Bor - Terminal Email Reader

Bor means pine in Slovenian. Bor is also an email reader inspired by pine.

I used to use pine and later its derivatives (alpine, realpine) until it became unsustainable. I switched to mu4e over a decade ago, but while I liked many things, it was never quite perfect.

A few years ago I switched away from emacs to VSCode and with the advent of AI coding I finally bite the bullet and made my very own mail client that works exactly the way I want it. Think of bor as pine dragged (by its feet) into 2025.

Bor uses mu for email access under the hoold and Textual for the user interface.

Some screenshots

Message index

Tabbed message reading

In-terminal preview using kitty terminal protocol

Features

• Fast email searching using mu's powerful query language
• Threaded message view with visual indentation
• Message composition with address autocompletion and Ctrl-C/V/X handling global clipboard even in terminal
• Attachment handling with preview (using kitty terminal graphics capabilities)
• Keyboard-driven interface
• Tab-based workflow
• Configurable via TOML configuration file
• HTML email support via html2text rendering

Requirements

• Python 3.10+
• mu (maildir indexer)
• Textual library
• Optional: html2text for HTML email rendering
• Optional: kitty terminal for image preview

Known issues

• no support for folders. You can mu search with maildir:/folder, but all archived messages go to the archived folder. This is how my work-flow works. Feel free to add and make pull request.

Installation

From PyPI

pip install bormail

From source

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/your-repo/bor.git
cd bor

# Install with pip
pip install -e .

# Or install dependencies manually
pip install textual tomli html2text

Dependencies

# Install mu on Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install maildir-utils

# Install mu on Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S mu

# Install mu on macOS
brew install mu

Release

1. Update the version in pyproject.toml.
2. Create a git tag like v0.1.1 and publish a GitHub Release.
3. The Build workflow will upload the sdist and wheel to PyPI.
   • Configure PyPI Trusted Publishing for slosar/bor before the first release.

Configuration

Copy the example configuration file and customize it:

cp bor.conf.example ~/.config/bor.conf

Edit ~/.config/bor.conf to configure:

• SMTP server settings
• Maildir folder paths
• Display preferences
• Color scheme
• Synchronization command
• Email and text aliases

See the configuration documentation for details.

Usage

Start Bor:

python -m bor.app

Or if installed:

bor

Keyboard Shortcuts

Global

Key	Action
Alt+0	Message Index tab
Alt+1-9	Switch to tab
Ctrl+Q	Quit

Message Index

Key	Action
↑/↓ or N/P	Navigate messages
Enter	Open message
R	Reply
F	Forward
C	Compose new
S	Search (mu query)
I	Show Inbox
O	Show Archive
U	Show Drafts
M	Mark message
X	Archive message(s)
A	Apply flag
D	Delete message(s)
E	Edit draft
T	Toggle threading
Ctrl+T	Show thread
L	Sync
Z	Undo move
Ctrl+R	Refresh index

Message View

Key	Action
Space/PgDn	Scroll down
<	Return to index (keep tab open)
Q	Close tab and return
N/P	Next/Previous message
R	Reply
F	Forward
C	Compose new
M	Mark/unmark message and advance
X	Archive
D	Delete
A	Apply flag
O	Open URL (if multiple, pick [1-9])
Z	View attachments
Ctrl+R	Toggle full headers

Compose

Key	Action
Tab	Autocomplete address/text
Ctrl+L L	Send message
Ctrl+L D	Save draft
Ctrl+L X	Cancel
Ctrl+L A	Attach file
Ctrl+L Z	Attach many files from a directory
Ctrl+I	Insert file

Ctrl+L A opens a file-path prompt with bash-like tab completion: one match completes immediately, multiple matches are listed without forcing a choice, and the input expands only to the longest shared prefix.

Ctrl+L Z first prompts for a directory with the same tab-completion behavior, then opens a file picker where Space marks files, Enter attaches the marked set, Esc cancels, and Ctrl+A toggles all.

Attachments

Key	Action
1-9	Select attachment
Enter	Open with system viewer
S	Save attachment
Shift+S	Save all
Q or Esc	Close and return to message view
<	Return to index (keep tab open)

URL opener limitation

The URL picker shows and opens the first 9 URLs. If a message has more than 9 URLs, it is easier to copy/paste the link or use terminal link clicking instead.

Search Queries

Bor uses mu's query language. Examples:

# Search in inbox
maildir:/INBOX

# Unread messages
flag:unread

# From a specific sender
from:john@example.com

# Subject contains word
subject:meeting

# Date range
date:1w..now

# Combine queries
from:john subject:meeting flag:unread

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

See the mu query documentation for more.

Development

Project Structure

bor/
├── __init__.py       # Package init
├── app.py            # Main Textual application
├── config.py         # Configuration handling
├── mu.py             # Mu interface
└── tabs/
    ├── __init__.py
    ├── base.py       # Base tab class
    ├── message_index.py
    ├── message.py
    ├── compose.py
    ├── attachments.py
    └── sync.py

Running tests

pytest tests/

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.

Credits

• mu/mu4e - Email indexing and searching
• Textual - TUI framework
• Inspired by traditional email clients like pine, mutt, and mu4e