Alpine Mail Main Screen

Why would you use a command line mail client when the GMail web client is accessible from anywhere and has a myriad of useful features?

  • You have an older computer and the javascript heavy web client takes too long to load.
  • You work primarily in a CLI environment, use a terminal multiplexer, and would like to be able to read your email without spinning up a browser instance.

For my particular use case, the first bullet point is the reason why I wanted to try setting up Alpine. Loading GMail on my older under powered laptop was taking far too long. Below is the process I used to configure everything.

Downsides

There are some convenient features that you’ll be missing from the web client such as:

  • Access to and autocomplete of email addresses in your Google Contacts. (although there is discussion of an inelegant work around)
  • Rich text email reading/composition.

Installing

I’m setting this up on Kubuntu 18.04 LTS. The first step is to install Alpine using the following command:

sudo apt install alpine

Server setup

IMAP Setup

Launch Alpine. Navigate to Main>Setup>collectionLists>Add and add in the following settings:

Nickname : Gmail (or whatever you would like to name the folder)
Server : imap.gmail.com/ssl/user=youruserid@gmail.com (ex: youremail@gmail.com)
Path :
View :

Press enter. When prompted, enter your password.

If you are using Gmail 2FA, your login password will not be accepted. You will need to create a specialized Google App password in the Gmail Privacy and Security settings and enter that in instead.

SMTP Setup

Navigate to Setup > Config and enter in the following information for SMTP Server:

smtp.gmail.com:587/tls/user=youruserid@gmail.com (ex: youremail@gmail.com)

Folder setup

Navigate to Setup > Config and check off the following items:

  • Compensate for deficient IMAP servers
  • Combined Folder Display
  • Enable incoming folders collection
  • Enable incoming folders checking

Deleting mail

To properly delete email in Alpine so that it shows up in the Trash folder on Gmail, do the following:

  1. Select the message and press Shift + S to mark it to be saved.
  2. Press Ctrl + T to show the folder menu.
  3. Select [Gmail]/Trash as the folder.
  4. Confirm your choice and save.

Tips

  • By default, Alpine checks for new mail every 150 seconds. You can change this in the Config screen by changing the Mail Check Interval value. Press Ctrl + L to force updating/checking of a folder.

Reference pages

cliemaillinux
By Tutorials