Viewing HTML Email and Opening Links

This tutorial gets HTML email rendering and link opening working in NeoMutt. You’ll set up a mailcap file to convert HTML to readable text, enable auto-view, and configure a URL picker so you can open links from messages.

Prerequisites

1. NeoMutt installed and configured with at least one account.

2. A text-mode browser installed — w3m, lynx, or elinks.

3. A URL picker installed — urlview or urlscan.

On Fedora/RHEL:

sudo dnf install w3m urlview

On Debian/Ubuntu:

sudo apt install w3m urlview

On macOS:

brew install w3m urlview

Part 1: Rendering HTML Email

Create a Mailcap File

Mailcap tells NeoMutt how to display non-text MIME types. NeoMutt searches several locations for a mailcap file. The most common is ~/.mailcap.

1. Create ~/.mailcap with an entry for text/html:

text/html; w3m -dump -T text/html %s; copiousoutput

copiousoutput tells NeoMutt that the command produces text suitable for piping into the pager.

Alternative Renderers

Pick the one you prefer:

text/html; lynx -dump %s; copiousoutput

text/html; elinks -dump %s; copiousoutput

Enable Auto-View in NeoMutt

1. Add these lines to your neomuttrc:

auto-view text/html
alternative_order text/plain text/html

auto-view tells NeoMutt to render HTML parts automatically. alternative_order tells NeoMutt to prefer plain text when a message includes both formats.

2. Open a message that contains HTML.

Expected result: the HTML content appears as readable text in the pager, converted by your chosen browser.

Verify the Mailcap Path

If rendering doesn’t work, check which mailcap file NeoMutt is using:

neomutt -nF /dev/null -Q mailcap_path

Expected result: the output includes the path to your mailcap file.

Part 2: Opening Links from Messages

Set Up urlview

urlview extracts URLs from a message and presents them in a selectable list.

1. Create ~/.urlview (urlview’s config file) to set your browser:

COMMAND $BROWSER

This uses whatever is set in your $BROWSER environment variable. You can also hard-code a browser:

COMMAND xdg-open

2. Add a macro to NeoMutt to pipe the current message to urlview:

macro index,pager \cb "<pipe-message>urlview<Enter>" "Extract and open URLs"

3. Open a message with links and press Ctrl-B.

Expected result: a list of URLs appears. Select one and press <Enter> to open it in your browser.

Alternative: Use urlscan

urlscan is a more modern alternative to urlview with colour support.

pip install urlscan

Replace the macro command:

macro index,pager \cb "<pipe-message>urlscan<Enter>" "Extract and open URLs"

Set the BROWSER Variable

If links don’t open, make sure $BROWSER is set in your shell profile:

export BROWSER="xdg-open"     # Linux
export BROWSER="open"         # macOS

Putting It All Together

Here is a minimal config block that covers both HTML rendering and URL extraction:

# HTML rendering
auto-view text/html
alternative_order text/plain text/html

# URL extraction
macro index,pager \cb "<pipe-message>urlview<Enter>" "Extract and open URLs"

And the corresponding ~/.mailcap:

text/html; w3m -dump -T text/html %s; copiousoutput

Next Steps

• “I want to know more about MIME handling.” See MIME and Render HTML Email with Mailcap.

• “I want to read mail offline.” See Setting Up Offline Email with mbsync.

• “I want to customise the pager display.” See Header Display and Colours.