explicitly choosing to see the full email. Tracking pixel blocking is a TUI-level protection.

This is how it looks:#

In overview:

And within an email open:

Links#

Links in emails are automatically numbered inline where they appear in the body. A link like Check out our blog renders as Check out our blog [1] in the terminal.

Press space then a digit (1–9, 0 for 10th) to open the link in $BROWSER.

• Up to 10 links per email, deduplicated by URL
• Numbers appear inline so you can see them while reading without scrolling
• If an email has no links, space works as page-down as usual

Attachments#

Attachments are listed in the reader header:

Attach:  [1] report.pdf  [2] photo.png

Press 1–9 to download attachment N to ~/Downloads/ and open it with xdg-open. Filenames are deduplicated automatically if a file already exists.

Download Raw Email Source#

Press space then d in the reader to download the full raw email source (.eml file) to ~/Downloads/. The file is named neomd-YYYYMMDD-<subject>.eml using the email's date and sanitized subject line.

This is useful for archiving emails, debugging headers, or importing into other email clients. The status bar shows a green confirmation when the download completes.

Threaded Inbox#

Related emails are automatically grouped together in the inbox list. Threads are detected using a hybrid approach:

1. Message-ID / In-Reply-To headers — proper RFC 2822 threading chain
2. Subject + participant fallback — emails with the same normalized subject (stripped of Re:, Fwd:, etc.) and overlapping participants (From/To) are grouped together

Threads display with a Twitter-style vertical connector line:

  1  ·17:43  │ rafaelxxxxxxxxxxx@g…  Re: Re: AUR Neomd              (12K)
  2  ·16:30 ·╰  rafaelxxxxxxxxxxx@g…  Re: AUR Neomd                  (10K)
  3 N 19:50  │ Bla blabla   via Li…  Jenna just messaged you        (38K)
  4 N 18:53  │ Bla blabla   via Li…  Jenna just messaged you        (38K)
  5 N 17:59  ╰ Bla blabla   via Li…  Jenna just messaged you        (38K)
  6   18:46    LinkedIn              tom Weller replied to ...      (45K)
  7  ·14:22  · Simon Späti           Data pipeline question          (5K)

• · reply indicator — you've replied to this email (IMAP \Answered flag, works across clients)
• ·╰ reply indicator within a thread
• │ connects thread members (newest on top)
• ╰ marks the root/oldest email at the bottom of each thread
• ° spy pixel indicator — tracking pixels were detected and blocked (shown after first read)
• Non-threaded emails show no connector (clean, no visual noise)
• Threads are sorted by their most recent email, so active conversations float to the top

Or as image:

Replying, Forwarding, and Drafts#

Conversation View#

Press T from the inbox list or while reading an email to see the full conversation across folders. neomd searches Inbox, Sent, Archive, Waiting, and other configured folders for related emails — matching by normalized subject and participant overlap.

Results display in a temporary "Thread" tab:

• Each email shows [Folder] prefix (e.g. [Sent], [Inbox], [Archive])
• Threading connectors (│/╰) show the conversation structure
• Press Enter to read any email, Esc to return to previous view

Also available as :thread (alias :t) from the command line.

Mark as Read Behavior#

Neomd marks emails as read after you've spent time viewing them, not immediately when opened. This prevents accidental marking when quickly peeking at emails.

How it works:

• When you open an email (press enter or l), neomd fetches the full body from IMAP
• Once the body loads, a timer starts (default: 7 seconds)
• If you stay in the reader for the full duration, the email is marked as \Seen on the server
• If you exit early (press h, q, esc, or T), the email stays unread

Configuration:

[ui]
mark_as_read_after_secs = 7   # wait 7 seconds (default)
# mark_as_read_after_secs = 0   # immediate marking (no timer)
# mark_as_read_after_secs = 10  # 10 seconds

Set to 0 for immediate marking (as soon as the body finishes loading). Set to any value in seconds to customize the delay.

UI behavior:

• The local inbox list updates immediately when an email is marked as read — no need to manually refresh
• The unread indicator (N) disappears as soon as marking completes
• Manual toggle with n still works to mark/unmark emails at any time

Reply Indicator#

Emails you've replied to show a · dot in the inbox list. This uses the standard IMAP \Answered flag, so it works across clients — if you reply from webmail, neomd shows it too.