home | help 
AERC-TUTORIAL(7)	Miscellaneous Information Manual	AERC-TUTORIAL(7)

NAME
     aerc-tutorial - tutorial for aerc(1)

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
     <C-p>  to	represent  Ctrl+p, which matches the convention used for writing
     keybindings for aerc.

     <C-p>, <C-n>
	 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

     <C-u>, <C-d>
	 Scrolls half a page up or down

     g, G
	 Selects the first or last message, respectively

     K, J
	 Switches between folders in the sidebar

     <Enter>
	 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. Fil-
     tering hides any non-matching message.

THE MESSAGE VIEWER
     Press <Enter> to open a message. By default, the message viewer  will  dis-
     play  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 al-
     ternative formats) show a part  selector  on  the	bottom	of  the  message
     viewer.

     <C-k>, <C-j>
	 Cycle between parts of a multipart message

     q
	 Close the message viewer

     To  show  HTML  messages parts, the text/html filter in your aerc.conf file
     (which is probably in ~/.config/aerc/) requires w3m along with optional de-
     pendencies for safer network isolation: unshare (from util-linux) or  sock-
     sify (from 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 mes-
     sage (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 <Tab> or <C-j> and <C-k> to cycle  between  these  fields  (tab
     won't  cycle  between fields once you enter the editor, but <C-j> and <C-k>
     will).

     Let's send an email to yourself. Note that the To and From  headers  expect
     RFC 5322 addresses, e.g. John Doe <john@example.org>, or simply <john@exam-
     ple.org>.	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 <C-x>. : 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:

     <C-t>
	 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  sum-
     mon  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  fil-
     ters:

     *	 text/plain  parts  are piped through the colorize built-in filter which
	 handles URL, quotes and diff coloring.
     *	 text/calendar is processed to be human readable text
     *	 text/html (disabled by default) can be uncommented to pipe through  the
	 built-in html filter.

   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 fil-
     ters, change its appearance and behavior, and so on.

AUTHORS
     Originally created by Drew DeVault and maintained by Robin Jarry who is as-
     sisted by other open source contributors. For more information  about  aerc
     development, see https://sr.ht/~rjarry/aerc/.

				   2026-08-30			AERC-TUTORIAL(7)
home | help