Logging and Debugging

Log Message Types

NeoMutt has different types of logging/error messages:

• Primitive Errors — errors emitted by C library functions such as fopen().

• Errors

• Warnings

• Message — Informational messages such as Sorting mailbox....

• Debug — Debug messages usually only interesting while debugging.

Viewing Log Messages

These log messages are shown in the command bar at the bottom of the UI (usually below the status line). Errors are shown in a different colour than the other message types.

To adjust the colours used for display:

color error ...
color message ...

See the description of :color for the precise syntax.

The command bar shows only the last message. To show the last 100 messages (this includes all types of messages from debug to error), use the <show-log-messages> function.

📷 Screenshot Needed

Subject: Log messages display

Description: The NeoMutt log messages view (accessed via <show-log-messages>) showing a scrollable list of recent log entries with a mix of message types — informational messages, warnings, and errors — each prefixed with a timestamp and severity indicator.

Highlights: How errors are displayed in a distinct colour, the chronological ordering of log entries, and the command bar at the bottom showing the most recent message.

Enabling Debug Logging

1. Debug messages are not shown by default. Set the debug log level with the -d command line parameter at startup:

   neomutt -d 2
   

2. The -d parameter expects a debug level which can range from 1 to 5 and affects verbosity of the debug messages. A value of 2 is recommended to start with.

3. If debug logging is enabled, all log messages (i.e. errors, warnings, …, debug) are additionally written to the file ~/.neomuttdebug0.