NOTMUCH-NEW(1)

NAME
notmuch-new - incorporate new mail into the notmuch database

SYNOPSIS

notmuch new [options]

DESCRIPTION

Find and import any new messages to the database.

The new command scans all sub-directories of the database, performing full-text indexing on new messages that are found. Each new message will automatically be tagged with both the inbox and unread tags.

You should run notmuch new once after first running notmuch <#notmuch-setup-1> to create the initial database. The first run may take a long time if you have a significant amount of mail (several hundred thousand messages or more). Subsequently, you should run notmuch new whenever new mail is delivered and you wish to incorporate it into the database. These subsequent runs will be much quicker than the initial run.

Invoking notmuch with no command argument will run new if notmuch <#notmuch-setup-1> has previously been completed, but notmuch new has not previously been run.

notmuch new updates tags according to maildir flag changes if the maildir.synchronize_flags configuration option is enabled. See notmuch-config <#notmuch-config-1> for details.

The new command supports hooks. See notmuch-hooks <#notmuch-hooks-5> for more details on hooks.

Supported options for new include

--no-hooks
    Prevents hooks from being run.

--quiet
    Do not print progress or results.

--verbose
    Print file names being processed. Ignored when combined with --quiet.

--decrypt=(true|nostash|auto|false)
    If true, when encountering an encrypted message, try to decrypt it while indexing, and stash any discovered session keys. If auto, try to use any session key already known to belong to this message, but do not attempt to use the user's secret keys. If decryption is successful, index the cleartext of the message.

    Be aware that the index is likely sufficient (and the session key is certainly sufficient) to reconstruct the cleartext of the message itself, so please ensure that the notmuch message index is adequately protected. DO NOT USE --decrypt=true or --decrypt=nostash without considering the security of your index.

    See also index.decrypt in notmuch-config <#notmuch-config-1>.

--full-scan
    By default notmuch-new uses directory modification times (mtimes) to optimize the scanning of directories for new mail. This option turns that optimization off.

CONFIGURATION

Indexing is influenced by the configuration options index.decrypt <#nmconfig-index.decrypt>, index.header.<prefix> <#nmconfig-index.header.-prefix> and new.ignore <#nmconfig-new.ignore>. Tagging is controlled by new.tags <#nmconfig-new.tags> and maildir.synchronize_flags <#nmconfig-maildir.synchronize_flags>. See notmuch-config <#notmuch-config-1> for details.

EXIT STATUS

This command supports the following special exit status code

75 (EX_TEMPFAIL)
    A temporary failure occurred; the user is invited to retry.

SEE ALSO

notmuch <#notmuch-1>, notmuch-config <#notmuch-config-1>, notmuch-count <#notmuch-count-1>, notmuch-dump <#notmuch-dump-1>, notmuch-hooks <#notmuch-hooks-5>, notmuch-insert <#notmuch-insert-1>, notmuch-reply <#notmuch-reply-1>, notmuch-restore <#notmuch-restore-1>, notmuch-search <#notmuch-search-1>, notmuch-search-terms <#notmuch-search-terms-7>, notmuch-show <#notmuch-show-1>, notmuch-tag <#notmuch-tag-1>

Author
Carl Worth and many others

Copyright
2009-2026, Carl Worth and many others