Your .muttrc File and Other Ways to Configure Mutt

Your .muttrc file is a configuration file that should be stored in your home directory. If you don't have one in your home directory mutt will utilize the system-wide configuration file at /etc/Muttrc (note the capital M). You can copy that file to your home directory, calling it .muttrc (note the period; it's a dot-file). This is the file you will modify to set up mutt to your liking. Alternatively, you can start a new .muttrc file using the text editor of your choice using the code in this document as a base.

The .muttrc file contains code that determines mutt's keybindings (which keys perform which function), code that determines what mutt looks like, including colors, and code that determines how mutt behaves. First of all, the hash mark (#) is interpreted as a comment sign, so any text after a hash mark is ignored when mutt processes its files. Knowing that, start off your .muttrc with a little header that labels it:

# The Woodnotes Example  Mutt rc
# http://www.therandymon.com
##################################################

The rest of the configuration discussed in this article belongs in your .muttrc file. Mutt parses this file when it starts up, and will alert you if it finds any errors. If you want to try a test .muttrc you can name it something different and start mutt from the command line with mutt -F TESTFILE to use it in place of your .muttrc.

However, you can also test out commands one by one once mutt is running, by pressing the colon sign and entering the command. You wouldn't want to do that for large sets of commands, obviously, but if you simply want to try something both ways, you can do so in this way. Still another way is to get mutt started, then make edits to your .muttrc file, and have mutt reload the configuration file by entering

:source .muttrc

This is my favorite way of testing configurations as I go.