midnight 0.4.0

Send mail later via batch queueing
Documentation

midnight

Schedule emails to be sent at a later time via at(1).

Installation

From crates.io

cargo install midnight

From source

git clone https://library.cat/rory/midnight
cd midnight
cargo install --path .

Runtime dependencies

You will also need at on your system. If you do not have it, grab it from your package manager.

If you are on macOS, the at daemon is not enabled by default, so you will need to run the following command to enable and start it:

sudo launchctl enable system/com.apple.atrun

Configuration

In your neomutt config, assign a macro to call the binary. Make sure it's in your path somewhere.

macro index,pager L "|midnight<enter>" "send later"

You must also ensure that you are using pipe_decode = no somewhere in your neomutt config, as midnight uses the message ID to send your email (setting pipe_decode strips the message ID). This ensures your scheduled (queued) messages get sent, even if you decide to edit their contents before they are delivered.

Advanced configuration

Depending on your setup, it may be possible to define a macro that works from the compose menu. You may need to set a separate macro per account, if your accounts use different names for the draft boxes. Something like the command below will likely work:

macro compose L "<postpone-message><enter><change-folder>=Drafts<enter>|midnight<enter>"

This seems to function ok in my setup, as the lastest postponed message is always be the first message my cursor lands on when switching to the drafts box. However, this may not be the case for you, depending on some other options in your neomutt config. So, please be careful, and test this yourself before relying on it.

Draftboxes

You may specify which draftbox an account is associated with, using a .draftboxes file. If you do not specify a .draftboxes files, midnight will grep around your neomutt config directory, and attempt to find the correct draftbox using the postponed = ... option inside a neomutt config file. If you use multiple accounts, you must have a separate file for each account for this to work properly. An example .draftboxes is below. Lines starting with '#' are comments.

# ~/.config/neomutt/.draftboxes
noreply@example.com = ~/mail/example.com/drafts
notarealaddress@crates.io = ~/mail/crates.io/draftbox

Usage

Programs

Installing midnight will give you access to the following programs:

  • midnight: Used to add a message to the queue. Primarily intended to be used from neomutt via a macro. See the Configuration section above for details.
  • mn: Alias for midnight.
  • mnq: List mail that's been scheduled for delivery.
  • mnrm: Remove a scheduled mail from the queue by passing it's job ID (this ID appears in mnq as the first value, between square brackets).
  • mnsend: Send a message using a unique message ID. This program is not intended to be called by the user, but rather, is used by midnight internally when creating a new job in at(1).

Getting help

You can run midnight -h to get a help menu that displays proper program usage, as well as some optional flags. The flags may be used with any of the binaries listed above, and may override that binary's default behavior.

Usage in neomutt

On the compose screen, use P to postpone the message. Then, go to your drafts folder, and use the macro you set above to schedule the message to be sent later (or see the Advanced configuration section on possibly setting a macro to send later directly from the compose menu). You will be prompted to enter a time at which to schedule the message for delivery. You may enter any time that can be interpreted by at(1). For instance:

  • now + 10 minutes
  • 0600
  • 2:00pm
  • 1800 Jun 1 2030

See man at for more details. If the time you enter is unable to be interpreted properly, the program will quit with an error message, and your email will not be added to the queue.

Caveats

This software is in a beta release, and there are some quircks and missing features for the time being:

  • Minimal configuration options (a .draftboxes file). If you want to change how the program invokes at, for instance, you will have to change the source code for now.
  • If you are using multiple accounts in neomutt, midnight will assume that each account has it's own file. This is important for reading the correct folder and postponed values inside of your config. If you don't have separate files for each account, then for now, you will need to either refactor your config, or change the source code of the program so it works with your setup. You may now set a .draftboxes file (see Draftboxes section above for details). By default, midnight will first try to look for this file, then fallback to grepping your neomutt config if this file cannot be found.
  • There is no state management, so there is no way to tell what job in atq correponds to what message in drafts. We have state manage now! midnight keeps some metadata in it's own queue file. By default, it's stored in NEOMUTT_XDG_CONFIG_DIR/.midnight. Additionally, calling mnrm <jobid> will also remove the job from atq(1).
  • There is (effectively) no way to call the program from the compose menu in neomutt at the moment (which would be very useful). There is currently a hack/workaround for this, though it may or may not work for you. Please see the Advanced configuration section for more details.
  • The program does not delete the message in drafts after the message is sent (however, the sent message will be displayed in your sent folder). Due to the extra metadata storage, and calling mnsend instead of invoking neomutt in at(1) directly, we now (attempt) to delete the message in the user's draftbox after it is sent.

Building

git clone https://library.cat/rory/midnight
cd midnight
cargo build